Google+ implemented a number of changes today that give the social network more parity with some of Facebook’s products. The most prominent new feature is the ability to control how much content from each Circle is shown in a user’s stream, similar to what Facebook allows users to do for individual friends.

Relevance in the feed is one of the most critical factors for any network and will be especially important in the ongoing competition between Facebook and Google. Facebook has gone back and forth over the years, sometimes giving users granular control, other times favoring algorithms. Google is known for its use of algorithms, but seems to be testing human curation potential with its new sliders.

In 2007, Facebook provided sliders for users to indicate the type of content they wanted to see in the News Feed. Users could also list friends they wanted to see more or fewer updates from. Now Facebook provides controls on individual profile pages, giving users the option to subscribe to or opt-out of different types of updates. Here is the old interface:

Google+ also made improvements for page owners, now allowing multiple admins and providing notifications about activity on the page. These changes are important for marketers using the site similarly to Facebook pages. Google+ pages now also include a total count of users that have connected with a page by adding it to a circle or clicking +1. This is similar to Facebook displaying total Likes, which has been a major driver for brands to spend money on ads and marketing campaigns to increase their count. By presenting a similar public metric, Google+ gives brands a reason to drive consumers to their pages there.

Other Google+ updates reminiscent of Facebook features include previews of content in the notifications window and a lightbox display for photos. For more details, see Google’s blog post.

Facebook could be looking to introduce ads to its mobile platform early next year before an anticipated initial public offering. According to reports, these ads would be in the form of Sponsored Stories, which turn user activity such as liking a page post into promoted units.

These ads would be particularly effective for mobile games and apps since they would drive directly to a point of conversion. Other companies would more likely find value in mobile Sponsored Stories if Facebook expanded the coupon feature we discovered it was testing last week. This would give brands a way to present consumers with a stronger call to action than liking a page.

Overall, putting Sponsored Stories in the News Feed would give Facebook a way to serve targeted ads to the 350 million users currently accessing the platform through mobile devices without compromising the user experience. This would be an important move for the company should it decide to file for an IPO in the spring, as it would indicate an opportunity to increase revenue.

How Sponsored Stories Would Benefit Games and Apps

When someone uses an app or plays a game on Facebook at least twice or for at least 10 minutes in the last month, it becomes eligible to be a Sponsored Story promoted to a person’s friends, according to advertising materials from Facebook. Developers can pay to display an ad that combines this activity with a thumbnail image and a call to action to play the game. If this type of ad were brought into the mobile News Feed, it would be a huge opportunity for mobile developers. Facebook recently began offering distribution channels for mobile apps, including support for sending users to native iOS apps or directly to a download page within the App Store.

Formerly, it didn’t make much sense for mobile apps to advertise on Facebook because pushing users from the web to a phone is a large barrier to entry and makes it difficult for advertisers to track conversions. But bringing Facebook’s demographic and interest targeting to a mobile environment through Sponsored Stories could be a game changer if click-throughs and conversions can compete with other mobile ad networks.

Sponsored Coupon Stories on the Way?

Last week we spotted Facebook testing a way for pages to post coupons and promote them with premium ads. Clicking to get the coupon sends users an email voucher and generates a story on their Timeline. If Facebook expanded Sponsored Stories to include this type of activity, companies could pay to promote the fact that a user got a coupon. This could work just as well on mobile. Further, it gives brands more control over what they present to consumers since traditional Sponsored Stories do not allow for customized messages.

Without this type of ad, Sponsored Stories on mobile could be a weak offering for pages, since the only possible call to action would be to like a page. Sponsored Stories on the web can direct users to custom tabs that provide greater incentive for users to connect with the brand. Tabs are not accessible on mobile, which could mean lower conversion rates for gaining new fans.

Zuckerberg: ‘Ads Should Be Content’

Facebook has always been careful about how and where it implements ads. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s disinclination for advertising is well known, but Sponsored Stories seem to be something he can get behind.

“The basic idea is that ads should be content,” Zuckerberg says in “The Facebook Effect,” which was released before Sponsored Stories were introduced. “They need to be essentially just organic information that people are producing on the site.”

