Sociable Labs has just emerged from stealth and launched its hosted software service that provides large ecommerce websites with custom Facebook social plugins that increase conversions and referral traffic. Rather than implement standard Like buttons or develop their own Open Graph integration, Sociable Labs’ turn-key solution lets sites show their users the products that friends have bought or signed up for, who to ask for, recommendations, and relevant suggestions of friends to invite.

To fund product development and marketing of the “ROI-Guided Social Design” hosted software solution Sociable Labs has raised a $7 million Series B round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s product addresses the traffic and conversion needs of ecommerce sites by exploiting the full potential of Facebook’s social and interest graphs. The company reports that initial tests of the $50,000 a year product have generated a 20-times increase in sharing to Facebook.

Customized Social Plugins Beat One-Size-Fits-All

Facebook’s current social plugins are designed to be generally applicable. The Like button fits most websites, but asking users to Like an action they’ve taken such as buying a product or registering for an event is a bit awkward. The Recommendations and Activity Feed plugins show what friends or the general Facebook populace have Liked, but don’t can’t tell users what friends have bought or browsed.

Sociable Labs’ product lets sites create social plugins designed specifically to encourage sharing of the types of actions that occur on their site. For example, custom plugins can be configured to ask users to “Tell friends what you just bought/signed up for” after they make a purchase or registration. The product leverage a site’s clickstream data and Facebook’s interest graph. That way it can show a customer viewing ecommerce search results which product their friends purchased, which brands their friends browsed most, or which friends have Facebook interests related to the results and might have recommendations.

For example, if I’m browsing skis on a sporting goods website powered by Sociable Labs, I might see a plugin that shows that three friends browsed the Rossignol brand. Then while deciding which pair to buy it could show me friends who Like “Skiing” or “Northstar Ski Resort” on Facebook who I could ask for recommendations. Once I purchase, I’d be shown a Facebook sharing button asking “Josh, show off the new skis you bought to friends”.

Other powerful social plugins Sociable Labs offers include targeted referrals that recommends friends with relevant Likes to invite to a site or send an email promotion to, with the referrer getting a discount when friends sign up. Group promotions let users recruit friends to reduce the price of an item, and an activity stream shows all the recent browsing, shares, and purchases of friends.

Beta client Active.com used Sociable Labs’ product to increase the rate of Facebook sharing by its users from 0.2% to 8% and increase conversion rates from Facebook traffic by 33%. Other clients also saw sharing increase by more than 20-fold. These shares generate significant referral traffic and sales for site. In fact, a Sociable Labs study showed that traffic coming from authentic social shares by friends converts 300% better than traffic from news feed updates published by Facebook Pages and 67% better than traffic from email marketing.

Sociable Labs See Sharing as the Key to ROI, Not Page Updates

Founded as part of fbFund in June 2009, the San Francisco-based Sociable Labs has since taken a total of $8.8 million in funding and grown to 25 employees. It is targeting the top 500 internet retailers who may see much more traffic to their website than their Facebook Pages, and therefore want to focus on bridging their sites with the social network. Sociable Labs now has 12 clients paying $50,000 a year subscriptions to its product and more for custom design work to skin the plugins.

The social plugin software is hosted by Sociable Labs so it’s easy to embed into websites. It stores all of a site’s clickstream data, even if the site doesn’t already do that itself. The company found that 40% of visitors to ecommerce sites were currently logged in to Facebook, allowing it to tie clickstream and conversion data to identity and show personalized social plugins to a significant portions of a client’s visitors. Also included in the product are a suite of tools for clients to A/B test and optimize the plugins.

The company’s CEO Nisan Gabbay tells me that “to date, brands have focused on monitoring mentions, gaining fans for their Facebook Pages, and pumping messages to fans. However, the right way to get a return on investment from social is getting more consumer to consumer viral marketing.” This is similar to the approach of BadgeVille, which is using gamification and personalized activity streams to increase loyalty and get users spending more time on content sites.

There are opportunities for ecommerce sites to utilize Facebook’s new Open Graph app system revealed at f8 to drive qualified referral traffic. Gabbay believes “Open Graph is very key to enabling social commerce, but its overwhelming for marketers.” Also, while automatic, implicit Open Graph activity sharing to the Ticker can generate traffic, Sociable Labs encourages explicit shares that are more likely to reach the main news feed, and on-site recommendation plugins that are more advanced than Facebook’s official plugins.

Until now, most Facebook marketing platforms center around Page management, with giants like Buddy Media and Vitrue consolidating the industry by acquiring or partnering with ecommerce, Ads API, and games companies. Buddy Media did acquire and integrate social plugin company Spinback, but otherwise there hasn’t been much activity in the third-party site Facebook integration space.

