Facebook Updates HipHop Virtual Machine - In a blog post, Facebook announced today the launch of its HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM). The execution engine will help the company run code faster. [Image via Facebook]

Facebook Fixes Photo Bug – Facebook acknowledged a problem that occurred, allowing users to see others’ private photos, and then fixed the glitch, according to ZDNet.

Facebook Offers Special Ad Tracking to Some – TechCrunch reported that Facebook has been providing top advertisers with special downstream conversion tracking by installing a pixel on an advertiser’s conversion page.

Facebook Sues Timelines.com – Facebook has counter-sued Timelines.com after that company sued the social network over its use of the word “timeline.” Facebook filed a suit to strip Timelines.com of its trademarks, claiming the are too generic.

Other Announcements:

GroSocial Releases Customizer for Pages – GroSocial released a white-label program allowing users to offer customers a branded version of GroSocial’s Customizer for Pages this week.

Intuit Releases SimpleStore for Facebook – Intuit released its social commerce app SimpleStore for Facebook this week, allowing business owners to simply sell goods on their Facebook Pages.

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.

Black Friday features prominently in our campaigns this week as Toys “R” Us offered its catalog for download on Facebook and Walmart used an app to help users locate their nearest stores — and the deals to be had there. Macy’s also released an app designed to involve users in the company’s annual Thanksgiving parade, GLAAD’s Thanksgiving effort to promote LGBT equality, movie streaming, free handbags 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.

The Great Big Toys “R” Us Book

Goal: Page Growth, Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty

Method: The Great Big Toys “R” Us book is available for download as a PDF on the company’s Page.

Core Mechanic: The app allows users to download the company’s toy catalog that includes holiday shopping specials for leisurely perusal. The company first began releasing the catalog on Facebook in 2009; at the time users could only peruse the catalog on Facebook, thus, the download represents the next level in marketing. The app also offers users the chance to sign up for mobile deals or emails.

Impact: The Page currently stands at 2.3 million and shows steady growth according to PageData.

Taco Cabana’s eClub Free Taco

Goal: Email Acquisition, Brand Loyalty, Product Purchase

Method: The Page’s Join Our eClub tab asks users to sign up for the company’s email list, taking them to the website to sign up in exchange for a free taco.

Core Mechanic: The free taco serves as a lure to bring customers into the social media and email offerings the company frequently launches, such as seasonal beverages or foods. The company has also been advertising the offer and its social media presence in-store to boost its email list.

Impact: The Page currently counts about 82,000 Likes and shows steady growth, according to PageData.

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.

The monetization between Facebook retail storefronts and counterpart Facebook advertising has created a disconnect for retailers. So, for retailers wondering where to turn to for ROI on all their Facebook commerce efforts, Zibaba launched Ads Direct this morning. Ads Direct is the first advertising solution fully integrated with a Facebook storefront, allowing retailers to sync storefronts and advertising campaigns within the same dashboard.

As a preferred Facebook developer, Zibaba is the first company to provide this fully integrated ad solution capability, but it’s likely we’ll see a flood of other established developers taking advantage of Facebook’s Ads API on Facebook Graph instead of the Facebook Advertising Manager.

With Zibaba, merchants can automatically populate ad campaigns based on conversions and product social metrics from their Facebook storefronts. These up-to-date numbers show the exact performance on pay-per-clicks, including data about how much a retailer is spending on advertising in relation to the amount of new sales, customer growth, fans, and ‘likes.’ The development allows retailers the ability to swiftly adapt advertisements accordingly, and scale advertising easily.

For small to medium sized companies, this one-stop-retail page will help to ease the burden and learning curve of f-commerce. The goal is to provide “any business, regardless of size, the ability to fully optimize every advertising dollar spent,” Arie Fishler, Zibaba’s chief technology officer, tells us.

Within the Zibaba dashboard, the Campaign tab is used to automatically create ads and display stats. Retailers chose a target location (or multiple locations,) target age range and gender, and set a pricing system. From there, administrators search their Storefront catalogue for a specific product, ad a line or two of text, and publish. It doesn’t look like retailers can create new ads uncorrelated with existing catalogue images—for example—lookbook images teasing for the next season that aren’t yet for sale. This could be a deterent on a retailer side, but there’s no real downside on the consumer end.

