Facebook added about two dozen new positions to its careers page this week, including a number of openings on the legal, HR, data analysis and account management teams.

A noteworthy addition is a job listing for an Integration Manager, Corporate Development to focus on “sourcing, evaluating, negotiating and executing mergers and acquisitions” and “play an instrumental role leading the due diligence and integration planning/execution phases of strategic acquisitions.”

New listings added to Facebook’s careers page:

• Commercial Counsel – Inbound (Menlo Park)
• Paralegal (Legal Assistant) (São Paulo)
• Patent Paralegal (Menlo Park)
• Program Manager, Payment Partnerships (Menlo Park)
• HR Business Partner, Legal and Global Marketing (Menlo Park)
• People Services Rep (Menlo Park)
• Critical Facility Engineer (Prineville)
• Logistics Analyst (Menlo Park)
• Software Engineer, Benchmarking (Menlo Park)
• Product Marketing Manager (Menlo Park)
• Partner Engineer, Mobile (Seoul)
• Analyst, User Operations, French (Dublin)
• Data Analyst (Menlo Park)
• Specialist, User Operations (Austin)
• Associate Account Manager, CPG (New York)
• Associate Account Manager, Retail (Atlanta)
• Manager, Account Management, CPG (New York)
• Integration Manager, Corporate Development (Menlo Park)
• Partner Manager APAC, Preferred Marketing Developer Program (Singapore)
• Client Partner, Retail/QSR (Toronto)
• Client Partner, Technology/Telecommunications (Toronto)
• Client Partner (Hyderabad – Mumbai)
• Client Partner, Entertainment (New York)

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

Facebook spent $87 million so far this year on business acquisitions not including its Instagram purchase, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Facebook spent $521 million on Instagram — $300 million of which was in cash, the rest in vested shares of Class B common stock. Facebook additionally issued 11 million unvested shares to employee stockholders of Instagram, with a value of about $194 million to be recognized as they vest over three years. This makes the total price of the mobile photo sharing app $715 million, shy of the $1 billion original price, which decreased with Facebook’s stock value.

Facebook reported $87 million in other business acquisitions from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30. Apart from Instagram, this year Facebook has bought Tagtile, Glancee, Karma, Face.com and Threadsy.

Tagtile was a mobile-based customer loyalty management startup that offered payments hardware and software for merchants. Glancee was an ambient mobile location app that alerts users when people with similar interests are nearby. Karma was a mobile gifting and commerce service, which was turned into Facebook Gifts. Face.com was a facial recognition technology company. Threadsy offered a Klout-like service called Swaylo to connect brands and influencers, and help users understand their own influence on Facebook.

Facebook also made a number of acqu-hires this year, picking up employees from Momentus Media, Lightbox, Bolt Peters, Pieceable Software, Spool, Acrylic and Carsabi.

The company only spent $24 million on acquisitions at the end of Q2, indicating that the most recent acquisitions to close added up to $63 million.

Facebook stock back below $20 – Facebook shares closed this week at $19.52, down more than 6 percent since Monday. The stock fell below $20 on Wednesday and did not recover. On Tuesday, the company announced it will report Q3 earnings after trading closes on Oct. 23. Earlier this week BTG Media downgraded Facebook from a “Neutral” rating to “Sell” with a $16 price target.

Facebook says tracking lawsuit isn’t specific enough – Facebook attorney Matthew Brown told a judge last Friday that a $15 billion lawsuit alleging that the company secretly tracks users’ off-Facebook activity should be dismissed because the plaintiffs didn’t specify how they were harmed. According to Bloomberg, he says the plaintiffs haven’t identified what kind of data or information was collected about them or whether Facebook used it in anyway or shared it with any other parties.

Facebook proposes new Sponsored Stories settlement – Facebook has revised its proposed $20 million settlement of a case regarding Sponsored Stories after a judge rejected the company’s first plan, Reuters reports. The new agreement would allot $10 million to cover lawyer fees for the plaintiffs and allow users to apply for a cash payment up to $10 each, addressing the judge’s concern that the settlement previously include cash for users. The original proposal set aside money for charity instead. If the new settlement is approved, any money that is left over after users’ claims and other expenses will go to charity.

Lithium Technologies acquires Social Dynamx - Social CRM company Lithium Technologies announced its acquisition of another social CRM application Social Dynamx. Lithium will combine its offering with that of Social Dynamx, available immediately as Lithium Social Web. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lithium previously acquired brand tracking application Scout Labs.

Facebook tests more visual login page - Facebook is testing a number of new designs for its login page, some including photos or illustrations that stretch across the length and width of the browser. According to images shared with TechCrunch, the new designs include the call to action, “Connect and share with the people in your life,” and moves the sign-in more to the center of the browser rather than the top right corner.

Facebook wanted to acquire Sparrow team - Facebook was reportedly in talks to acquire Sparrow, the email client for Mac OS X and iOS that ultimately sold to Google in August. FrenchWeb and TheNextWeb have sources that say Facebook was interested in Sparrow first, but when the deal stalled, Google was able to woo the team over to its Gmail product. It’s unclear whether Facebook wanted the team to work on its messages product or was generally impressed by its design talent.

