Facebook’s acquisitions in 2011 suggest a strong focus on mobile technology and talent, as six of the 12 startups acquired this year had previously been working on mobile ventures.

In September, Facebook announced it had 350 million monthly active users accessing its services through mobile devices. This was 100 million more than it had said were active on mobile in March. As the social network introduced a mobile app platform to third-party developers in October, we expect it to continue to build its expertise in this area next year.

Rel8tion – January

The stealth hyper-local mobile advertising startup was acquired and brought into Facebook’s Seattle office. The social network hasn’t yet announced plans to bring ads to its mobile experience, but there have been reports that this could happen before Spring 2012.

Pursuit – February

Facebook hired two of the three founders of this professional network startup that helps employers promote job openings by using their employees’ social networks. So far we haven’t seen Facebook add more professional networking tools, though there are several third-party job apps growing on the platform.

Beluga – March

Five months after Facebook acquired this group messaging startup, the social network released a standalone messaging app that has been one of iOS’ top free apps since it debuted. The success of Messenger could encourage Facebook to develop more standalone apps, for instance one for quick photo-sharing.

Snaptu – March

After partnering with the Israeli startup earlier in the year to bring the app to 2,500 different kinds of mobile devices, Facebook brought the team on presumably to continue to build smartphone-like experiences on basic feature phones.

Recrec – April

This was a talent acquisition, rather than a a traditional acquisition, but most of the founding team of Dogpatch Labs-incubated startup Recrec joined Facebook. Recrec had been developing technology that automatically converted images into HTML and CSS.

Daytum – April

When Facebook hired the two founders of this New York-based startup, we suggested the new employees could help the social network track and visualize activity such as photo uploads, checkins or wall posts. As it turns out, the new monthly and yearly summary boxes on Timeline look a lot like Daytum, which lets people manually enter data such as trips to the gym, films watched or food consumed.

Sofa – June

The social network acquired this Dutch development and design startup for its talent, not its software products, which include Kaleidoscope for tracking differences in text and images, Versions for code version control, and ecommerce platform Enstore.

Push Pop Press – August

Facebook bought digital book software company Push Pop Press, whose cofounders, designer Mike Matas and engineer Kimon Tsinteris, were former Apple employees. They left to launch Push Pop, which was used by Al Gore in his global warming iPad book “Our Choice,” which won one of Apple’s Design Awards.

Digital Staircase – November

Facebook fueled speculation about a possible standalone photo-sharing app when it acquired Digital Staircase, maker of a handful of photo and video editing apps, including MovieCam.

MailRank – November

The social network picked up two former directors of engineering of Second Life-maker Linden Lab in a talent acquisition of MailRank this fall. It did not provide details about what the pair would be working on.

WhoGlue – November

Unlike others, this acquisition was not for talent. Facebook bought Baltimore-based social networking software firm WhoGlue Inc, a company it had sued for patent infringement two years ago. The renamed WhoGlue LLC continues to develop private social networks for its clients.

Gowalla – December

Most recently, Facebook brought Austin-based Gowalla co-founders and other key team members to Palo Alto to work on product and engineering. The social network did not acquire Gowalla technology. The location-based service will be closing sometime in January, according to a blog post by co-founder Josh Williams.

Image credit: Gowalla

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.

Barilliance is trying to bring together standard web-tracking technology with Facebook Pages to better target the right products to users.

The software places a cookie in user browsers, then tracks consumer behavior on a commerce website, then translates that behavior to the user’s experience within the brand’s Facebook store. When a consumer visits the Facebook Page, the product recommendations are tailored to the consumer’s search and purchase behavior on the website.

Barilliance co-founder Ido Ariel says the company’s core technology is product recommendations. The back end of Barilliance’s software allows retailers to target by first or returning customer, referring traffic source, location and product. On the website this looks like a banner and on Facebook it’s within an ecommerce tab.