This three-step process means we could see a greater number of retailer advertisements, due to ease and instant result calculations. If this does translate into more CPCs, we’ll see likely see Facebook further encourage developers to build their own tools on the Ads API.

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.

Today at the PayPal Innovate conference in San Francisco, eBay and Facebook announced a partnership to integrate the Open Graph protocol into eBay’s ecommerce platforms X.commerce, Magento and GSI. Merchants will be able to easily add Facebook sharing option to their sites, including new “want” and “own” buttons that will give customers more flexibility to express their connection with products than the Like button.

By establishing a partnership with some of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, Facebook will be able to increase the size of its footprint on the web. The Open Graph integrations will also provide Facebook with extremely valuable data about the purchasing intent and history of its users that advertisers may be willing to pay high rates to target.

By gathering explicit data on what users want to buy or already own, Facebook could steal ad dollars from search engines where ecommerce stores currently advertise to reach users while they’re making a decision on what or where to buy.

Previously, Facebook had left third-party developers such as Beetailer and Zibaba to allow ecommerce platform users to integrate Facebook features such as social plugins or import their products into Page tab app storefronts. Now Facebook is building its functionality directly into X.commerce, Magento, and GSI so users of these platforms will be able to add social features themselves.

At f8 last month it was announced that developers would be able to create their own Open Graph canvas apps and website integrations to share structured data to Facebook. Rather than having users Like something, a website could report that a user “listened” to a song or “Read” and article. Some third-party developers such as Payvment are already building their own ecommerce buttons, as shown here.

Through the partnership with Facebook, eBay ecommerce platform merchants and developers will be able to add “Want” or “Own” buttons to products without going through seperate software vendor.

Users will be able to click these buttons to share with friends that they want to buy something in the future, or already own a product and would recommend it to friends. These news feed stories will drive traffic back to to ecommerce stores, helping them boost sales. Store owners will also be able to power wish lists, registries, group buying, and other features with the data from these buttons. These opportunities make eBay’s ecommerce more attractive to merchants.

Facebook stands to make a lot of money off of the partnerships as well. It will soon allow advertisers to target users based on their Open Graph activity. For example, an athletic clothing retailer could target ads to users that said they owned any product on a specific sporting goods site, or a jewelry store could target ads to anyone who said they wanted a certain brand of necklace on any website.

Right now, advertisers can only target users based on the Pages they Like. The “Like” relationship is ambiguous, though. Advertisers can’t tell if users are already customers and have the money to buy a certain class of product, or if they merely dream of one day being able to afford the brand Page’s products.

With explicit knowledge about how a user is connected to a product, advertisers can get clicks from users who are more likely to actually make a purchase. This means they’ll be willing to pay a higher cost per click. Imagine how much more a luxury car company would pay to advertise to a user who says they own a BMW M3 convertible than one who says they simply Like BMW. Advertisers may even pay more to reach one of these Facebook users than they’d pay Google to appear next to a search for “BMW M3″.

By working the Open Graph protocol into X.commerce, Magento, and GSI, all the users of these ecommerce platforms could soon be feeding Facebook this valuable data in exchange for referral traffic. While Facebook pitched the Open Graph as a way to get users sharing more about themselves, its now becoming clear how this sharing is key to Facebook’s monetization plans.

UK Won’t Ban Facebook – Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion met with United Kingdom officials Thursday regarding the social networks’ role in summer riots there. The government ended up not moving to restrict access to the social networks in emergencies such as riots.

Facebook Takes Third Spot for Video – Facebook becomes the third largest video site on the Internet, comScore reported. That is 51.5 million people who watched videos on the platform in July.

AT&T to Discontinue Facebook Phone – AT&T is reportedly set to drop its “Facebook phone” called the Status, according to TechCrunch.

Places More Popular Than Foursquare – London developer Golden Gekko reports its clients report much more Facebook check-ins than Foursquare in Europe. Magnus Jern reported that the ratio ranged from 5-10 to 1. However, the future of the service is unclear.