Since Sponsored Stories are derived from users’ friends’ activity, companies cannot simply pay their way into the News Feed unless their content is engaging. Facebook has successfully brought Sponsored Stories into the App Ticker and News Feed Ticker streams without major complaints. Inserting these ads into the mobile News Feed is not likely to result in the type of backlash that could come if Facebook inserted traditional banner or interstitial ads.

And by expanding its ad inventory to include mobile in this way, the company could significantly increase revenue and give credence to the $100 billion valuation some have suggested.

Ultimat Vodka’s Social Life Audit topped our review of Facebook campaigns this week, although Burger King and Subway also had some interesting ways of promoting their products. Nasty Gals saw a particularly successful and simple sweepstakes campaign and Toyota Prius’ charity app was interesting for being so tightly branded.

Below is an excerpt of this week’s full Featured Facebook Campaigns entry in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other Facebook marketing campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

Ultimat Vodka’s Social Life Audit

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

Method: Ultimat Vodka created an app, Social Life Audit, that culls a users’ data and creates a customized social “score” and infographic.

Core Mechanic: We spoke to Paul Aaron with Amalgamated, who worked on the Social Life Audit campaign for Ultimat Vodka and he told us that the app itself was tightly integrated into the company’s brand.

“Our overall goal was to create more widespread buzz and word-of-mouth that got people thinking about Ultimate Vodka,” he told us. “Facebook is where people go to be social and spirit brands are inherently social brands. Social Life Audit was part of a broader campaign targeting overworked, high-end consumers who are craving balance in their lives.”

The vodka product is a mix of wheat, rye and potato vodkas, therein is marketed as being well-balanced. Aaron told us that the broader Ultimat campaign was precise and targeted via print and digital, but that the Facebook app generated the most buzz for the brand. Users not only get their own personalized infographic when using the app (which also generates ticker stories), but they can share this to the stream when they are finished.

It is this part of the app — the sharing — that Aaron said was the most potent of the campaign. “When people use the app and get their score, they are encouraged to post them, which in turn, gets tagged and added to their photo albums. About halfway through making Social Life Audit, we knew we had something special on our hands, but we didn’t know that it would garner as much traffic s it did.”

Overall Aaron told us the app, with impressions on- and off-line, delivered CPM that was a fraction of print or banner ads. This was of particular value, since the brand didn’t have a big advertising budget.

Impact: The Page was created at the end of November and currently stands at 10,100 Likes.

Nasty Gals’ Epic Holiday Giveaway

Goal: Page Growth, Email List, Brand Loyalty, Product Purchase, Network Exposure

Method: Nasty Gal is a clothing company hosting an email entry sweepstakes giving away a gift card every day until Christmas for two weeks.

Core Mechanic: The sweepstakes asks users to enter an email to win one of the gift cards, ranging from $200 to $1,000. The sweepstakes is Like-gated and allows users to share their entry to the stream.

Impact: The sweepstakes is simple and appears to have brought in about 10,000 Likes since it began in early December, according to PageData. The Page currently stands at 146,800 Likes.

Want to learn how top brands are 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 released version 4.1 of its iPhone app to bring the new Timeline version of profiles to iOS. The app is now in line with Facebook’s offering for Android and the mobile touch site, which we detailed last week.

Facebook for iPhone has more than 57 million daily active users, according to AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. For the first time, Facebook for Android has more DAU than its iPhone counterpart. The Android app reached that milestone when it passed 58 million DAU on Dec. 16.

Although Facebook for iPhone still leads in monthly active users, the Android app has a higher percentage of DAU per MAU. This suggests Facebook is more “sticky” among Android users.

Facebook noted in the iPhone app changelog that iPad support for Timeline was on its way. Facebook for iPad, has 5.5 million DAU, according to AppData.

Personalized calendars asking users to invite their friends to the app dominated our list of the fastest growing by monthly active users this week. There were a few others — holiday cards, quizzes, Spotify, JibJab and Christmas photos — that also made the list.

The titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 460,000 and 9.9 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	MyCalendar – Birthdays	41,600,000	+9,900,000	+ 31%
2.	MiCalendario – Cumpleaños	16,800,000	+5,600,000	+ 50%
3.	CastleVille	37,100,000	+5,500,000	+ 17%
4.	Takvimime	3,100,000	+2,400,000	+ 343%
5.	Il Mio Calendario – Compleanni	4,200,000	+1,900,000	+ 83%
6.	MonCalendrier – Anniversaires	4,800,000	+1,500,000	+ 45%
7.	21 Preguntas	4,700,000	+1,200,000	+ 34%
8.	JibJab	3,000,000	+800,000	+ 36%
9.	Holiday Card List ★	1,400,000	+740,000	+ 112%
10.	МойКалендарь	1,000,000	+730,000	+ 270%
11.	Adventure World – An Indiana Jones Game	9,400,000	+700,000	+ 8%
12.	Spotify	10,700,000	+700,000	+ 7%
13.	MeinKalender – Geburtstag	4,100,000	+600,000	+ 17%
14.	Merry Christmas | Feliz Navidad	1,300,000	+600,000	+ 86%
15.	Tetris Battle	8,800,000	+600,000	+ 7%
16.	我的日历 – 生日	5,200,000	+600,000	+ 13%
17.	내 캘린더	790,000	+560,000	+ 243%
18.	Birthday Cards	760,000	+530,000	+ 230%
19.	FarmVille	31,900,000	+500,000	+ 2%
20.	ΗμερολόγιόΜου	730,000	+460,000	+ 170%

The calendar apps ask users to invite friends and generate ticker stories in the process. This week included were: MyCalendar – Birthdays with 9.9 million MAU, MiCalendario – Cumpleaños with 5.6 million MAU, Takvimime with 2.4 million MAU, Il Mio Calendario – Compleanni with 1.9 million MAU, MonCalendrier – Anniversaires with 1.5 million MAU, МойКалендарь with 730,000 MAU, MeinKalender – Geburtstag with 600,000 MAU, 我的日历 – 生日 with 600,000 MAU, 내 캘린더 with 560,000 MAU and ΗμερολόγιόΜου with 460,000 MAU.

Greeting card apps Holiday Card List ★ with 740,000 MAU and Birthday Cards with 530,000 were on the list. These types of apps generally ask users to select friends to whom they want to send greeting cards and either send app requests or post cards to the Wall.

The rest of the list included quiz app 21 Preguntas with 1.2 million MAU; this is the type of app that asks users questions about their friends then publishes feed stories in the process. JibJab’s app grew by 800,000 MAU, Spotify by 700,000 MAU and Merry Christmas | Feliz Navidad by 600,000 MAU. This latter app publishes a photo with a user’s friends as ornaments, tagging them and also publishing a feed story.

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 December 12th and 18th.

Inside Mobile Apps

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

Monday, December 12th

• Batman: Arkham City Lockdown Brings the Dark Knight to iOS
• Emerging Top Paid iOS Apps: Tweetbot, Batman and Michael Jackson
• How Many Downloads Does an App Need to Reach The Top of The Free Charts on iOS?

Tuesday, December 13th 

• Fiksu Finds a Way to Cheaply Acquire Users For Paid Apps
• Emerging Top Grossing Apps: Tap Zoo 2, Chrono Trigger & Six Guns
• Backflip Studios Revamps Classic Time Waster in Paper Toss 2.0 for iOS
• Android Marketplace Adds Review Filters, Helping Developers Avoid Penalties For User Experience on Different Devices
• Android’s Weaker Monetization Means Developers Are Still Choosing iOS in Droves

Wednesday, December 14th

• With 70M Monthly Active Users, Outfit7 Finally Signs Merchandising Deals
• Free-to-Play Pioneer NimbleBit Says to Put Fun and User Experience First, Not Monetization
• Emerging Free iOS Apps: Paper Toss 2.0, Social Girl and Google Currents
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Natural Motion, Social Point, 24 MAS and More
• Springpad’s Social Notes, Data Access Bring it to 2.5M Users