Thismoment updates marketing platform – Social brand marketing company Thismoment released an updated version of its platform, Distributed Engagement Channel 4. DEC 4 helps brand marketers create, distribute and measure dynamic interactive brand experiences across multiple sites and devices. It includes support for Facebook Timeline and Open Graph, in addition to other platform features like Twitter Cards. More new features are explained here.

Facebook, Google, Adobe and others partner to help developers - Facebook this week announced its participation in the Web Platform Docs alpha release, along with Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera and the W3C. The partnership aims to build a single place on the web for developers to find the information they need to be successful at building apps and websites. The docs on WebPlatform.org are aimed at developers of all levels, spanning a range of topics from how the Internet works to best practices for approaching accessibility. Facebook has donated many of the documents on this HTML5 Resource Center to WebPlatform.org.

Facebook this week hired Dwight Crow and Christopher Berner, the team behind used car price comparison site Carsabi. The founders are looking to sell the site and move on to other projects at Facebook.

The company also appears to have made about a dozen other hires this week based on LinkedIn activity and listings that have been removed from its careers page.

New hires according to LinkedIn:

• Christopher Triolo, Software Engineer – former Computer Science Laboratory Teaching Assistant at Princeton University
• Aurélien Fredouelle, Ingénieur logiciel – former Ingénieur logiciel bas-niveau et avionique at MBDA
• Andy Molloy, Global Sales and Services Support – former MSc Supply Chain Management at Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business UCD

Prior listings removed from Facebook’s careers page:

• Head of Policy, France (Paris)
• Marketing Mix Science Lead (Menlo Park)
• Academic Relations Program Coordinator (Menlo Park)
• Assistant Facility Manager (Prineville)
• Chief Facility Engineer (Prineville)
• SMB Associate, French (Dublin)
• User Operations – Contract (Menlo Park)
• Client Partner, Norwegian (Dublin)
• Client Partner (Toronto)
• Client Partner, CPG (Atlanta)
• Client Partner, Entertainment (Los Angeles)

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

Facebook today announced that its acquisition of Instagram is complete. The mobile photo sharing network will continue to operate under the Instagram brand, but its 16 employees will join the team in Menlo Park, Calif., and Facebook will support the app with infrastructure and engineers.

When Facebook first announced its plan to buy Instagram in April, the deal was worth $1 billion in cash and stock. A mandatory review from Federal Trade Commission delayed the closing of the deal, and with Facebook’s share price suffering since its initial public offering, that value has dropped. Instagram agreed to $300 million in cash and 22,999,412 shares of Facebook common stock, which the California Department of Corporations approved after a hearing last week. The final value of the sale is closer to $735 million.

Instagram shared a new milestone in its blog post about the acquisition: 5 billion photos shared through the service. The app also picked up more than 50 million new users in the four and a half months since Facebook announced its plans to acquire the mobile photo-sharing network.

In the blog post, the Instagram team wrote, “The Instagram app and its features will stay the same one you know and love, and we’ll keep working together to build a better Instagram for everyone.”

Facebook VP of Engineering  Mike Schroepfer echoed the statement in a blog post, saying Facebook is “committed to building and growing Instagram independently.”

Schroepfer also noted that Facebook will look to the Instagram team to help the social network improve its mobile experience.

The state of California today approved Facebook’s plan to acquire Instagram for $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of its stock. This brings the deal, which was announced in April, closer to closing. Instagram shareholders still have to vote to formally approve the sale.

This morning lawyers and employees from Facebook and Instagram attended a “fairness hearing” before the California Department of Corporations. Facebook called for the hearing as a way to obtain exemption from federal registration and speed up the acquisition process. Without a state-level fairness hearing, it can take more than six months and over $250,000 to register a securities offering, according to the California Department of Corporations website. California is one of six states in the U.S. that allow this quicker and more cost-effective review.

Since the time Facebook announced its intent to buy Instagram, its shares have lost significant value on the public market. The formerly $1-billion deal is now worth close to $750 million at Facebook’s $19.10 share price as of today at 1 p.m. PT. The LA Times reports that co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom says he recognized the risk of Facebook losing value and was negotiating on the basis of cash and stock options, not the end valuation. He says the media played up the $1-billion valuation, but he believes Instagram’s 19 shareholders will still vote in favor of the deal.

“We still believe firmly in the long-term value of Facebook,” he said.

Systrom also revealed that although he had been approached by other companies looking to buy Instagram, no formal offers had been made.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation of the acquisition without taking any action, allow the deal to proceed. Instagram has gained more than 50 million new users in the four and a half months since Facebook announced its plans to acquire the mobile photo-sharing network.

Facebook has acquired San Francisco-based Threadsy, which offers Klout-like service called Swaylo to connect brands and influencers. Some of that product will be taken down after the deal closes, but SwayloPro will continue to operate as an independent company owned by its current investors, according to an announcement on Swaylo’s blog.