Facebook Hit 1 Trillion Pageviews - Facebook surpassed 1 trillion pageviews according to Google’s Ad Planner tool, although comScore says otherwise.

Facebook Mobile App to Offer Photo Filters - Facebook looks to be competing with Instagram’s classy mobile app by offering almost a dozen photo filters to its mobile own application — following Facebook’s attempt to buy the startup, according to The New York Times. News of the feature first leaked out in June.

Recapping Facebook’s Bug Bounty – Neal Poole did a basic rundown of Facebook’s Security Bug Bounty program, which included information about multi-line JavaScript URI, redirects preserving fragment portions of URLs, XSS filters and more.

Facebook Wraps Up Farm Bureau Dispute – Facebook and the Farm Bureau had a dispute over Facebook trademarking “FB,” but it seems like the lawsuit is set to be wrapped up.

Milyoni Chart for Credits – Milyoni created a nice chart and whitepaper that includes ways that Facebook Credits can, and cannot, be used.

Facebook to Open Second Campus - Facebook is set to open up an additional campus from its current Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters. The second campus pwill be southwest of the current location, to be constructed in 2013 to accommodate about 2,800 employees.

Ticketmaster Allows Users to Find Friends – Line Nation’s Ticketmaster service launched an app that allows users to see where their friends are sitting on seat maps and tag themselves.

BBC Does Facebook On-Demand Video – BBC has developed an on-demand Facebook application allowing users to rent episodes from the show “Top Gear” for 48 hours.

ShopIgniter, Involver Partner – The two companies are entered into a partnership to help online retail businesses with a management content system.

Facebook ecommerce developer Milyoni has added new sharing features to its Social Theater app that lets Pages rent videos to users for Facebook Credits. Social Theater, which powers rentals for Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight and the ACL music festival, now allows users to leave timed comments, share specific scenes, chat live with other viewers, Like brands mentioned in the film, and send discounts on rentals to friends. These improvements can now be seen on the Page for film The Big Lebowski, will enhance the Social Theater user experience, and could help instances of the app spread virally across Facebook, increasing sales for content owners.

Milyoni got the attention of the ecommerce and media worlds when Warner Bros first announced it would rent films from its Facebook Page using Social Theater, and would allow users to pay with Facebook Credits. While it opened a new revenue stream to video content owners, we criticized the app for lacking many of the social feature it added this week. Without these, Social Theater wasn’t taking full advantage of Facebook’s communication channels and built-in audience, hampering sales.

The ecommerce developer has since raised $3 million in Series A funding and partnered with Page management company Vitrue to help brands drive direct return on investment on their social media efforts. It’s also been tapped to power on-Facebook rentals of concerts as well as more Warner Bros films including Inception and Harry Potter. Now it is debuting Social Theater 2.0 with rentals of cult hit The Big Lebowski from the film’s Facebook Page.

Once users opt to rent the film they’re shown a landing page with Like and Send buttons for sharing the app with friends, and a Like Box so they can become a fan of the film’s Page. Users then confirm that they’ll pay 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, for 48 hours of unlimited viewing of the film. They’re giving the option to post a link to the walls of friends that lets them get a $1 discount on renting the film.

While watching the film without going into full-screen mode, they see timed comments — text tied to a certain moment in the film —  written by other viewers scroll across the screen. They can add their own comments that are also published to Facebook, though this syndication could be made more explicit to the user.

At certain moments in the film users are are shown prompts to share scenes or popular quotes from to the film to the news feed. This content can be consumed for free by friends right from the news feed, and entices them to click through and rent the film themselves. Users also prompts to Like the Pages related to the film or of brands mentioned in the film, so users get a chance to Like the Page of the film’s main character “The Dude”, and when he asks for a drink of Kahlua, users have the option to Like the alcohol brand.

On the backend, Milyoni has implemented an efficient self-serve admin system that for deployment of the app in less than 24 hours. Admins can also customize pricing, promotion, and app layout.