This is going to change. As brands increase their focus on ROI, they will pay for social plugins that drive more traffic and conversions than Facebook’s. Gabbay agrees, saying “It’s a little early, but I’m sure you’ll see a lot of consolidation” as the bigger players move to add social plugins to their service offering. For now, though, Sociable Labs is a step ahead, offering a product that can drastically improve sharing and conversion rates for ecommerce sites.

Professional networking Facebook app developer BranchOut has launched RecruiterConnect, a powerful enterprise software-as-a-service that lets recruiters search Facebook for job candidates. Recruiters can search by job title, location and more. Search results include the friends of any of the millions of users who’ve installed BranchOut, giving recruiters access to a significant portion of Facebook’s user base, especially those in the US.

RecruiterConnect could become a serious competitor, or at least a strong complement to LinkedIn Recruiter, the standalone professional network’s enterprise search tool. BranchOut offers a price tag of $300 a month per seat, less than half of LinkedIn’s cost. Its database also includes blue collar workers such as store managers and cashiers that large brands are always looking for, to contrast with LinkedIn’s more white collar core user base. BranchOut founder and CEO Rick Marini tells me his company purposefully waited 15 months since the launch of its user-facing professional networking app to release RecruiterConnect because it wanted to build up a valuable database. Thanks to Facebook extended permissions, each time a user installs the app, BranchOut pulls the name, location, education and work history of all their friends. Now recruiters can pay for access to this enormous cache of data, which includes users that might be good candidates but never would have signed up for a professional network themselves.

RecruiterConnect Offers Comprehensive Search

With RecruiterConnect, candidates can be searched for or filtered by keyword, company name, location, job title, and connection to the recruiter. Results will include a recruiter’s friends, friends of friends, BranchOut connections, as well as the first and second degree connections of all BranchOut users. Potential candidates in the first group can be contacted directly through RecruiterConnect. Friends of BranchOut users must be contacted indirectly through the introduction system and a gatekeeper – someone who is both friends, friends of friends, or a BranchOut connection of the candidate and the recruiter. By buying additional seats on a RecruiterConnect license, recruiters can pool in the first and second degree contacts of fellow recruiters or employees at their company. This lets them expand the number of people they can contact directly. If a recruiter is friends or friends of friends with a candidate, they can contact them via Facebook Message, otherwise they use BranchOut’s internal messaging service that triggers email notifications for recipients.

Other features include the ability to add private notes to a candidate’s profile, view similar people to the currently viewed user, and add candidates to folders. If clients are running job listings on BranchOut, they receive suggestions for candidates that meet the job’s requirements. The company is working on a “clone” tool that allows recruiters to select a current employee and receive suggestions of people very similar to them, which can be used to build teams or replace employees. BranchOut now has 15 to 20 recruiter clients using RecruiterConnect. For example, Bay Area startup recruiters could execute a highly refined search for “software engineers”, that went to Stanford, worked at Google, and live within a 50 mile radius of San Francisco. Marini tells me only high quality recruiters will be granted licenses to keep the service’s users from being spammed.

Facebook Implements Barriers to BranchOut Competitors

BranchOut hit its peak user count of 252,000 daily active users and 3 million monthly active users over the summer thanks to users sending wall posts to friends to invite them to the app. This was before Facebook began restricting how apps could use wall posts and began delivering invites through the Requests and notifications channels rather than the more viral publicly visible wall. While BranchOut has since declined to 30,00 DAU according to AppData, Marini tells me that “these changes put a moat around BranchOut. It’s harder to be viral now.” By that he means that potential competitors such as Monster’s BeKnown might not be able to build as big a recruiter database as BranchOut has, so they won’t be able to release a search tool as strong as RecruiterConnect. Similarly, f8′s Ticker and Open Graph protocol provide exposure to apps that let users read, watch, or listen, but “companies that are more service or utility-oriented have it tougher.” Marini continues, explaining that BranchOut’s relatively infrequent posts are even making it out of the Ticker and into the news feed. “We didn’t know which way the new viral channels would effect us, but we came out net positive. It’s kind of scary when Facebook makes big changes.” Now, unless a competitor comes in with a massive marketing budget or Facebook again changes its viral channels, Facebook professional networking or at least recruiter search could become a winner-takes-all scenario with BranchOut at the top.

Facebook has made several developer-focused announcements over the past few days, including that it has released more free tickets to its Mobile Hack event at Facebook headquarters this Friday. This will give more developers the opportunity to learn about building Facebook-integrated native native and HTML5 mobile apps.

