Facebook Ads API partner Clickable today announced the closing of a $12 million Series C round of funding led by distribution partner American Express. Clickable develops a licensable tool and offers a managed spend service for search and social advertisers.

The money will in part fund further development of its Facebook Ads API tool and service. However, the company isn’t ruling out the possibility of joining the trend of acquisitions between the Facebook Ads API and Page managements industries, according to Clickable’s VP of Marketing Max Kalehoff.

Founded in 2006, the New York-based company had previously taken $22.5 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Peter Thiel, and Founders Fund. American Express is one of it distribution partners, white-labelling its products and pushing them to its small business clients.

Clickable integrated Facebook ad buying capabilities into its product and services in mid-2010. When we reviewed its Ads API offering in February 2011 it was still lacking some core features, including automatic bid optimization and high-scale ad variant creation for A/B testing. We concluded the product had a good foundation but needed time to mature.

Since then, Kalehoff tells me Clickable has been “steadily releasing Facebook enhancements including bid auto-optimization. It’s starting to get to a critical mass where we we feel it’s pretty compelling compared to when we launched in beta”.

The funding will help accelerate this development cycle and help it keep up with Facebook’s rapid release of API changes and new ad performance data — something that can be difficult for Ads API players coming from the relatively stable search marketing industry. “The funding will go towards product and market development and social is a huge part of that” says Kalehoff.

With $12 million in the bank, Clickable could also acquire a Page management company, the way Efficient Frontier bought Context Optional. Companies with both Ads API and Page management companies can help clients leverage traditional ads and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ads to drive earned viral media.

Kalehoff  says “There’s absolutely no question that we recognize the value of integrating all the Facebook marketing APIs (include Pages and Insights). We’re building in that direction”.

However, it could take half a year to develop a full- fledged Page publishing tool, tab app suite, and Page analytics.With several solid but small Page management tools available as acquisition targets, it might be more efficient to brather than build while other Ads API companies who already acquired or partnered with Page management companies get ahead.

Along with improving the improving the Clickable product, the investment could give American Express more control of the product’s future. The financial services company has been using Facebook to attract new clients through its Small Business Saturday promotions, by providing free or discounted Facebook ad credits.

American Express could use the investment to push Clickable to focus more on serving its small business partners, something the Ads API tool’s lack of a minimum spending requirement already permits. In this way, American Express could provide merchants with a Facebook ads tool tailored to their needs and through which they could start spending with their American Express small business account.

A major upgrade to Facebook Page Insights is currently being rolled out to administrators. It adds several important new metrics, and removes some others. People Talking About This, Reach, and Consumptions will all help Page admins better measure the total audience of their Facebook marketing campaigns and the traffic they are driving.

Facebook has published a .PDF guide to the Insights upgrade, but it doesn’t go into detail about the dozens of new data types admins now have access to. Below we’ll examine every data field available in the Page Insights spreadsheet exports and graphical user interface and discuss what the most significant additions and subtractions are.

What’s in the New Page Insights

To access the new Page Insights, visit your Page and click the Insights tab in the left Page navigation menu. You’ll then see the graphical user interface. By clicking “Export Data” in the top right, you can choose to download spreadsheets of Page- or post-level data for a specific timeframe.

Several of the metrics measure the volume or reach stories that we’ll call “social mentions”.  These stories include liking your Page, posting to your Page’s Wall, liking, commenting on or sharing one of your Page posts, answering a Question you posted, RSVPing to one of your events, mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page or checking in at your Place. Metrics are followed by the time frame and other ways they can be sliced.

