Our list of apps growing by daily active users was dominated by calendar applications in just about every language. Then there were a few other apps, such as Yahoo and YouTube’s Connect apps Spotify, a pair if iPad apps and a few others. The titles below grew from between 190,000 and 6.9 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Yahoo!	13,800,000	+6,900,000	+100%
2.	MiCalendario – Cumpleaños	2,200,000	+1,310,000	+147%
3.	Takvimime	860,000	+857,000	+28,567%
4.	Il Mio Calendario – Compleanni	940,000	+840,000	+840%
5.	MonCalendrier – Anniversaires	740,000	+440,000	+147%
6.	Iwipa Website: HTML + iframe + FBML	580,000	+420,000	+263%
7.	CastleVille	8,500,000	+400,000	+5%
8.	MyCalendar – Birthdays	5,100,000	+400,000	+9%
9.	Spotify	3,400,000	+400,000	+13%
10.	Words With Friends	5,900,000	+400,000	+7%
11.	MyPad for iPad	2,300,000	+300,000	+15%
12.	Flipboard	740,000	+270,000	+57%
13.	schoolFeed	920,000	+260,000	+39%
14.	Adventure World – An Indiana Jones Game	1,700,000	+200,000	+13%
15.	Diamond Dash	2,800,000	+200,000	+8%
16.	Tetris Battle	2,600,000	+200,000	+8%
17.	YouTube	1,900,000	+200,000	+12%
18.	내 캘린더	200,000	+199,998	+9,999,900%
19.	ΗμερολόγιόΜου	200,000	+199,700	+66,567%
20.	MeinKalender – Geburtstag	580,000	+190,000	+49%

Yahoo topped the list with 6.9 million DAU; another Connect app, YouTube, grew by 200,000 DAU. A tab application, Iwipa Website: HTML + iframe + FBML, grew by 420,000 DAU. Spotify grew by 400,000 DAU, a pair if iPad apps made our list: MyPad for iPad with 300,000 DAU and magazine-style app Flipboard with 270,000 DAU. Then a Connect app that creates a social network for your high school, synchronizing with your Facebook profile, schoolFeed, grew by 260,000 DAU.

Calendar apps made up the rest of the list. MiCalendario – Cumpleaños grew by 1.3 million DAU, Takvimime by 857,000 DAU, Il Mio Calendario – Compleanni grew by 840,000 DAU, MonCalendrier – Anniversaires grew by 440,000 DAU, MyCalendar – Birthdays grew by 400,000 DAU, 내 캘린더 by 200,000 DAU, ΗμερολόγιόΜου by 199,700 DAU and MeinKalender – Geburtstag with 190,000 DAU. These apps offer users personalized calendars and ask users to invite friends tpo use the app before creating them.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Facebook is testing a form of its groups product that restricts access to users with a designated .edu email address, reminiscent of the way networks operated when Facebook began in 2004. Students are being prompted to create groups for different aspects of their college experience, whether its classes, dorms, intramural sports, student organizations or parties.

The test is limited to Brown and Vanderbilt universities because they provide different email addresses for students and alumni, according to a TechCrunch post by former Inside Facebook lead writer Josh Constine. This prevents former students from infiltrating the groups, as many early adopters did when Facebook first launched.

Facebook’s existing groups product allows users to create closed and secret groups, but the company must be interested in determining the demand for even more limited groups. University groups could be a start to a broader initiative to get more people familiar with Facebook’s offerings around small-group sharing, which has been an increasingly popular topic since the launch of Google+. Facebook’s updates to groups, friend lists and privacy controls this year all promote the idea that Facebook is still a safe place to share information about yourself with your friends.

For the company whose mission is to “make the world more open and connected,” there is an ongoing question about how to balance public and private. One day they launch the subscribe feature to broadcast your status updates to a public audience. Another they bring back university-only groups. How Facebook optimizes for both openness and exclusivity in coming years will determine how much marketshare it can maintain as competing networks add new features and users.

Facebook is testing a new premium ad offering that allows pages to post a coupon to their fans and then use that post as an ad unit on the Facebook homepage.

Users who see the ad or the page post can click “Get Coupon.” This action can be posted to a user’s Wall. Users then receive an email from Facebook with the coupon and an option to share it with friends. Facebook tells us that pages who are part of this limited test can offer discounts that customers can redeem in-store or online.