Thursday, December 15th 

• Rockstar Releases Classic GTA III for iOS and Android
• New Hires in Mobile: GameHouse, GREE and Tapjoy
• Zynga Lanches New iOS Game ForestVille One Day Ahead of IPO
• Playphone Bets a Mobile-Social Gaming Network Will Help it Shift From a Legacy Feature Phone Business
• Zynga Prices at the Higher End of The Range With $10 a Share
• Emerging Android Apps: Christmas, Air Penguin and Pano
• Sencha Touch 2 Makes Web Apps Into Native Apps in One Line of Code

Friday, December 16th 

• Zynga Shares Slip Slightly as Company Raises $1B During IPO
• How Zynga Employees Marked The Company’s IPO at Headquarters
• Google’s New Android Training Site Offers App Design Advice and Tutorials
• Mobile App Roundup: PapayaMobile, iAds and Malware

Saturday, December 17th

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Social Point, Natural Motion, W3i and More

Sunday, December 18th

• What Does Life After IPO Look Like For Zynga?

Inside Social Games

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

Monday, December 12th

• Words With Friends Creeping up on CastleVille in This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Being Human Game Brings Syfy’s Supernatural Drama to Facebook

Tuesday, December 13th 

• Watch Sessions from Facebook’s First Ever Games Hack
• Men vs. Women for Facebook Puts a Militaristic Spin on the Battle of the Sexes

Wednesday, December 14th

• Meteor Games Sunsets Neopets: Treasure Keepers, Allegedly Cuts Staff
• Digital Chocolate’s Galaxy Life Debuts on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by DAU
• Report: Tagged Acquires Hi5
• Can Games Still Succeed on Facebook?
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: 50 Cubes, 24 MAS, Game Closure and More

Thursday, December 15th 

• New Hires in Social Gaming: Peak Games, Wooga, Kixeye
• Zynga Lanches New iOS Game ForestVille One Day Ahead of IPO
• Zynga Prices at the Higher End of The Range With $10 a Share
• Zynga Shares Flat on Opening Price of $10 as Company Raises $1B During IPO

Friday, December 16th

• Digital Chocolate’s Galaxy Life Leads This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Social Gaming News Roundup: Night Owl Games, Outplay Entertainment and Nexon 

Saturday, December 17th

• Social Gaming News Roundup: Night Owl Games, Outplay Entertainment and Nexon

Sunday, December 18th

• What Does Life After IPO Look Like For Zynga?

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, December 12th

• Calendars, Quizzes, Spotify, Christmas, The Independent and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: BeKnown, Starz, Lexus, Starbucks and Gap
• Facebook Testing Private Messages Between People and Pages
• Facebook to Remove App Profile Pages

Tuesday, December 13th 

• Football, Muppets, Angry Birds, Subway, Adele, Hyundai and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
• LAX is Facebook’s Busiest Airport
• New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Nanigans, Sociable Labs, Identified, Buddy Media and More
• Facebook Testing New Coupon Posts and Ads
• University-Only Groups Seek to Bring Back Facebook Exclusivity

Wednesday, December 14th

• Calendars, Yahoo, Spotify, Flipboard, SchoolFeed and YouTube on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Zendesk Brings Facebook into its Help Desk Application
• Facebook Asks How Well You Know Your Friends
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Kubra, Acquinity Interactive, W3i and More

Thursday, December 15th 

• Timeline Goes Live for Users Around the World
• Facebook Careers Postings: Engineering, Fraud, Ads, Marketing and More
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Data Center, Business Ops and More
• Facebook Marketing Showcase: Luxury Car Brands Look To Drive Fans Right To The Showroom
• Facebook Brings Timeline Functionality to Android, Mobile Touch Site

Friday, December 16th 

• Musicians Find More Value on Facebook Than Other Networks
• Facebook Gauging Interest in Action-Optimized Campaigns
• Ron Paul Sees Big Fan Growth After Last Debate This Week on Inside Facebook’s Elections Tracker
• Facebook Roundup: Greenpeace, JavaScript, Marketing, Buddy Media and More

Saturday, December 17th

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Acquinity Interactive, W3i, Game Closure 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 Acquinity Interactive, W3i, Kubra, Natural Motion Games, Social Point, Game Closure, 50 Cubes and 24MAS Group.