Page Level Export

• People Talking About This - The number of people sharing stories about your page. Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Page Stories - The number of stories created about your Page. Daily, weekly, monthly,
• Lifetime Total Likes - Lifetime The total number of people who have liked your Page.
• Daily Friends of Fans - The number of people who are friends of the Fans of your Page (estimated) (unique users).
• Total Reach - The number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page. Daily, weekly, month, by story type.
• Organic Reach - The number of people who visited your Page, or saw your Page or one of its posts in News Feed or Ticker. These people can be Fans or non-Fans (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Reach - The number of people who saw a Sponsored Story or Ad pointing to your Page (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Reach - The number of people who saw your Page or one of its posts from a story published by a friend. Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Total Impressions -  The number of impressions seen of any content associated with your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Impressions - The number of times your posts were seen in News Feed or Ticker or on visits to your Page. These impressions can be by fans or non-fans (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Impressions - The number of impressions of a Sponsored Story or Ad pointing to your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Impressions - The number of impressions of a story published by a friend about your Page (total count). Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw any of your Page posts (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw your Page posts in News Feed or Ticker, or on your Page’s Wall (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Reach of Page Posts – The number of people who saw your Page posts in an Ad or Sponsored Story (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw your Page posts via a story from a friend (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Total Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions that came from all of your posts (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions of your posts in News Feed or Ticker or on your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions of your Page posts in an Ad or Sponsored Story (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Impressions of your Posts - The number of times users saw your posts via stories published by their friends (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Total Consumers - The number of people who clicked on any of your content without generating a story (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly, by consumption type.
• Page Consumptions - The number of times people clicked on any of your content without generating a story (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly, by consumption type.
• Total Frequency Distribution - The number of people your Page reached broken down by how many times people saw any content about your Page (unique users). Weekly, monthly.
• Page Posts Frequency Distribution - The number of people who saw your Page posts, broken down by how many times people saw your posts (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Frequency Distribution - The number of people your Page reached from a story published by a friend, broken down by how many times people saw stories about your Page (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Page Stories By Story Type - The number of stories about your Page by story type. Daily, weekly, monthly. The story types have the following definitions: “Fan” is when someone becomes a fan, “Mention” is when a user tags the Page in an update or a photo, “Checkin” is when a user checks in to a Place Page, “Page” is when your Page posts an update or when a user reposts an update originally published by the Page, “Other”: is when a user creates a story about a Page using one of Facebook’s lesser known products such as Recommendations.
• Lifetime Gender and Age - Lifetime aggregated demographic data about the people who like your Page based on the age and gender information they provide in their user profiles (total count).
• Lifetime Countries – Lifetime aggregated Facebook location data, sorted by country, about the people who like your Page (total count).
• Lifetime Cities - Lifetime aggregated Facebook location data, sorted by city, about the people who like your Page (total count).
• Lifetime Language - Lifetime aggregated language data about the people who like your Page based on the default language setting selected when accessing Facebook (total count).
• Weekly Reach Demographics, Country, City, and Language - Weekly total Page reach by age and gender, user country, user city, and user selected language (unique users).
• Demographics, Country, and Language People Talking About This - The number of People Talking About the Page by user age and gender, user country, and user language (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Daily logged-In Tab Views - Tabs on your Page that were viewed when logged-in users visited your Page (unique users).
• Daily External Referrers - Top referrering external domains sending traffic to your Page (total count).

Post Level Export

Note: all metrics are for the lifetime of the corresponding post.

• Total Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post (unique users).
• Organic Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in News Feed or Ticker, or on your Page’s Wall (unique users).
• Paid Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story (unique users).
• Viral Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in a story from a friend (unique users).
• Total Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post (total count).
• Organic Impressions - The number of impressions of your post in News Feed or Ticker or on your Page’s Wall (total count).
• Paid Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story (total count).
• Viral Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post in a story generated by a friend (total count).
• Engaged Users - The number of people who clicked anywhere in your posts (unique users).
• Talking About This - The number of unique people who created a story about your Page post (unique users).
• Stories - The number of stories generated about your Page post, by story type, ie Likes, comments, and shares (total count).
• Consumers - The number of people who clicked anywhere in your post without generating a story (unique users).
• Consumptions - The number of times people clicked anywhere in your posts without generating a story (total count).