Specifically this could look like a 10% off or free shipping banner, an offer for customers who made a purchase in the last month, specific items of interest, for a particular region, or a combination of these, Ariel says. Visitors to a retail website will see the same or similar offers on both platforms.

Ariel tells us that Barilliance wants to extend this technology from web and Facebook commerce for other products, such as email newsletters and chat. “It’s better to keep customers happy and loyal than acquire new customers,” he says. Barilliance’s technology, then aims to convert visitors into customers via personalizing recommendations.

Barilliances’ 100-plus ecommerce customers are mainly in the United States.

Games, charity, in-store marketing and giveaways characterized our campaigns this week. Innocent Drinks and Hastsune Miku Fashions created branded games, Target and Walgreens offered users deals and value, Grand Marnier harnessed the holiday season with a charity app and Clarins is giving away a spa weekend. 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.

Innocent Drinks’ Fruit Picker Game

Goal: Page Growth, Network Exposure, Brand Loyalty

Method: Innocent Drinks’ Fruit Picker Game involves users in trying to gather the fruit to make the juice for the company. Playing the game generates a ticker story and scores may be published to the feed.

Core Mechanic: The game is tightly wound into the idea that Innocent Drinks is a fun, simple, healthy product. Users must play a simple, fun game to help pickers deliver the fruit for the juice. Users then my collect badges to share with friends on Facebook and may win prizes, such as an iPad 2.

Impact: The Page has 209,000 Likes and PageData shows relatively steady growth.

Clarins’ Spa Life Photo Contest

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

Method: Clarins created a game, Spa Life, where users build their own virtual spa, and then enter to win a spa trip by submitting a photo of their spa created within the game.

Core Mechanic: Users play the Spa Life game, then take a photo of their spa from within the game, then upload that to the contest page. By getting others users to vote on their photo, users may win the spa getaway. The photo with the most votes wins.

Impact: The Clarins Page has 137,900 Likes with steady growth, according to PageData. The promotion is very involved, tightly branded and allows for good opportunities for network exposure, since users have to share to win.

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.

Movies, music but most interestingly, Black Friday Pages were popular on our list if the fastest growing by the number of Likes this week. There were also a pair of game Pages and football (soccer) Pages on the list, too. Pages on our list this week grew from between 222,600 to 925,800 Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Scary Movie	1,167,989	+2,822	+925,834
2.	Target	7,023,171	+73,002	+571,634
3.	Clear	536,638	+94	+535,465
4.	Small Business Saturday	2,767,723	+2,954	+426,503
5.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
6.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
7.	Texas Hold’em Poker	53,343,455	+41,798	+312,907
8.	Fast & Furious	11,148,166	+31,290	+298,382
9.	Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D	408,752	+61,101	+296,513
10.	Temptations	306,379	-61	+290,906
11.	Adele	8,875,617	+45,840	+285,565
12.	Burberry	9,747,370	+41,351	+269,563
13.	Macy’s	3,293,424	+1,451	+265,447
14.	Facebook	55,989,019	+36,162	+259,448
15.	Angry Birds	10,155,779	+38,961	+245,763
16.	Cristiano Ronaldo	36,627,265	+34,494	+240,968
17.	FC Barcelona	22,889,852	+33,121	+231,427
18.	I Love My Daughter	723,308	-1,529	+230,356
19.	Levi’s	9,278,885	+96,752	+227,108
20.	LMFAO	8,172,466	+32,817	+222,642

“Scary Movie” grew by 925,800 Likes and appeared to be a Page consolidation, “Titanic” grew by 409,500 Likes and “Fast & Furious” by 298,400 Likes, partly it seemed due to a Blu-ray giveaway. Musicians on the list included Motown singers The Temptations with 290,900 Likes (a consolidation), Adele with 285,600 Likes and LMFAO with 222,600 Likes.