This type of coupon promotion differs from Facebook Check-In Deals, which is a self-serve promotion tool that allows businesses to offer coupons to people who visit a location and check in with Facebook. Facebook Check-In Deals are only available through mobile.

“We think this test is complementary to the other products we offer businesses and we hope to learn more about how this might work for both merchants and customers,” Facebook says.

Facebook has been urging advertisers to try its new “page post ads,” which allow pages to promote any existing post made by the page. For advertisers who want to run premium ads on the home page, Facebook recently introduced an expanded unit that includes thumbnails of a users friends who are connected to the advertiser’s page. Premium ads are not available within Facebook’s self-serve Marketplace ad tool.

Facebook tried its hand at daily deals this year, but discontinued the pre-paid coupon service after a four-month test.

Thank you to Alex Kaminski for the tip.

Nanigans hired a CFO, Sociable Labs a VP of Engineering, Identified and Buddy Media engineers and other companies hired sales and support staff this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Nanigans

• Scott Ward, CFO – formerly CFO at Chitika.
• Ben Tregoe, SVP Business Development – previously the Founder & CEO at Getsugar.

Sociable Labs

• James Donelan, Vice President of Engineering – formerly Vice President of Engineering  at Lithium Technologies.

Identified

• Rui Li, Software Engineer – formerly a Software Engineer at Facebook.

Buddy Media

• Richard Castera, Platform Response Engineer – formerly Technology Director/Lead Web Developer at SankyNet.
• Imre de Daranyi, European Sales Director – had worked in Business Partnerships at Facebook.

Vitrue

• Helen Attia, Sales and Marketing, EMEA – formerly Senior Account Manager, South East Asia (Singapore) at Adobe.
• Wendy Asiedu, Strategic Account Director – previously an Account Executive at Omniture.

Shoutlet

• Michael Poppy, Account Manager – previously Director of Traffic and Project Management at Broadcast Interactive Media.
• Bob Hutchinson, Sales Director – formerly the National Account Manager at Brainshark, Inc.
• Renee Richveis, Sales Executive – was Staffing/Talent Consultant at KU Consulting.

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Los Angeles International Airport was the most popular airport people checked into between August and November, according to information Facebook released today.

Based on check-ins on Facebook and third-party location services that have integrated with the Facebook Places API, airports in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas round out the Top 5. Twenty of Facebook’s 25 “most social airports” are located in the U.S. This could be useful for marketers considering check-in promotions or other Facebook campaigns, whether for travel companies or simply at airports. The thrill of travel combined with long wait times make airports ripe for Facebook activity.

Facebook also found an increase in check-ins during the holiday travel rush. Last year, check-ins were 20 times above average on Dec. 18, with highs also occurring on Dec. 23 and Dec. 24. Airport check-ins slowed after Christmas and increased again on Dec. 29 through Dec. 31 as people returned home or traveled for New Year’s Eve.

Below is Facebook’s list of Top 25 airports people checked into between August and November. We linked to the corresponding Facebook place pages that had the most check-ins. It is interesting to note that not all airports have claimed their automatically-generated place pages. These pages sometimes have more activity than the official fan pages operated by the airport.

For example, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport actively manages a page here, making posts and answering questions, but the Facebook-generated place page linked to below has nearly twice as many Likes and about 40 times as many check-ins. Embracing its new title as “most social airport,” LAX has already shared the news with fans of the place page it has claimed and customized with FBML and iFrame tabs.

1. Los Angeles International Airport
2. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
3. Chicago O’Hare International Airport
4. San Francisco International Airport
5. Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
6. Denver International Airport
7. Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport
8. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
9. McCarran International Airport
10. Suvarnabhumi International Airport
11. Philadelphia International Airport
12. Miami International Airport
13. Boston Logan International Airport
14. Charlotte Douglas International Airport
15. John F. Kennedy International Airport
16. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
17. San Diego International Airport
18. Newark Liberty International Airport
19. Washington Dulles International Airport
20. Heathrow Airport
21. Toronto Pearson International Airport
22. Baltimore Washington International Airport
23. Portland International Airport
24. Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport
25. Salt Lake City International Airport