Page Insights Graphical User Interface

What’s Been Removed From Insights or Renamed

• Active Users - The number of people who have interacted with or viewed your Page or its posts. This includes interactions from Fans and non-Fans. Active Users has been replaced with the more comprehensive Reach metrics.
• Daily Unlikes – This has been removed from the export and is now available in the Page Insights graphical user interface.
• Lifetime Total Unsubscribes - The total number of users who have hidden your App or Page in News Feed (total count). This metric helped Pages determine if they were posting spammy or irrelevant content, and its removal may be the most significant loss for Page admins of the Insights upgrade. Update: This metric was mistakenly removed by Facebook and has now been re-added.
• Daily Logged-In Page Views (total count and unique users) – These have been removed from the exports bu are now available in the Page Insights GUI.
• Daily News Feed Impressions – This has been replaced by several organic impressions metrics.
• Daily Likes and Comments – This has been replaced by the Lifetime Post Stories by action type.
• Daily Discussion Posts – Facebook will remove the Discussions tab from Pages on October 31st, 2011, so this metric will no longer be necessary.
• Daily Wall Posts and Videos- This has been replaced by the People Talking About This ‘user’ story type.
• Daily Photo Views and Video Views – These metrics can now be found in the Page consumptions by consumption type.
• Feedback - (Comments+Likes)/Impressions. This has been replaced with Virality in the Insights graphical user interface, though that metric also includes shares of a post.
• Daily Internal Referrers - Daily top referrers to your Page on Facebook (total count) — search, stream, or share. The removal of this metric means it will be difficult for admins to tell where non-fans are arriving to their Page from. Admins can use the Like Sources metric in the Insights GUI to tell where non-fans who become fans are coming from.
• Media Consumptions – Video views, audio listens, and photo views by day. This has been removed from the GUI but replaced in the Page level export with Consumptions by Consumption Type.
• Daily Active Users Breakdown – Unique Page Views, Post Viewers, Liked a Post, Commented on a Post, and Wall Posts. This has been removed from the GUI and replaced with Reach metrics, Lifetime Talking About This, and Lifetime Post Stories by Action Type.
• Page Activity – User Mentions, Discussion Posts, Reviews, Wall Posts, and Videos. The Discussions and Reviews tabs are being removed from Facebook Pages, and the remaining GUI metrics are replaced with People Talking About This.

The Most Important Changes to Page Insights

Reach and Consumptions are two of the most valuable new additions to Page Insights, while the removal of Daily Unsubscribes is the worst part of the overhaul. Reach aggregates all types of impressions and engagement, including those reached by People Talking About This, and gives admins a measure of the total audience of their Facebook marketing efforts. This will allow marketers to compare Facebook to other channels to determine where they can gain bring their message to the most people.

Consumptions can be used to track clicks of posted links. While Likes and comments help improve a post’s EdgeRank and get it more impressions, most marketers are looking to drive traffic to specific online presences where they host custom Page tab applications, ecommerce stores, signup pages, and branded content. Admins will no longer have to use URL shorteners to measure clicks. The Consumptions metric will help marketers measure how their Facebook Page post publishing efforts compare to ads in terms of driving traffic to links.

Daily Unsubscribes let admins track how frequently their Pages were being hidden from the news feeds of fans. This was a powerful way to measure how spammy or boring a Page’s posts were. When admins saw Daily Unsubscribes go up, they could try posting less frequently, providing more compelling content, or being less aggressive with their calls to action. It will now be more difficult for admins to tell when their Page posts aren’t satisfying fans, which could hinder the process of refining a Page publishing strategy. Update: This metric was mistakenly removed by Facebook and has now been re-added.

With all of the data, admins will be able to see how everything they do impacts the performance of their Page. Through API access to the new data, Page analytics firms will be able to derive trends and provide actionable next steps for their clients to take in order to improve key performance indicators such as Reach, People Talking About This, and Consumptions. By giving admins a better understanding of how users are reacting to their efforts, Facebook may be able to get Pages to publish better content in a way that improves the quality of the site as a whole.

Update 10/20/11: Facebook has contacted us to explain that is has made several changes to Page Insights since this article was published. It had accidentally removed the Daily Unsubsribes metric and has now re-added it to the Page level export. It has also changed the descriptions of some metrics. We’ll be updating this article soon to reflect all the changes.

Learn how to develop marketing strategies from your Page Page Insights in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to advertising and marketing through Facebook.

Campaigns on our list this week incorporated varied methods for either Page growth or other types of promotions. Universal Pictures is giving away 1 million Facebook Credits and Fair Trade is promoting an app to help users find fair trade products. Toyota created its own game to promote its products while CVS and Kodak are partnering to promote photo prints.

You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

Universal Pictures’ “Tower Heist” 1 Million Credits Giveaway

Goal: Page Growth, Engagement, Product Purchase, Network Exposure, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: A Credits giveaway when users engage with a Facebook application Heist It Back that promotes the upcoming film, “Tower Heist.”