Black Friday Pages started off with Target, which saw 571,600 new Likes thanks to Like-gated Black Friday deals. Then there was Small Business Saturday with 426,500 Likes; the Page promoted local business shopping on Saturday and included Like-gated content. Burberry grew by 269,600 Likes after releasing its new collection on Facebook. Macy’s promoted its Black Friday deals and Thanksgiving Parade and grew by 266,500 Likes. Then Levi’s, which had huge deals and Facebook savings codes, grew by 227,100 Likes.

Games included Texas Hold’em Poker with 312,900 Likes and Angry Birds with 245,800 Likes.

The rest of the list included Clear shampoo with 535,500 Likes, facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! with 333,000 Likes, Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D with 296,500 Likes and Facebook with 259,500 Likes. Then there was Cristiano Ronaldo with 241,000 Likes, FC Barcelona with 231,400 and I Love My Daughter with 230,400 Likes.

Harley-Davidson is soliciting feedback from its fans in its latest campaign, Simplehuman is giving fans a chance to play a game to win some of its new products. EmpowHer is reaching out to its fans to answer health questions and bring their friends into the health community. There were a few games promotions and Ultimat Vodka took a users’ social life and gave it a score by way of promoting its product.

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.

Harley-Davidson’s Fan Machine

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

Method: Using an application called the Fan Machine Harley-Davidson the company is soliciting feedback from users on a marketing campaign for the company’s products.

Core Mechanic: Fan Machine presents an advertising brief from the company and asks users to submit and vote on ideas for that campaign. Users can submit ideas, vote, share ideas to the stream.

Impact: The Page currently stands at 2.8 million Likes and according to PageData the Page has seen steady growth.

Simplehuman’s Hello Design Game

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure, Product Purchase

Method: The Hello Design game allows users to play an engaging and fun game matching up items “meant” for each other, such as Simplehuman’s soap container and sensor pumps.

Core Mechanic: The Like-gated game prompts users to match up items, such as a hot dog and bun, that go together. Playing the game creates a ticker feed story, then once a user gets a score they are entered to win prizes and may publish their score to the feed.

Impact: PageData shows that the Page, currently at 5,100 Likes, has gained momentum in recent weeks.

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, Google Pair Up to Fight Anti-Piracy Law – The House Stop Online Piracy Act proposal has brought together Facebook, Google and other companies in an effort to prevent the passing of the law that companies say will place the onus of protecting against piracy on them.

Facebook IPO Rumors Swirl – Business Insider reported that Facebook employees are reporting that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the IPO is coming soon, as early as next month.

Porn, Violence a Recent Problem – Facebook acknowledged to ZDnet this week a series of problems with unwanted pornographic or violent content showing up in their news feeds. The Wall Street Journal reported that it was a “coordinated spam attack” coming as the company ramps up to release Timeline.

FCC, Facebook Settle Over Privacy Issues – The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook reached a settlement over privacy issues, even as the FTC encourages people to Like them on Facebook.

Facebook’s Name Policy Hones in on Salman Rushdie - Writer Salman Rushdie became a target for Facebook’s real name policy this week. After the author took to Twitter to protest the deactivation of his account, the company restored his profile. The New York Times writes about the dilemmas caused by this policy in today’s world. [Image Via david_shankbone]

Google+ Works with Page Management Companies – Google announced last week the creation of Google+ Pages for brands to share information with users on Google+ and Page management companies like HootSuite, Context Optional, Vitrue and Buddy Media are set to work with brands on managing this new platform.

Orange Launches Facebook Phones – Orange is set to release three affordable Android smartphones for customers who heavily use Facebook.

Dems, GOP Participating in DC Hackathon – Congressional members from both parties are set to participate in the first ever DC Facebook Hackathon to find new ways to use social media in the political process. [Image Via Facebook]

Creepy Zuckerberg Fan Appears at Carnegie Mellon – A student at a recent Mark Zuckerberg appearance at Carnegie Mellon University instilled fear in the audience, and CEO, when he made some creepy and cryptic comments. The student apparently snuck into the venue the night before to place some speakers under Zuckerberg’s seat.