Nine new international Facebook Credits payment methods have been added to make it easier for those abroad to buy Credits. Additionally, developers now have the capability to programmatically check if an app is installed on a Page and what privacy setting a user has selected for an app.

Facebook recently launched a blog specifically for HTML5 developers, and there announced it would hold an all-day Mobile Hack event at the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto on October 28th. The event will cover iOS, Android, and HTML5 mobile web development for the new Facebook mobile app Platform. It will feature: “technical deep-dives, a Q&A, partner presentations, and an opportunity for you and your team to hack on site with Facebook developer team assistance. At the end of the day, awards will be given to the best mobile social apps.”

Developers can register to attend Mobile Hack for free on Eventbrite, though tickets are limited and will likely sell out the same way the mini-f8 Open Graph Technology Days Facebook held around the country did. They may then begin working on their hack project, as apps don’t need to be built from scratch at the event. The schedule for Mobile Hack is as follows:

10:00am – Registration Open
11:00am – Facebook Platform on Mobile
11:45am - New Features: Social Discovery on Mobile
12:30pm - Lunch
1:30pm –   Partner Presentations and Best Practices
2:30pm -  Native Distribution for Web Apps
3:00pm -  Break
3:15pm -  Open Graph and Mobile
4:00pm -  Q&A
5:00pm -  Dinner
5:00pm -  Hack
11:00pm – App Presentation & Awards
11:30pm – Event Close

There hasn’t quite been a blitz of mobile app development since the new Platform opened earlier this month. The launch partner apps show some promise, but traffic has been slow. Creating a healthy mobile app platform is key to Facebook growing mobile engagement and making money through mobile Credits. Facebook is hoping the new HTML5 resource center and Mobile Hack will give developers the understanding necessary to explore the mobile platform’s viral channels.

Alongside the announcement of initial test of Facebook Credits for Websites, Facebook listed that Credits can now be bought with several new international payment methods. The news benefits developers, as users are more likely to become paying customers if it’s easy for them to acquire Credits.

Many of the new payment methods are online payment solutions for Southeast Asia and South America, which have become important secondary markets for developers. Facebook now supports over 80 payment methods in 50 countries. They new methods include:

• Axeso5 (Brazil)
• Join Card (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand)
• Malaysia OBT (Malaysia)
• MEPS FPX (Malaysia)
• MEPSCASH (Malaysia)
• PayEasy (Philippines)
• PaysBuy (Thailand)
• SafetyPay (Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Spain, Austria, Brazil)
• WebCash (Malaysia)

The Graph API can now be used to determine if an app has been installed on a Page. An HTTP GET request to /PAGE_ID/tabs/APP_ID will return the IDs of any app installed on a Page when used with a Page admin access token, and whether a particular app is installed when used with that app’s access token. This will allow Page management apps to determine what tab apps have or haven’t been installed  on a Page they oversee.

The new app authentication flow allows users to set the widest possible audience for content shared through that app. Now developers can retrieve a user’s privacy selection via the privacy setting table. This way, when apps present users with subsequent privacy selectors, they can default to a user’s previously chosen privacy setting. This keeps users from thinking their existing privacy settings have been changed.

Musician profile website and publishing platform Bandcamp this week released a tab application that lets artists present their Bandcamp presence on their Facebook Page. While competing services like RootMusic built Page tab apps that now host hundreds of thousands of musicians, Bandcamp has focused on letting music be streamed or purchased from the news feed. Its new app makes it easier and cheaper for musicians to sell music than other popular Facebook apps.

Bandcamp criticizes the social network as a place for musicians, calling it “just another part of a good overall distribution strategy” in the launch materials for its app and saying Facebook Pages are cluttered with distracting content and ads. By waiting this long to build a Page tab app for Facebook, though, Bandcamp has given its competitors a big head start in terms of functionality and user base. It will need to close these gaps to remain attractive to artists who have much to gain from Facebook’s massive audience, and to increase its own revenues.

Bandcamp was founded in 2008, a few months after ReverbNation’s Facebook app launched and long before RootMusic’s growth took off. The service lets musicians create a homepage from which visitors can stream their music, view their upcoming tour dates, join their mailing list, download tracks, and buy their albums. The site acts as a publishing platform, as artists don’t necessarily need a record label if they can distribute their music for profit through Bandcamp.

At launch, the site’s simple design and reliability made it a refreshing alternative to Myspace. In the early days of music Page tab apps on Facebook, it offered arguably stronger, cheaper branding and distribution services than RootMusic’s BandPage and ReverbNation’s BandProfile. It also offered a wide range of sharing capabilities including powerful Facebook news feed sharing option that allowed users to stream music in-line from te feed or begin a purchase flow with a single click.