Method: “Tower Heist” is a film set for release November 4 that mirrors the country’s current financial troubles, involving a crew of “normal” folks who are swindled by a rich businessman and then seek to steal their fortunes back from him.

We spoke to IFeelGoods’ co-founder and Vice President of Marketing Scott Silverman about the application and how it is related to the film. As part of the promotion for the movie, and in what Silverman told us was in keeping with the film’s theme, users may “win back” Facebook Credits when they participate in the application’s different tasks, such as sharing their story about the time they “stuck it to the man,” inviting friends who accept the invitation or sharing on Facebook.

“The idea was almost to give back to people who are interested in the movie by giving them Facebook Credits, or get them to essentially steal [the money] from the main character [of the movie],” Silverman told us about the app. Because free Credits are part of the engagement and the app offers users different actions to earn them, Silverman characterized the amount of engagement he’s seen with the app as “tremendous.”

By the time the film is released, or at least by the time the campaign is over, Silverman expects that all 1 million Credits will be claimed. As of Monday morning 933,200 Credits remain, which is to say that about 66,800 have been claimed by the Page’s 53,800 users.

Silverman said that the application was meant to tie into the movie and enhance elements of the film, which is why people telling their stories and sharing those stories was the main action involved.

Impact: The Page is currently at 53,800 Likes and PageData notes that a spike in the number of Likes occurred last week, a few days after the Heist It Back app launched. Although the film is still several weeks away, that less than 10% of the Credits have been claimed is surprising; the highest number of Credits earned by users at this point is under 300. There are only a few ways users can earn Credits and these don’t all necessarily publish to the stream, so it will be interesting to see whether all of the Credits are claimed. All in all, this was an interesting way to tie-in users to the central theme of the movie while also attaching high value to the application associated with it.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of hundreds of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Facebook’s Page again topped our quarterly list of the top Pages by the number of Likes, as measured by our PageData tool. As with past lists, the majority of the names on this one remain unchanged even as all of them grew. Both Facebook and Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker reached over 50 million, with several others above 40 million Likes.

The number of Likes that Pages on our list had ranged from Facebook’s 54 million down to MTV’s 28.3 million.

See how other top brands are maximizing their returns on their Facebook campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible. See the list below:

1. Facebook – 54,031,990

2. Texas Hold’em Poker – 51,151,002

3. Eminem – 47,880,731

4. YouTube – 46,059,390

5. Rihanna – 45,905,971

6. Lady Gaga – 44,288,366

7. Michael Jackson – 41,557,728

8. Shakira – 41,109,665

9. Family Guy – 38,543,871

10. Justin Bieber – 36,690,985

11. Harry Potter – 35,671,699

12. Katy Perry – 35,636,341

13. Linkin Park – 35,393,553

14. The Simpsons – 35,382,429

15. Cristiano Ronaldo – 35,016,634

16. Coca-Cola – 34,714,743

17. South Park – 34,329,509

18. Lil Wayne – 31,878,344

19. Bob Marley – 31,737,524

20. AKON – 31,301,325

21. Disney – 28,914,893

22. Megan Fox – 28,851,053

23. Music – 28,774,416

24. Beyoncé – 28,585,631

25. MTV – 28,338,730

Page tab applications lead the way for growth on our list of the fastest growing by monthly active users this week. Note that on 14 October Facebook changed the way it calculates active users, resulting in a one-time decline in stats for many apps. Samsung and Nokia apps were on our list, as well as Spotify, Scribed and a Halloween costume app. The titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 137,600 and 721,400 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Static HTML: iframe tabs	61,100,000	+721,358	+1%
2.	Mafia Wars 2	840,000	+687,909	+32,899%
3.	Bubble Witch Saga	3,400,000	+623,374	+24%
4.	PM Custom Welcome Tab	6,400,000	+555,616	+10%
5.	Static Iframe Tab	14,000,000	+400,102	+3%
6.	Samsung Mobile	12,300,000	+362,805	+3%
7.	Disfrázate	550,000	+320,259	+139%
8.	Test Console	2,000,000	+320,247	+19%
9.	Welcome tab app for Pages	10,700,000	+307,489	+3%
10.	BandRx	4,500,000	+299,522	+7%
11.	TheAudience Fangate	1,100,000	+286,548	+35%
12.	Tracks.by	1,000,000	+271,251	+39%
13.	Spotify	6,900,000	+253,639	+4%
14.	Static IFRAME Tab : Pin Icon	860,000	+234,812	+38%
15.	Ravenskye City	470,000	+231,664	+2,779%
16.	Scribd	9,500,000	+215,503	+2%
17.	Nokia Social App	7,200,000	+150,603	+2%
18.	WixYourPage	2,000,000	+147,429	+8%
19.	iFrameWrapper: best FBML alternative	1,700,000	+140,883	+9%
20.	Welcome	3,000,000	+137,603	+5%