• Ad Sales for Facebook/Social Apps

Facebook, Greenpeace Agree on Energy Policy – Facebook and Greenpeace have come to an agreement this week on the promotion of green or renewable energy the social network uses to operate. [Photo via Facebook]

Facebook Updates JavaScript - Facebook announced in a blog post this week that JavaScript SDK changed to OAuth 2.0.

Involver Reports Facebook Marketing Adoption – Involver reported this week, in infographic form, that businesses are adopting Facebook as a marketing tool at faster rates.

Facebook Compiles Top Political Articles of 2011 – In a note on the U.S. Politics on Facebook page, the social network listed the most popular political news articles of the year based on Facebook shares, posts and use of social plugins.

Developers Attend Social Games Hack at Facebook – Developers GameHouse, Tien Len, Attributor and GameFace.me took home prizes for the most innovative hacks at Facebook Games Hack, an event aimed at educating developers on Open Graph integrations.

Other Announcements:

Ticketfly Raises $12M -  Ticketfly reported this week that the company released an integrated in-app Facebook app to allow vendors to sell tickets right on Facebook.

Buddy Media Launches Power Your Connections Contest – Buddy Media launched the Power Your Connections Illustrator contest this week, inviting artists to design their own interpretation of the art of connections, as in social media connections. The prize is $5,000, a feature in Buddy Media’s campaign and a showcase at SXSW.

Airline to Let Passengers Choose Seatmate Using Online Profiles – KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is launching “meet and seat,” a way to view Facebook or LinkedIn profiles of the people you could sit next to on your flight.

Texas congressman Ron Paul was the biggest gainer in our Inside Facebook 2012 Election Tracker after the Republican presidential debate Thursday night — the last debate before the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3rd. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney also saw a surge after the debate, passing Newt Gingrich in daily new Likes for the first time in nearly a month.

Paul came into the debate rising in the polls, and he expressed strong anti-war views that might have led to increased activity on his Facebook page. Paul gained nearly twice as many new fans as Romney after the debate, though Romney continues to hold the lead as the most popular Republican presidential candidate with more than 1.2 million Likes.

Newt Gingrich’s Facebook growth ebbed and flowed slightly over the past week, as his national poll numbers dropped. Rick Perry saw a spike in new fans last weekend after the debate in Des Moines, but did not maintain momentum with this latest debate.

Herman Cain, who suspended his campaign amid allegations of sexual harassment and an extra-marital affair, continues to see a daily decrease in fans.

Some advertisers on Facebook are seeing a new pricing option called “action-optimized CPM” in the Marketplace dashboard.

According to Facebook, this is a way to determine the interest in optimizing campaigns for actions such as page Likes or app installs, not a true test of cost-per-action pricing. Advertisers who select “action-optimized CPM” are still being charged each time their ad is viewed.

This test could be an indicator that Facebook is considering a new cost-per-action model for its self-serve ad platform. It’s also possible the company is reevaluating its cost-per-impression offering. Unless advertisers are linking to an external website, most campaigns on Facebook aim to get users to Like a page, install an app, attend an event or take another similar action within the social network. Paying per impression does not seem to be ideal for most advertisers in these cases.

Across the industry, advertisers are moving away from CPM models that do not ensure that consumers are truly seeing their ads. Cost-per-conversion, action or engagement are much more desirable because companies do not have to pay unless an ad is effective. In fact, some third-party ad providers that use Facebook’s API, such as AdParlor, charge and optimize for cost-per-fan or cost-per-install as opposed to the CPM or CPC options in Marketplace.

Facebook could provide something similar in the future to emphasize its strength in getting users to connect with pages or engage with Sponsored Stories. However, Facebook will need to consider how this sort of change would affect developers working with the ads API, which was brought out of private beta in August. It is possible that third-parties who sell on cost-per-action models could lose that advantage over Marketplace, but it is likely their ability to run large-scale tests to optimize creative will still make third-party vendors an attractive option for some.

Image credit: All Facebook.com