As Pages receive half as many impressions as their news feed posts, focusing on the feed rather than Pages seemed like a wise move. In the instructions for installing its new Page tab app, Bandcamp slams Facebook’s Pages product, which compete with its own core product, writing “The average Facebook page has between 50 and 60 things for your fans to click on other than your music. Why let an ad for Bonobos pants vie for your fans’ attention?”

With time, though, Bandcamp’s competitors replicated its rich news feed stories, branding, and distribution, and staying out of Facebook app development began looking like a misstep. Now, traffic measurement service Compete shows Bandcamp having roughly 800,000 monthly unique visitors and its new Page tab app has 90,000 monthly active users, while RootMusic’s BandPage hosts 300,000 artists, and has 1.3 million daily active users and 28 million MAU according to AppData.

Bandcamp users can visit the Facebook app or follow a prompt on their Bandcamp profile to access instructions for adding the Page tab app to their Facebook Page. Once installed, the app shows the same streaming, download, purchase, and sharing options as on artist’s Bandcamp page. If visitors go to download a track, they’re directed back to a Bandcamp download page. If they go to make a purchase, a payment flow is initially shown in-line before sending users to PayPal to complete the transaction.

The list of features missing from the app is long. To start with, there’s no way to automatically send updates when content is added, nor customize the app’s chrome, take in mailing list signups, display videos or photos, or require users to Like the Page, send a tweet, or sign up for email updates in order to access the app or specific content.

The one thing Bandcamp’s app handles very well is selling music. Musicians can easily upload music to Bandcamp and immediately begin selling it. Bandcamp takes a just 10% cut of sales with no upfront costs, and artist can require downloaders to join their mailing list. This beats RootMusic’s options of free downloads through Soundcloud or links to other music stores such as iTunes and Topspin. It’s also much cheaper than ReverbNation’s mp3 store which takes a large $3 cut per album. Bandcamp also lets artists cheaply give music away, as they can pay Bandcamp 2 cents a song to let fans download music for free.

Bandcamp’s Page tab app works well for artists that want to sell their music directly through Facebook. For smaller artists trying to scrape by, that might be the most important thing. However, its weak customization and lack of fan-gating options means that for now, artists thinking about the long-term, who are signed with labels, or that sell their music through iTunes and Amazon, may be better served by a more full-featured Facebook apps.

Last week Facebook announced the first test of “Facebook Credits for Websites”, its new program that could allow any site to sell virtual goods or digital media in exchange Facebook’s virtual currency. For businesses selling things online, a big hurdle to conversions is getting potential customers to enter their payment details, so this could be a big new way for them to make payments easier and monetize more users.

Facebook will need to make a choice regarding exclusivity and Credits for Websites. Requiring Credits to be the exclusive payment method for Facebook-logged in users would allow it to essentially charge websites for access to its identity platform. A rollout without exclusivity requirements could get more websites to adopt Credits.

Therefore, we believe that similar to how Credits were at first an option but then later required to be the sole payment method for Facebook.com games, Facebook may be best off initially allowing websites to use Credits alongside other options and later making them mandatory.

Credits Benefits and Costs

For background, Facebook launched Credits in the summer of 2010 to simultaneously make it easier for game developers to accept payment for virtual good and to give itself a 30% cut on virtual good transactions. Users buy Credits from Facebook with their credit card, PayPal account, mobile phone, gift cards, or offers. Rather than having to enter payment details in each different game or with each developer whose games they play, Facebook Credits allow them to enter payment details once with a single, theoretically more trusted vendor (Facebook) and then spend across different games and developers.

Initially game developers could provide the option to pay with Credits alongside their other payment methods. They would then redeem with the Credits spent by their users with Facebook for 70% of their value. In July 2011, Facebook began requiring all game developers to exclusively process payments through Credits, while utility app developers could (and still can) choose whether or not to use them. Then, Facebook began allowing mobile app developers to process payments with Credits earlier this month.

Offering Facebook Credits as a payment option is a trade-off for developers. Benefits include the ability to:

• Instantly process payments from those with a balance of Credits
• Monetize international users without having to accept their local currency
• Monetize those without credit cards such as teens that can acquire Facebook Credits by completing offers, buying Facebook Credits gift cards with cash at local convenience and grocery stores, or by depositing loose change at Coinstar/Rixty kiosks
• Avoid transaction and fraud costs
• Let users pay through a big-name company they may trust more
• Increase user spend because they’re paying indirectly through a virtual currency rather than directly with dollars they may be more careful with

Developers must also endure several drawbacks if they offering Credits as a payment option. Most importantly, they must pay Facebook a 30% tax. Additionally, developers lose flexibility in how they optimize virtual currency costs to maximize sales. Some people don’t trust Facebook and may be more likely to submit credit card information to a game developer than to the social network. Developers are also less likely to earn money off of breakage, where users buy their proprietary virtual currency but never end up spending it. Though there haven’t been many prolonged outages in the past, if the Facebook Credits system went down, those relying on it to process payments could miss out on sales until service was restored.