The Page tab category took up about half of our list, including: Static HTML: iframe tabs with 721,400 MAU; PM Custom Welcome Tab with 555,600 MAU; Static Iframe Tab by 400,100 MAU; Welcome tab app for Pages with 307,500 MAU in the Philippines; Static IFRAME Tab : Pin Icon by 234,800 MAU; WixYourPage with 147,400 MAU; iFrameWrapper: best FBML alternative with 140,900 MAU and Welcome with 137,600 MAU.

Mobile apps included Samsung Mobile with 362,800 MAU mostly growing in Indonesia and India and Nokia Social App with 150,600 MAU, growing in India, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.

Then there were a few music apps on the list. Musician Page app, BandRx grew by 299,500 MAU, music app Tracks.by grew by 271,300 MAU and Spotify continued growing mostly in the United States and United Kingdom by 253,600 MAU.

Then there was a Halloween app Disfrázate with 320,300 MAU; the app allows users to publish a photo to the stream with their face applied to different Halloween costumes. Then a few apps, Test Console with 320,200 MAU and TheAudience Fangate with 286,500 MAU, were on the list before Scribd, the document storage site. The Facebook Connect integration grew mostly in the US, France and Philippines by 215,500 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between October 10th and 16th.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods. 

Monday, October 10th:

• Tiny Invaders Lands on iOS, Gets iPhone 4S Announcement Bump
• Slam Dunk King for iOS Proves Freemium Games Can Be a Ball
• Emerging Top Paid iOS Apps: Gameloft on Sale, New Games From Chillingo, Phosphor and Image & Form
• Facebook Finally Releases Official iPad App With Multi-Conversation Chat, Photo Browser and More
• Facebook Makes Its Move: Brings Viral Channels to HTML5, iOS Apps
• Facebook for iPhone 4.0 Update Ports New iPad App Design and Features
• Facebook’s Just-Launched HTML5 Platform Needs More Polish
• Third-Party Facebook Mobile Utility Apps Integrate Hardware to Offer Lightweight Social Experiences
  

Tuesday, October 11th:

• Emerging Top Grossing Apps: Dark Meadows, Dark Flights and the NHL
• Pocket Gems Confirms Redpoint Funding, Doesn’t Disclose Additional Details
• Zynga Announces Zynga Direct, a Social-Mobile Network Enabled With Facebook Connect
• Can iOS Top Grossing Squeeze in Another Zoo Game? Zynga Bets So.

Wednesday, October 12th:

• Pixel Ranger From MetroGames Brings the New West to iOS
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: CrowdStar, TinyCo, Storm8 and More
• Emerging Free iOS Apps: Halloween Is the Theme to Beat

Thursday, October 13th:

• Heyzap Adds a Game Organizer to Its Android Gaming Network
• Playforge Takes The Slow and Steady Route in Growing Its Zombie Franchise
• Booyah CEO Keith Lee Steps Down, COO Willig Steps Up
• New Hires in Mobile: Booyah, GREE, Ngmoco and PlayPhone
• Top Emerging Android Apps: Minecraft, Life is Crime and Lots of Utilities
• 190M Android Devices Activated, Google Sees $2.5B For Mobile Revenue Run-Rate

Friday, October 14th:

• Mobile App Roundup: Newsstand, Infinity Blade, Outfit7, Synthetic and a Critical Valve
• Flurry Adds Hourly, Time of Day & Cohort Metrics to Analytics

Saturday, October 15th:

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: TinyCo, King.com, Lolapps and More

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, October 10th:

• Laralyn McWilliams Leaves Loot Drop, Joins iWin as VP of Creative
• The Sims Social Slows Down on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Dexter: Slice of Life on Facebook Makes a Blood Pact Between Game and Hit Show
• Facebook Makes Its Move: Brings Viral Channels to HTML5, iOS Apps
• Facebook Finally Releases Official iPad App with Multi-Conversation Chat, Photo Browser and More
• Everything is New and Broken in Just-Launched HTML5 Games for Facebook’s Mobile Platform
• Top 25 Facebook Games for October 2011

Tuesday, October 11th:

• The Vampire Diaries Sucks In Players In Facebook Game Debut
• Live-Blogging the Zynga Unleashed Press Event: 10 New Products
• Zynga Announces Zynga Direct, a Social-Mobile Network Enabled With Facebook Connect
• Zynga New Game Lineup Includes Hidden Objects, Mobile Zoo Game, More
• Zynga’s Project Z Network No Threat to Facebook for Now

Wednesday, October 12th:

• Zynga Poker, Bubble Witch Saga Top This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU
• Interior Design With a Heart in the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Game for Facebook
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Liquid, Lolapps, Games Cafe and More
• Your Social Game TV Season on Facebook

Thursday, October 13th:

• House of Fun: Slot Machines Goes For a Spin With Facebook’s Casino Game Crowd
• A Closer Look at the Origins of Zynga’s Hidden Chronicles
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Funzio, RockYou and Zynga
• Idle Games Raises $10M to $15M, Facebook Game Still Unlaunched
• Zynga to List Its Shares on Nasdaq, Breaks Out Individual Game Revenues

Friday, October 14th:

• 3D Slots, Spa Life Top This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Kixeye’s War Commander Demands More From Facebook Users Than Most Social Games Dare
• Social Gaming News Roundup: Playdom, Zynga, PayPal, Wooga and Kabam

Saturday, October 15th:

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lolapps, TinyCo, Games Cafe and More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, October 10th:

• Birthdays, Spotify, Photos, Report Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Comida Kraft, First Alert, Lipsy and VEVO
• Facebook Acquires Interest Graph-Focused Question and Answer Service Friend.ly
• Facebook Finally Releases Official iPad App With Multi-Conversation Chat, Photo Browser and More
• Facebook Makes Its Move: Brings Viral Channels to HTML5, iOS Apps
• Facebook for iPhone 4.0 Update Ports New iPad App Design and Features
• Third-Party Facebook Mobile Utility Apps Integrate Hardware to Offer Lightweight Social Experiences

Tuesday, October 11th:

• Steve Jobs, Music, Movies, Football and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
• Chat Alert Notifies Users When a Specific Facebook Friend Goes Online
• New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Identified, Brighter Option, Buddy Media and More
• Study of Facebook News Feed Changes: Page Post Comments Up 21%, Likes Up 9%, Impressions Down 25%
• Facebook’s Music Sharing Partnerships Aren’t Helping Musicians Gain Fans

Wednesday, October 12th:

• Horoscopes, Calendar, Tabs, Yahoo, Badoo and The Guardian on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• How to Create a Facebook Subscribe Widget for Your Website
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Warner Bros, King.com, TinyCo and More
• Facebook Ad Click Through Rate Up 18%, Cost Per Click Down 10% Says TBG Digital
• Facebook’s Partnership With eBay Will Bring It Ad-Targetable Data on What Users “Want” and “Own”

Thursday, October 13th:

• Facebook Careers Postings: Engineering, Ad Ops, User Ops and More
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Recruiting, Dublin and More
• Top Examples of In-Store Marketing for Facebook Pages

Friday, October 14th:

• Music, Halloween, Friend Photos and More on This Week’s Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
• “Recently Read Articles” Aggregated News Feed Stories Give Facebook Reader Apps a Viral Boost
• Facebook Updates Formula for Counting Active Users
• Facebook Rolls Out New App Authentication Flow That Ups Privacy and Transparency
• Facebook Looks to Jumpstart App Development by Bringing Its Open Graph Roadshow Across the US
• Facebook Roundup: Privacy, Echo Nest, Music, Wal-mart, Ooyala, BrightApps and More

Saturday, October 15th:

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: OpenFeint, King.com, Storm8 and More

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at King.com, Midasplayer AB, OpenFeint, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., CrowdStar,  TinyCo, Storm8, Liquid Entertainment, Lolapps and Games Cafe Inc.