PayPal Releases Facebook Payment App – PayPal released a Facebook app, Send Money, that allows users to send money to friends without a fee.

Other Announcements:

Coupons.com for Pages – Coupons.com released its Brandcaster Social platfor to allow brands to create secure, printable coupons directly on their Pages in 48 hours or less.

Napkin Labs Brings Crowdsourcing to Pages – Napkin Labs’ Brainstorm app allows brands to gives brands a way to get feedback from fans anything from new products to coming changes.

NASCAR, ESPN to Livestream Driver’s Camera -  NASCAR and ESPN announced that the two will provide a livestream of driver Tony Stewart’s live in-car camera on Facebook during the season finale on Sunday, November 20.

In this week’s look at the most interesting new campaigns running on Facebook, we interviewed marketing leaders from agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere about the company’s charity campaign. We also examined commerce campaigns from Flex Watches, Ann Taylor, and JC Penney. There was a fresh group of game integrations between brands and gaming companies, too, including the likes of Best Buy, Zynga, Toyota and Indycar.

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.

John Deere’s Project “Can Do”

Goal: Charity, Engagement, Brand Loyalty, Network Exposure

Method: The app allows users to design their own virtual can of food as part of a bigger company effort to donate food.

Core Mechanic: The food donation campaign from John Deere is to construct a life-size version of a combine made of food cans. Users on the app can also watch a live stream if the construction, design their own virtual food can, meet a farmer and learn more about the combine. We spoke to Nicole Schneider, Project Manager and Richard Williamson, Project Manager with John Deere about the campaign for the role farmers and ranchers play in producing safe, healthy and abundant food for a growing world population.

They told us the primary goal of the campaign was to raise awareness “for the essential role farmers and ranchers play in producing safe, healthy and abundant food for a growing world population,” but that Page growth and engagement were also important. By allowing users to design their own food can and share it to the feed, users were helping the company donate one real can for every virtual can designed. The ultimate goal was to donate more than 300,000 cans to a food bank.

Impact: The Page currently stands at about 688,000 Likes and PageData points to steady growth both before and after this particular campaign launched.

Flex Watches’ TabJuice Store

Goal: Product Purchase, Network Exposure

Method: A new TabJuice store for Flex Watches recently launched where users may purchase, Recommend and tweet about watches.

Core Mechanic: The landing tab of the Page is Like-gated, but the store is a tab on the Page that is operated by TabJuice.

Impact: A case study provided by Elle Communications noted that in the first week of the store’s operation, more than $2,000 worth of merchandise was sold in 24 hours (the watches are about $30 a piece). At the time the Page had 11,000 Likes, now the Page stands at 17,400 Likes; PageData notes 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.

Brands such as Samsung Mobile, Levi’s Walmart and Facebook were popular on our list of the fastest growing Facebook Pages by the number of Likes this week, in addition to a few sports Pages, a small business Page and the Halloween Community Page. There were also a few Page consolidations that made the list. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Jamaicansmusic.com	1,896,477	+131	+675,353
2.	TNT We Know Drama	820,504	+1,769	+613,466
3.	Samsung Mobile	4,242,723	+99,905	+546,700
4.	Levi’s	8,564,067	+67,589	+509,796
5.	John Grisham	983,221	+445,938	+451,101
6.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
7.	Texas Hold’em Poker	52,422,603	+48,919	+348,831
8.	Small Business Saturday	1,884,732	+19,346	+337,015
9.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
10.	Walmart	10,084,387	+51,460	+328,335
11.	Facebook	55,174,470	+42,966	+324,688
12.	Need for Speed	4,459,374	+14,882	+324,261
13.	Hotel Urbano	800,712	+41,795	+323,379
14.	UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship	6,867,709	+3,189	+323,106
15.	Toma tu like .l.	1,192,678	+143,173	+304,661
16.	Real Madrid C.F.	21,248,219	+30,610	+303,954
17.	Halloween	651,288	+127,724	+298,886
18.	Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D	408,752	+61,101	+296,513
19.	Adele	8,087,732	+37,192	+296,030
20.	Cristiano Ronaldo	35,893,624	+41,471	+276,318