Football (soccer), popular films, games like Texas Hold’em Poker and Angry Birds, Subway and Burger King, Hyundai, Adele and more made our list of the fastest growing Facebook Pages by Likes. Holiday marketing figured somewhat into the growth, in the sense that companies were promoting deals and specials. Pages on our list this week grew from between 214,000 to 581,300 Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Die Nationalmannschaft	951,980	-185	+581,322
2.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
3.	قناة العربية Al Arabiya	1,333,518	+1,268	+351,134
4.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
5.	Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D	408,752	+61,101	+296,513
6.	Adele	9,491,764	+46,668	+287,707
7.	FC Barcelona	23,423,716	+48,074	+286,188
8.	Texas Hold’em Poker	53,934,576	+32,704	+276,654
9.	Hyundai Worldwide	1,404,545	+27,390	+239,694
10.	Subway	9,032,453	+2,928	+234,045
11.	I Love My Daughter	723,308	-1,529	+230,356
12.	Los Muppets	752,754	+35,761	+228,970
13.	Harry Potter	37,523,351	+28,698	+228,578
14.	Angry Birds	10,645,394	+34,310	+226,121
15.	Real Madrid C.F.	22,223,150	+28,537	+223,832
16.	UNO	4,848,936	+6,305	+222,803
17.	Burger King	2,184,540	+2,990	+222,215
18.	Titanic	11,227,374	+29,021	+219,590
19.	Cristiano Ronaldo	37,102,147	+27,490	+219,037
20.	The Twilight Saga	26,718,959	+27,321	+213,969

Die Nationalmannschaft topped the list of sports teams on our list with 581,300 Likes to 952,000, then FC Barcelona with 286,200 Likes to pass 23.4 million, Real Madrid C.F. with 223,800 Likes to grow to 22.2 million and  Cristiano Ronaldo with 219,000 Likes, for a total of 37.1 million, made the list. These Pages all promoted sports teams, players and related events.

Movies that made our list included “Titanic” the Community Page with 409,500 Likes to 13.4 million, “Los Muppets” with 229,000 Likes to 752,800 Likes, “Harry Potter” with 228,600 Likes for a total of 37.5 million, “Titanic” the Page with 219,600 Likes to 11.2 million and “The Twilight Saga” with 214,000 Likes to 26.7 million. These Pages promoted showtimes, merchandise and more on their Pages using videos, photos and other links.

Games that made our list included Texas Hold’em Poker with 276,700 Likes and a total of 53.9 million, Angry Birds with 226,100 Likes to grow to 10.6 million and UNO with 222,800 and 4.8 million total. The Pages promoted different game-related deals, for example Angry Birds promoted deals with Barnes and Noble and Toys “R” Us. Food companies with discounts also made the list. Subway grew by 234,000 Likes to 9 million promoting discounted and free sandwiches and Burger King grew by 222,200 Likes to 2.1 million with a free fries and gift card giveaway.

The rest of the list included Dubai news TV channel  ناة العربية Al Arabiya grew by 351,100 Likes to 1.3 million, facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! by 333,000 Likes to 445,400, Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D by 296,500 to grow to 408,800 Likes,  Adele by 287,700 Likes to 9.4 million, Hyundai Worldwide has been publishing photos of new vehicles to grow by 239,700 Likes to 1.4 million and I Love My Daughter by 230,400 Likes to 723,300.

Facebook will remove all automatically generated app profile pages early next year and give admins the option to transfer Likes to a relevant fan page, the company announced on its developer blog.

Developers will be relieved that all traffic to app profiles will be sent directly to apps and that they will no longer have to consider how to use the incongruous pages.

Although app profile pages look similar to fan pages, they do not allow admins to “Use Facebook as a Page” or receive notifications about user posts or comments. The dashboard to edit app profiles has a different UI than fan pages do, and insights are accessed differently.

Users, on the other hand, could be confused when Facebook’s search results directed them to app profile pages instead of the app itself. Users would sometimes Like or write on the Wall of the app profile page instead of the corresponding fan page, and since app admins were not notified of the activity, users were less likely to get a response.

In the next few weeks, admins will get a notification (see above) on their app profile prompting them to migrate Likes to an existing Facebook page. The name and category of both pages must match for Facebook to approve the merger. No content, including Wall posts or photos, will be transferred.

Facebook says it will delete all app profile pages on February 1, 2012.

For more details about related Graph API changes, see Facebook’s Developer Blog.

Facebook has confirmed it is testing a feature that allows people to communicate privately with page owners.