• Business Intelligence Developer
• Business Analyst

• Sr. Business Analyst

• User Acquisition Analytics Manager
• Digital Product Manager

• Mobile UI Artist
• Senior Game Developer – Flash

• Social Games Designer
• Social Games Programmer

• Support Engineer- Browser and Social Games
• Product Manager for Popular Social Gaming Company
• Sr. Game Engineer for a Popular Social Gaming Company
• Producer/Project Manager

Echo Nest Points Out Flaws in Facebook Music – The CEO of Echo Nest, a music industry service provider, published a blog post this week outlining technical problems with Facebook’s music sharing system. It criticizes errors in how Facebook IDs songs that prevents music shared from one service such as Spotify from being played in a different service such as Rdio.

Wal-Mart Offers Localized Deals for Fans – Wal-Mart and Facebook have partnered to offer the retailer’s Facebook fans deals localized to its 3,500 locations in the U.S. Facebook is not working with other merchants in a similar way because of a lack of resources. We wrote about similar types of deals previously, when Facebook tested tools allowing corporations to administrate all the Places pages of the local instances of their business.

Ooyala Analyzes Facebook Videos – Ooyala recently released a video analysis tool, Custom Analytics with Business Dimension Reporting. The tool helps users segment audiences based on behavior on the Facebook platform.

Flowtown Acquired by Demandforce - Small business marketing firm Flowtown was acquired by Demandforce, a marketing solutions company.

BrightEdge Leverages Open Graph – BrightEdge released a new solution for Facebook Pages trying to improve their SEO, the S3 edition includes things like open graph tags, improved search rankings help, engagement measurement and more.

Other Announcements:

Buddy Media Opens San Francisco, Singapore Offices – Buddy Media has opened new offices in San Francisco and Singapore.

Votigo Launches Self-Service Platform, Offers – Votigo has launched self-service access to its social media promotions platform this week. As part of the promotion, the company is offering contest and sweepstakes apps for two cents to the first 2,000 businesses creating a promotion with the platform before the end of October.

Facebook has announced it will hold  “Open Graph Technology Days” in Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Austin over the next month. Formerly known as Developer Garages, the sessions are designed to help developers learn about Open Graph, the Ticker, and Timeline so they can start building applications.

Facebook hopes that by creating a thriving community of Open Graph developers it users will gain access to a new set of applications that help them share news of their media consumption, daily activities, and purchasing habits, and more.

The Open Graph Technology Days, also branded as city-specific f8 conferences, will be held in:

Chicago – October 21 - http://fbf8chicago.eventbrite.com

New York – October 25 - http://fbf8ny.eventbrite.com

Seattle – October 27 - http://fbf8seattle.eventbrite.com

Austin – November 2 - http://fbf8austin.eventbrite.com

All of these sessions except the Chicago event are already sold out, though developers can register to join a waiting list.

At f8 in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s new goal was increasing the volume of content that people share, not growing the service’s user count. To do that, it unveiled many new opportunities for developers surrounding its Open Graph protocol.

Specifically, through Frictionless Sharing, apps can automatically publish stories about a user’s activity to the home page Ticker and add reports about activity to a user’s profile Timeline. Along with these new opportunities come many new questions from developers. By bringing f8 on the road to some of the country’s other major centers of innovation, Facebook can answer these questions in person and jumpstart app development.

Facebook has held these types of smaller developer conferences before in cities including London, New York, Taipei, and San Francisco. This time around, each Open Graph Technology Day will include:

• a keynote talk on the value of Open Graph to developers
• an overview of the Open Graph protocol
• Sessions focusing on games, mobile, and the new marketing APIs
• Q&A with the Facebook developer team
• Office hours where developers can get one-on-one time with Facebook engineers

Currently, most of the popular Open Graph applications on the platform were developed by f8 launch partners. Through the Open Graph Technology Days, Facebook may be able to encourage the long-tail of developers to take advantage of its new viral channels and build apps its users will come back to the site to engage with.