Facebook confirmed the acquisition, but did not offer further details or comment.

With Swaylo, users can see their level of influence within their social network on a scale of 0 to 10. Rather than pulling in information from several services, it focuses on influence with Facebook where people tend to connect with people they know in person. Swaylo then helps brands discover the people whose influence matters most for their business and get them to work together. The company plans to remove the option for users to be able to access their Sway scores but SwayloPro will live on to help marketers gain insights about their customers.

TechCrunch notes that this isn’t the first time Facebook has taken only part of a company it acquired. In 2010, it took three employees from Zenbe to work on its unified messaging system.

Threadsy CEO and founder Rob Goldman did not say what his team would be working on at Facebook, but he shared the following sentiment in a blog post announcing the acquisition, “This is incredibly exciting for us! We built Swaylo because we believe Facebook and other social media services are the digital representation of our lives. There is no better opportunity to take Swaylo’s vision to the next level than at Facebook.”

Threadsy began as a product to combine email, Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging and other services into one platform. It didn’t quite take off, but after the Swaylo side project gained million users in its first 10 days, it decided to shift its focus. The company has raised $6.3 million since being founded in 2008.

The Federal Trade Commission announced today that it has closed its investigation of the Facebook-Instagram acquisition without taking any action, which will allow the deal to move forward.

The commission was unanimous in its decision to end investigation into whether the deal violated antitrust laws. The FTC regularly looks into acquisitions over $66 million. When Facebook announced that it planned to buy the mobile photo sharing app in April, the deal was worth $1 billion in cash and stock. However, with Facebook’s share price suffering since its initial public offering, that value has dropped. Instagram agreed to $300 million in cash and 22,999,412 shares of Facebook common stock, which would be about $747 million at today’s share price.

The acquisition could close relatively soon, allowing the companies to begin integrating. Contrary to popular belief, employees of Facebook and Instagram have been working separately for the past four months. Instagram, for example, launched a blog for businesses and added a new photo map feature last week. Facebook released its own mobile photo-sharing app called Camera, which allows users to add filters to their photos and share them quickly with friends.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in April that Instagram will continue under the Instagram name and continue to support posting services beyond Facebook. Users can continue to have followers and follow people without connecting with them directly on Facebook.

Gannett Co., which owns USA Today and a number of digital media properties, has agreed to buy Facebook ad tech company BLiNQ Media for $92 million, according to TechCrunch sources.

Gannett, which already owns rich media ad company PointRoll and full-service digital agency GannettLocal, is likely looking to have a more direct connection with Facebook advertising as the industry grows. For example, The Washington Post last year started its own agency, SocialCode, which has access to the Facebook Ads API. TechCrunch says Gannett and BLiNQ have already been working together for about a year on ad campaigns for clients. BLiNQ is a Preferred Facebook Marketing Developer certified in the ads and insights categories.

It has been a summer of exits for a number of social marketing start-ups, including Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver and Wildfire. TechCrunch says Gannett will pay $92 million for BLiNQ over a period of three to four years, with $23 million coming up front. The start-up was founded in 2008 by David Nicol Williams, who previously founded search marketing firm 360i. The company now has about 50 employees and has raised $3.1 million, according to CrunchBase.

Google today announced that it agreed to acquire Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing software company that is a popular solution for managing pages and apps across platforms.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but AllThingsD reports that it could be around $250 million, plus earnouts and employment agreements. Wildfire was widely expected to be acquired this summer, after other major players in the space — Buddy Media, Vitrue, Involver — were also bought.

Wildfire is a member of Facebook’s Preferred Marketer Developer program, certified in pages, apps and insights. Co-founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard started the company four years ago focused on building apps for sweepstakes, user-generated contests, quizzes, coupons and incentive-based surveys. In 2011, Wildfire broadened its service offering to include page management and monitoring tools. Besides Facebook management, the platform now allows marketers to manage Google+, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. The company serves clients including Virgin, Cirque du Soleil, Gilt Group and Spotify. It also helps build apps for Facebook’s own use, including the voting app it used for its proposed policy changes earlier this year.

Google was reportedly interested in Buddy Media, but that company sold to Salesforce. Now with Wildfire, Google gets a popular platform and large sales team. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has about 350 people. Unlike Buddy Media, Wildfire doesn’t have access to the Facebook Ads API, but it’s unclear to what degree Google was interested in that aspect of the platform. Wildfire works with Adaptly to provide social advertising services for its clients.

In an announcement about the acquisition, Google wrote:

In a complex and changing landscape, businesses want to manage and measure these efforts in an integrated way. We’ve been working towards this end for some time. For example, Google Analytics helps businesses measure the contribution of hundreds of social sites; our Admeld service has helped to serve ads in Facebook developers’ social apps; and our DoubleClick platform enables clients to run and measure ads across social websites. On Google+, brands use services like Vitrue, Buddy Media and others to manage their pages, with many more to come.

With Wildfire, we’re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services. We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.