Finally, Facebook can impose its own exclusivity policies on how Credits can be used alongside other payment options. Facebook allowed the game developers to flourish using any payment method they wanted on the Facebook.com Platform before eventually requiring Credits to be their exclusive way of processing payments. In this way, the gaming industry invested in developing for the Facebook Platform rather than competitors such that it had little choice but to accept Facebook’s 30% tax when it became mandatory.

In many cases, developers would prefer Facebook not implement exclusivity policies, though they begrudgingly accepts them and the 30% as the cost of being able to do business on the Facebook Platform.

Facebook Credits for Websites and Exclusivity

In the first round of testing for the new Facebook Credits for Websites program, the social network is working with online gaming portal GameHouse. In two specific games, if users are logged in to GameHouse via their Facebook Credentials they’ll be prompted to pay for virtual goods with Credits and won’t see the credit card and PayPal options. In this way, Credits are the “exclusive payment method for users logging in through Facebook”.

If the tests go well, Facebook could roll out Credits for Websites to more beta partners and eventually to all websites. Here are some of the exclusivity structures it could use, how they would impact developers, and the likelihood that Facebook would choose each potential structure:

Exclusive for all users - Websites can only use Facebook Credits as a payment method if it’s the only option they give to users, even those without Facebook accounts. This would prevent developers from monetizing significant portions of their users who don’t have a Facebook account or don’t log in with it. Therefore it wouldn’t be worth it for developers to switch to Credits exclusively. It’s very unlikely that Facebook would choose this structure. It only works on Facebook.com because every user there must be logged in through Facebook.

No Exclusivity - Websites can offer Credits as a payment option as well as other options such as credit cards and PayPal. Though it would clutter their payment flows, developers could offer Credits as an additional option to lower the payment barrier for those who maintain a balance of the virtual currency. It would help with monetization of international and teen users without forcing developers to pay a 30% cut on all of their transactions.

At first, Facebook may choose to roll out Credits for Websites without exclusivity. This would lower the risk and cost for developers such that Facebook could to get the maximum number of developers to add Credits as a payment option. Getting a wide base at first would also help Facebook push more users to start carrying a balance of Credits because they’ll see them as more widely applicable.

Though it would complicate enforcement, Facebook could require Credits to be listed equally or at least alongside credit card and PayPal options so developers wouldn’t bury Credits behind additional clicks to dissuade users from paying through a taxed method.

Exclusive for Logged in Facebook Users – Websites that want to utilize Facebook as an identity provider to power their registration and login systems would have to exclusively use Credits as their payment method for Facebook-logged in users. This creates a value exchange where developers can’t piggyback on Facebook identity without paying for it. If developers want to monetize their users but not use Facebook Credits, Faceboo could deny them access to its identity platform.

Functionally, it works because only logged in Facebook users would see the option to pay with Credits, and those with an existing balance of Credits would be able to pay instantly. People using a third-party website without signing in through Facebook would only see more traditional payment options, or could also be given the option to log in through Facebook to pay through Credits.

If the test is any indication, Facebook may eventually want this to be the way Credits for Websites works. Third-party sites would be taxed for access its its identity platform the same way Facebook taxes developers on Facebook.com. At first it might allow Credits for Websites to be used without exclusivity, but eventually it might give sites warning that it would become the mandatory payment method for Facebook-logged in users.

Facebook has already carried out this strategy of luring developers with an untaxed Platform, then giving them the option and incentives to use its taxed universal currency, and then finally making Credits the exclusive payment method with games on Facebook.com, and canvas utility apps might be next. A similar long-term strategy for Facebook Credits for Websites could be the best path to monetizing transactions for games, media, subscriptions services, and more across the web.

Buddy Media has announced several new features to its social marketing suite, including ReachBuddy that lets brands embed on third-party websites the widgets they use as Facebook Page tab apps. ReachBuddy will help brands gain more exposure for the contests, discounts, sweepstakes and content apps the build for Facebook. This will in turn make BuddyMedia more of a cross-web publishing platform than a dedicated social media tool.

The Page management giant also launched C-Rank, a system for scoring and benchmarking Facebook and Twitter that will help brands track their performance. Additionally, clients can now create custom dashboards tailored for different team members such as marketers or community managers to improve the efficiency, compose content for other team members to publish in a way that facilitates corporate/local franchise hierarchies similar to Hearsay Social, and license custom packages of Buddy Media products to keep costs down for brands in specific verticals.