Jamaicansmusic.com grew by 675,400 Likes, apparently by a Page consolidation. The other musician that was on the list was singer Adele, whose Page saw 296,000 Likes in the past week as she was nominated for a music award. A few media Pages made the list, TNT We Know Drama by 613,500 Likes as the result of a Page consolidation and then “ Titanic” with 409,500 Likes.

Brands previously mentioned included Samsung Mobile with 546,700 Likes as the company promotes a new phone. Then Levi’s saw 509,800 Likes after the company sponsored a nationwide hiring day in its stores. Walmart saw 328,300 Likes on its Page, which includes a variety of promotions that create feed and news ticker stories. Facebook grew by 324,700 Likes and Brazilian discount travel company Hotel Urbano by 323,400 Likes, the Page is constantly posting updates about deals.

There were games on the list, Texas Hold’em Poker with 348,800 Likes and Need for Speed with 324,300 Likes, growing a lot after the release of a Michael Bay-directed commercial. There were also sports on the list. UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship benefitted from a Page consolidation with 323,100 Likes. Then Real Madrid C.F. with 304,000 Likes and team star Cristiano Ronaldo saw 276,300; both Pages posted constantly about news and team-related photos.

The rest of the list was rounded out by author John Grisham, who seemed to benefit from a Page consolidation with 451,100 Likes. American Express’ Small Business Saturday Page grew by 337,000 Likes as the November 26 event. The  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! grew by 333,000 Likes but doesn’t appear to work. Toma tu like .l. is a Spanish language humor site with 304,700 Likes this week. The Halloween Community Page grew by 298,900 Likes and finally the Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D Page grew by 296,500 Likes.

We saw an interesting new promotion on our weekly roundup of Facebook campaigns — paying customers cash to buy products. There was also a branded dress-up contest, a branded game, a Facebook customer service tool, contests, travel apps and more.

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.

Pepsi and SavingStar Launch Spend $15, Get $5

Goal: Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty, Network Exposure

Method: In an interesting new Facebook promotion, Pepsi Max is using SavingStar technology to ask users who buy $15 worth of Pepsi Max or Diet Pepsi products on November through participating retailers to receive $5 cash at the end of the month.

Core Mechanic: SavingStar built a network of 24,000 retailers throughout the country and by using SavingStar technology, Pepsi customers do not have to drastically alter their shopping behavior to participate. Simply registering a frequent buyer card, say at CVS, is enough to participate. At the end of the month users have several options to redeem their cash, SavingStar CEO David Rochon tells us. “The money goes in an account in your name and you can choose how to receive your money — through a PayPal account, bank account, Amazon gift certificate, or you can donate it to charity.”

The idea behind the SavingStar platform is to make it simpler for customers to receive value, and also to make that process fully digital, Rochon explains. This way, these branded offers may reach not just loyal Pepsi fans, but even people who may not normally drink this product. Such promotions are positioned to take the place of dwindling ad campaigns like the Sunday newspaper coupon, Rochon told us.

“The reason that we love Facebook is that these are the kind of promotions that are inherently social, people want to share them, that’s the reason that a national program [like SavingStar] is important,” Rochon explained.

Impact: The offer launched last Tuesday and Rochon told us that thousands of folks had taken advantage of the offer just a few days later. The Diet Pepsi Page and the Pepsi Max Page are both getting some bumps in Likes, according to our PageData tool. But, this campaign’s success is better measured in brand awareness and sales than Likes, since the feature is not Like-gated.

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.