Facebook is granting all developers access to a new application authentication flow today that was announced at f8 last month. Developers can now add a description of their app that will be displayed in a redesigned publishing permissions dialog. Extended permissions have been broken out into a second authentication step that explains why an app needs certain data, and lets users revoke specific permissions. Data about publishing permissions dialog impressions and accepts, sources of users, and extended permissions conversion rates are now included in Facebook’s app Insights analytics tool.

The changes will make it clearer to users what permissions they are granting applications, and give them more control of their privacy. The two-step authentication process could increase app install friction in a way that could hurt app growth. However, in the long-run, the revised authentication flow could increase user confidence in the Platform such that users become more comfortable experimenting with new apps.

Facebook has also changed the way it measures active user counts to only publicly report authenticated users, rather than all users. We’ve written a separate article discussing how this will cause a one-time dip in active user counts that does not actually mean apps have lost users, and explaining how this impacts our AppData tracking service.

Redesigned Permissions Dialog

Previously, users only had to accept one extended permissions dialog to give an application publishing privileges and access to their data. The permissions dialog didn’t explain what that data would be used for, or what the app would publish to a user’s profile. This meant users would sometimes grant privileges they didn’t understand and would get angry when they saw the app had published on their behalf.

The redesigned authentication flow aims to solve this problem. First, users see a dialog asking for permission to install the app and allow it to publish Open Graph activity. It shows users:

• The name  and logo of the app
• A tag line about the app
• A privacy selector for choosing who it can share with
• A list of the data types it requires
• An “About this app” description of its purpose
• Open Graph aggregations previews that show what it can add to a user’s profile Timeline
• A link to the Facebook terms of service and privacy policy
• A tiny link to report the app as spam
• Friends who’ve installed the app
• A “Log In and Add t0 Facebook” accept button

Developers can configure what appears in the dialog and the default privacy setting by entering the Developers app and selecting Settings -> Auth Dialog. Once they’ve properly configured the dialog, they can implement it by enabling “Enhanced Auth Dialog” in the Migrations section of the Developers app’s “Advanced Settings”. Facebook says all apps will be migrated to the redesigned dialog by the end of 2011, though it hasn’t released exact migration dates.

Open Graph app developers reorder the aggregation previews. These previews of what an app will publish represent a significant step forward in increasing transparency in the app install process. Facebook could further improve transparency by including a sample Ticker or news feed story from the app in the previews.

Separate Extended Permissions Dialog and Authenticated Referrals

Apps requiring additional, optional privileges such as the ability to publish check-ins or post to a user’s wall will display a second extended permissions dialog after users complete the initial install dialog. This step includes clear descriptions of what each permission means and the option to deny the app these non-essential privileges. Below, the dialog is an explanation provided by the developer for why it requires these permissions.

Before the redesign, users had to grant apps all the extended permissions and then dig into their app privacy settings to revoke certain permissions. This can now be handled as users install an app. Developers should reference the tutorial Facebook posted this week to ensure their apps run properly if some permissions are revoked.

This granular control may improve app install rates from users who are sensitive about a certain type of privacy, such those who don’t want to provide contact information or have content published to the stream on their behalf.

Authenticated Referrals is another option available in the Auth Dialog settings that when enabled causes users clicking a link to an app to see the authentication flow in-line being being brought to the app. This is useful for apps that require user data or permissions to function. It allows them to remove the awkward pre-permissions landing page and provide a personalized experience when users first arrive.

Authentication Data in App Insights

App Insights now displays impressions and accepts, sources of users, and the what privacy setting users are selecting for the authentication dialog and authenticated referrals. The authentication conversion rate will help developers determine if they are asking for too many or unnecessary permissions, or that they need to reword their their explanation for asking for permissions.

Extended permissions are each listed separately in Insights, and display their impressions, click through rate, and how many times they’ve been accepted. Developers can then identify extended permissions with low conversion rates that they may want to stop asking for.

The way applications use or abuse the permissions process has been a problem for Facebook in the past. Without enough transparency, some users would end up regretting that they installed an app that published or content or used their data in ways they didn’t want. They might then blame the Facebook Platform rather than the developer, leading them to avoid using applications in the future.

This increase in transparency and enhanced granular app privacy controls should give users a much clearer sense of what and with who they’re sharing. With time, Facebook may be able to remove the privacy stigma around apps and create a Platform more users want to engage with and more developers want to work on.