A core part of Buddy Media’s Facebook Page management business is the licensing of its suite of custom tab applications that brands can embed on their Pages. Brands can choose from templates to skin in order to easily offer promotions such as sweepstakes, discounts and user-generated content contests. They can also add content apps to let them distribute their Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr updates.

Most brands are working to build their Facebook fan bases, in some cases Like-gating their Page tab apps so users must become fans to use them. However, some still get much more traffic on their websites, or often create micro-sites for special initiatives. Now, rather than rebuilding widgets that duplicate the functionality of their tab apps, Buddy Media clients can use ReachBuddy to embed these apps on sites outside of Facebook.

ReachBuddy launch partner Pepsi used ReachBuddy to add video to a microsite promoting a partnership with television show The X-Factor. Rather than embedding a YouTube video, Pepsi was able to easily configure  a white-labeled video player for the site through the simple ReachBuddy interface.

Brands have an ever increasing number of ways to distribute their content, between websites, microsites, Tumblr, and now Google+ planning to launch brand pages that can host applications. Redundantly building rich functionality into each of these distribution channels is a waste of resources. By allowing brands to build first for Facebook, the biggest platform, and then replicate their apps across the web, ReachBuddy will make Buddy Media more valuable to clients trying to take advantage of the whole evolving social landscape.

Facebook has just announced a closed, limited test in which for the first time it will allow websites to process payments for virtual goods using Facebook Credits. Facebook’s virtual currency is currently the mandatory payment method for all Facebook games on the web, a payment option for Facebook apps, and became available as a payment option to mobile app developers last week. The only initial launch partner for “Facebook Credits for Websites” will be online and downloadable games site GameHouse that until now only accepted payments through credit card and PayPal.

During the test, Facebook will closely monitor the demand for Credits as a payment method and the user experience of those that pay though its virtual currency. If a high enough percentage of users make purchases through Credits and feedback is positive, Facebook may expend additional resources to let more websites add Credits as a payment option.

Eventually, Facebook might open the option to all web developers selling virtual goods or digital media, allowing the social network to earn a 30% cut on transactions across the web. In exchange, sites will be able to provide an easier way to buy their goods and media than punching in credit card or PayPal details. Facebook has provided a signup page for developers that want to try Facebook Credits for Websites if the test is expanded.

GameHouse users that sign in to the site with their Facebook login  and play Collapse Blast or UNO Boost will only see Credits as a payment option, not credit cards or PayPal. If they choose to buy virtual goods or proprietary in-game currencies, Facebook Credits will be deducted from the same account that Facebook canvas and mobile games pull from. Similar to how it works within Facebook, users without an existing balance of Credits will be able to purchase a bundle within the payment flow.

Unlike on Facebook where Credits are the exclusive payment method for games, GameHouse may still offer other payment options. However, Ian Fliflet who handles corporate strategy for GameHouse tells me that those signed in through Facebook won’t see the option to pay with a credit card or PayPal account. This could anger some long-time GameHouse users that try signing in through Facebook for the first time only to find their preferred payment options missing in the two test games. That in turn could negatively skew feedback on Credits for Websites.

If the test does indicate a demand for Credits as a payment option outside of Facebook.com, its unclear whether Facebook would require developers to use its virtual currency exclusively. It could simply make them an additional payment option, the way Credits currently work for Facebook.com apps as well as mobile apps and games. However, it might extend this test model so that sites that want to use Facebook as an identity and login provider will also need to use its taxed virtual currency.

The impact of Facebook Credits for Websites could be significant. It could assist independent game developers and digital media merchants with monetization, as customers might be able to quick make purchases rather than having time to reconsider while enduring the friction of entering their credit card information or logging in to PayPal.

Currently, many independent game developers have to distribute through portals like GameHouse that have built a base of users that have already provided their credit card details. Facebook Credits for Websites could give them the opportunity to distribute directly to fans in way that gives them more control over branding. The tax that third-party game portals take on credit card or PayPal transactions may vary widely, so Facebook’s 30% cut could be less or more than developers are used to paying.

Facebook has much to gain from Credits for Websites, though. The more places they’re accepted, the more users that are likely to buy and maintain a balance of Credits, and the more transactions Facebook will get a cut of. A user might buy a bundle of Credits to spend them on a gaming portal or to buy a band’s album, but then spend then become a paying customer of a freemium game on Facebook.com.