This “Private Messages for Pages” feature would be beneficial for pages who would prefer to deal with customer service matters off of the public Wall. However, sending a private message does not generate a News Feed story, and if fans start to use the message feature to give a company praise or ask general questions, pages might miss out on the positive effects that would result from a person’s friends seeing the activity.

According to early screenshots from WeAreSocial.sg pictured here, page owners will have the option whether or not to accept private messages. It appears people can use the messages feature whether they Like a page or not. Admins can exchange a series of messages with users, but pages cannot initiate private conversations with their fans or others unless the user has commented or made a post on the page.

In September, Facebook removed the “Send Update” feature that allowed pages to send messages to people who Like the page, but there has never been an easy option for users to directly contact page owners. With the page redesign in February, Facebook made it possible to feature page owners and link to their profile where users can send them a private message if the page owner allows it, but this has not been intuitive for users or admins.

We have not been able to access the beta ourselves, but Facebook confirms, “We are currently testing a feature that allows people and Pages to communicate privately. We have no further details to share at this time.”

Image credit: WeAreSocial.sg

Inside Facebook is pleased to announce Brittany Darwell as our new lead writer. She joins us to focus on the products and business of Facebook and its developer and marketer ecosystems.

Brittany brings several years’ worth of experience in social media management and journalism to bear, having served as reliable tipster to Inside Facebook since 2010. She completed her undergrad at University of Missouri with a degree in journalism and most recently held a social media marketing position at Ignited. In the past two years she has provided social media strategy for clients including NBC Universal, Sony, Activision and Coca Cola’s Venturing and Emerging Brands unit.

She can be reached for all editorial matters at: brittany.darwell (at) insidenetwork (dot) com and on Twitter @brittanydarwell.

BeKnown explains their strategy for helping users and companies leverage Facebook to find job matches this week in our featured Facebook campaigns. There was also Starz’s new game to generate excitement for the premiere of “Spartacus,” Lexus’ charity campaign, Starbucks’ new drink and the Gap’s gift card contest.

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.

BeKnown’s College Pages, Jobs Tab on Facebook

Goal: Network Exposure, Product Use, Brand Loyalty

Method: BeKnown has recently released two integrations of its job search application. One is called College Pages and utilizes a user’s alumni and school networks to help them find work. The other, Job Tab, allows companies to post jobs on their Pages.

Core Mechanic: We spoke to Tom Chevalier, Global Product Manager for Monster Worldwide (parent to BeKnown) and he told us there were two main reasons the company had rolled out the integrations. One was to help users take advantage of their school networks on Facebook when searching for work, and secondly, to give brands another opportunity to engage users by bringing their human resources departments into the Facebook marketing game.

“College Pages play into the way in which we can help a school, help its alumni and help students come together. We really think Facebook is the place to do that,” Chevalier told us. In the College Pages BeKnown users may post jobs to the app, users may also see other people in their network affiliated with the school.

The company Pages are free to use for any company, Chevalier told us. The point of the integration is to bring in the HR department to be a part of the conversation on Facebook. It allows companies to look at fans as potential talent, he said.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of implementing this software on Facebook is that searching for work is often a private affair, thus BeKnown has limited sharing opportunities in order to secure trust with its users, Chevalier explained. “We do not take every possible opportunity to share information on Facebook. While user adoption and numbers are important to us, we are not willing to compromise the trust factor,” he said. That said, Chevalier did hint at a phased rollout of new features taking advantage of the custom open graph.

Ultimately, Chevalier said the BeKnown apps on Facebok would help users advance their careers in brands and schools they are connected to, and help companies connect with talent already invested in their brand.

Impact: These integrations allow BeKnown/Monster to spread all over Facebook, but according to AppData the number of users of BeKnown is currently down. Currently the app has about 210,000 MAU.

Starz’s Spartacus Campaign, Take Up Arms

Goal: Brand Loyalty, Network Engagement, Viewership Growth

Method: Starz has created a game-sweepstakes combo in anticipation of the beginning of the “Spartacus” TV show.

Core Mechanic: The Like-gated app is both a sweepstakes with a grand prize of a trip to New Zealand to visit the set, as well as branded gift packages. Users may enter the sweepstakes alone, or also play the game, Take Up Arms, and engage in the plot of the show, which is a rebel fight against Roman slaveowners. In the game users may take the side of the rebels or the Romans.

Impact: The Page comes in just under 2 million Likes but the real success of this campaign will be measured by the number of folks watching the show. PageData shows a recent spike in growth on the Page.

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.