More users maintaining a balance of Credits also makes Facebook a more lucrative platform for developers. Typically only a few percent of gamers ever pay to play, but if they already have a balance they may be more likely to spend. Facebook may need to initially reduce its tax or not demand any exclusivity as a payment method to get websites hooked on Credits. With time, though, Facebook Credits for Websites could become a significant revenue source and powerful way to attract developers.

Facebook has quietly released a new feature in Facebook for iPhone 4.0 update that could create new opportunities for marketers. If users click or enter a URL that uses the fb://page URL scheme and have the official Facebook for iPhone/iPad app installed, the corresponding Facebook Page will be opened in that app. Before the 4.0 and later software updates, fb://page URL scheme links would load a blank screen in the apps.

For example, if you click the link of or enter the URL fb://page/7844589738 in an iOS device that has Facebook for iPhone/iPad installed, that app will launch and bring up t he official Facebook Page for InsideFacebook.com (7844589738 is the Facebook ID of the Page for Inside Facebook). Marketers could distribute URL scheme-linked text via email or mobile site, and users wouldn’t notice the strange URL, they’d just click on a link and suddenly see the Facebook app open.

This new functionality could let marketers instantly bring users to their Page where they can Like it or write on its wall, rather than forcing them to open the m.facebook.com site where they might not already be logged in. Marketers could attach this link to a QR code to promote their Page and gain Likes from iOS device users. The fb://page URL scheme could become even more important if users gain the ability to access Page tab applications from mobile devices in the future.

iOS URL schemes allow specific first- and third-party iOS applications to be launched with special URLs. They can also be used to immediately perform certain functions such as setting a recipient for a new text message, showing directions in Google Maps, or add a shortened URL to a tweet in Tweetie or Twitterific. However, if the user doesn’t have the corresponding app installed, neither the app or a browser version will load.

Previously, URL schemes could be used to open a specific photo album, Event, or user profile in Facebook for iPhone. With the latest major Facebook for iPhone and iPad software updates, official Pages and Places Pages can now be opened with URL schemes as well. Page use the “fb://page/[Page ID]” URL scheme while Places use “fb://place/[Place ID]“.

There may be a URL scheme suffix that allows the info or wall tab to be loaded specifically, though none of the logical suffixes I tried worked. Android devices have their own URL scheme, and some developers have found ways to open user profiles in the Facebook for Android apps, though I haven’t seen a solution for opening Pages.

Facebook for iPhone/iPad has 52.3 million daily active users and 92.7 million monthly active users according to AppData, many of which stay logged in on the app at all times. This creates a large audience that can utilize the Facebook Page URL scheme to quickly gain access to a Page from a logged in state, allowing them to Like it or leave a wall post.

iOS app developers could use the Page URL scheme to send their users out of their app and to their Page so they can gain Likes. Similarly, marketers could distribute a Page URL scheme as an “iOS only” link to gain Likes.

In the physical world, marketers could also tie the URL scheme link to their Page to a QR code and display in their brick and mortar store or distribute through print materials. Users could then scan the QR code to launch their Facebook app and Like the Page. This could become a way to speed up in-store promotions where users who show they’ve Liked a business’ Page get a discount or free gift.

Those trying to take advantage of the URL scheme functionality should be sure their audience is likely to have an iOS device with the Facebook app installed. Otherwise providing a standard browser link that’s accessible across devices and to those without the Facebook app is a safer bet, even if it means users may have to log in to Facebook again before they can Like the Page.

Facebook recently launched its mobile app platform that allows users to access canvas apps built in HTML5 from their mobile devices. Page tab applications cannot be accessed from mobile yet, judging by the fact that some Page tab app developers such as RootMusic have begun building in HTML5. Once Page tab apps are opened to mobile, Page URL scheme links could become a powerful way to drive traffic to them as well as helping Pages gain Likes.

[Thanks to Sam Cornwell for the tip]

Facebook and the United States Department of Labor today announced a partnership to help the country’s unemployed find work, the LA Times reports. Together they’ve launched the Social Jobs Partnership Facebook Page that aggregates career resources including job search education, job boards, and services that match a visitor’s skills with opportunities. The goal is to make it easier for those without jobs to discover these resources that were previously scattered across .gov and .org websites. Public service announcements will be run on Facebook and in the 10 states with the highest unemployment to promote the new Page.

With Americans spending so much time on the free social network, Facebook is in a unique position to assist the labor department. The partnership could help Facebook dispel the belief that it is purely a procrastination tool and demonstrate how it can improve peoples lives.

14 million Americans are out of work, yet there are 3 million open jobs. This disconnect is in part due to a lack of awareness of free government career resources (along with systemic factors, like people not having the necessary qualifications for some job openings). Job seekers may be looking at local listings and sending out resume after resume. However, if they haven’t received assistance in determining what opportunities are best suited for them, optimizing their resume, and learning how to navigate the interview process, they may have further difficulty securing employment.

In addition to Facebook and the Labor Department, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), DirectEmployers Association (DE), and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) are participating in the project.

The Social Jobs Partnership Page they’ve created acts as a portal to services that can help, including:

• CareerOneStop – a Department of Labor site that educates users on job seeking, resume writing, interviews, and more
• My Next Move – A tool that provides skills and salary information on hundreds of careers, and personalized career suggestions
• My Skills My Future – A skills-to-job matching tool
• Job Corps – A free job training and education program for young people from low income families
• NACElink – A board of job and internship postings for college students

Users can Like the Page to receive news feed updates about new career resources, answer surveys about their needs, and receive job listings. The Page also features a Share Your Story app that lets users describe how Facebook helped them find a job. Submissions will presumably be featured on the Page or used in promotions for the partnership.

Studies show 55.5% of recruiters are already using Facebook to source hires, meaning Facebook users may have a better chance of finding employment than those that abstain from social networking. Several applications have launched to assist these recruiters, such as BranchOut and Monster’s BeKnown for professional networking and recruiter search, Jobvite for viral job listing distribution, and Work For Us for displaying personalized job opportunities on brand Pages.

In the past, Facebook has worked with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and local government agencies to set up Pages that further their goals. These initiatives have strengthened its relationship with the US government in ways that complement its increasing lobbying effortsto prevent unfavorable privacy laws and other types of regulation from being levied against the site.

The Social Jobs Partnership could also improve the site’s image amongst users, some of who view it as a fun way to waste time rather than a place to learn and grow. Its viral nature will make success stories stemming from the partnership especially visible. It might only take one friend getting a job thanks to the Social Jobs Partnership Page to persuade their network that Facebook can help one connect with employment, not just friends.

Today Facebook released its Messenger standalone mobile messaging app for BlackBerry, and added several new features and languages to the existing iOS and Android versions. Users of all the versions of Facebook Messenger will now be able to see when a conversation partner is typing, view the online status of all their friends, and can quickly add their top friends to a new or ongoing thread. Many additional languages are also now supported for iOS and Android.

Now available in App World via Facebook’s About page, the BlackBerry version of the push notification and SMS app could become a competitor to RIM’s native BlackBerry Messenger service. With the feature additions Messenger now more closely approximates the web version of Facebook Chat, and surpasses the built-in Chat functionality of the primary Facebook mobile apps. Facebook Messenger can now better achieve its purpose of allowing low-friction, cross-platform instant messaging.

The initial release of Messenger in August gave users a way to communicate with Facebook friends and their phone contacts without having to decide what device or platform to route a message to. Friends without Facebook receive messages as SMS, those with the app receive push notifications, those online on the web version of Facebook receive Chats, and those offline receive Facebook Messages in their inbox.

However, users had to search for friends individually to determine their online status and add them to a conversation. There was no way to easily add friends they frequently Chatted with to a conversation. There was also no way to tell if someone else was typing a Message to you, leading people to cut each other off in mid-sentence. BlackBerry users couldn’t access the app and had to Chat using the primary Facebook app or SMS, leading some to stick to BBMing with their other BlackBerry-carrying friends.

Today’s update solves all these problems. When users go to start a conversation or add friends to an existing thread, they’ll first see a list of their closest friends and their online statuses — whether online on the web, on their mobile device, or offline. Below this, users see an alphabetical list of all their online friends, and can also search for offline friends. This means that if users just want to Chat but not with anyone in particular, they’ll see options of readily available friends, which could increase usage of the app.

In addition to new features, 22 new languages have been added to the Android versions, and 12 more have been added for iPhone. In September, Facebook also made the app available in the UK and Ireland.

According to AppData, the iOS and Android Messenger apps have been growing relatively steadily, but have still only reached 1-2% of the audience of the primary Facebook apps for those operating systems. Messenger for iOS has 530,000 daily active users and 1.9 million monthly active users compared to Facebook for iPhone’s 52.3 million DAU and 92.5 million MAU. Messenger for Android has 780,000 DAU and 1.6 million MAU compared to Facebook for Android’s 47.9 million DAU and 70.9 million MAU.

With BBM already ingrained in BlackBerry user behavior patterns, we expect Messenger for BlackBerry to achieve less than 1% of Facebook for BlackBerry’s 28.6 million DAU. Still, the ability to chat for free regardless of a friend’s device should be appealing to BBM users and could steal some of them away. Meanwhile, the new features should boost the DAU of the iOS and Android Messenger apps by making users more likely to choose them over the primary Facebook apps.