Social Theater 2.0 is much more engaging and viral than the first version Milyoni launched with The Dark Knight. It gives users a unique, social viewing experience in which they can easily share compelling content and discounts on rentals with friends, and subscribe to updates about the film and related Pages. These elements should allow content owners who license Social Theater to secure more rentals, and help Milyoni turn one-time renters into repeat sales across deployments of its app.

In a move that could accelerate the consolidation of ecommerce, marketing games, and Facebook Ads API companies into Page management giants, Buddy Media has raised a $54 million Series D round of funding. The funding comes from late-stage investors GGV Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Insight Venture Partners. GGV, Institutional Venture Partners and Bay Partners and values the company at $500 million.

Buddy Media now has capital to acquire developers that can help its brand clients produce a direct return on social media investment, engage their fans, and efficiently run high-performing ad campaigns. The funding will also go towards building out its sales, support, and product teams,  and opening more  international offices.

Buddy Media has grown to become the largest of the Facebook Page management companies, helping brands run and promote their presence on the social network. The company succeeded by raising funding and scoring big name clients early, and now boasts hundreds of high profile clients, a team of over 200 employees, and European headquarters in London. Buddy Media raised a $23 million round in October 2010, part of which likely went to acquiring social ecommerce and analytics developer SpinBack in May.

An IPO could be in Buddy Media’s future as it recently hired Dennis Morgan as its chief financial officer, who helped led corporate finance for Yahoo! as it completed over $5 billion in acquisitions. GGV partner Jeff Richards will join the company’s board of directors, alongside Facebook’s first sales executive Kevin Colleran, who joined last month. The CEO of consulting firm MediaLink, Michael Kassan, will become Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow’s special advisor.

With time, Facebook has incorporated more native Page management functionality, and free tools have proliferated. Low and middle-tier Page management companies may face commodification of their services. However, Buddy Media’s focus on enterprise-level solutions is proving lucrative as the world’s biggest brands require advanced tools to apply the marketing spend they’re shifting shift to social.

Capital for Acquisitions in Ecommerce, Games, and Ads API

With plenty of cash on hand, Buddy Media could hire new product teams or acquire developers so it can widen and strengthen its service offering in verticals that emerging as important to Facebook brand presence.

It already acquired SpinBack, whose technology lets brands encourage sharing of ecommerce products and purchases, and track additional sales generated by these shares. Still, it could look to purchase a full-fledged ecommerce store, or the developer of apps that let users pay for purchases with Facebook Credits so clients can process sales from their Page a make a direct ROI. Potential targets include Beetailer, Zibaba, and Moontoast. Page management competitor and prevalent consolidation force Vitrue recently partnered with ecommerce developer Milyoni to gain access to these types of technology.

Marketing-focused game development is becoming more important to Page management as brands look to drive sustained engagement, exposure, and sharing. There are plenty of small game design houses ripe for acquisition that could bring their suite of games as well as their team to Buddy Media. GamesThatGive, which makes games that trigger charity donations when played, was acquired by Vitrue last month, and we believe this type of consolidation will become more common in the next year.

Perhaps the most important decision Buddy Media will have to make with its new funding is how to integrate with the Facebook Ads API, which lets tool and service providers programmatically access Facebook’s ads system to create, buy, manage, and track large scale advertising campaigns. Facebook ads help brands gain fans for the Pages, and the new Sponsored Stories ad unit is triggered by Page content and fan interactions, so having a combined Page management and Ads API solution is optimal for clients. Ads API tool and service providers can earn millions of dollars by taking a percentage of a brand’s total spend.

With the Ads API out of beta and now publicly available, Buddy Media could build its own team and develop an Ads API tool. Alternatively it could acquire one of the smaller brand-focused Ads API developers such as Brighter Option, GraphEffect, or XA.net. This would follow the trend of consolidation between social marketing and Ads API, as Experian acquired Techlightenment in January and Efficient Frontier acquired Context Optional in May.

One day, Facebook’s native tools may be good enough and brand marketing departments may become sophisticated enough to reduce the need for third-party Page management solutions. But for now, by buying or building out tools critical to a brand’s Facebook presence, Buddy Media can continue to sign  big clients as they wake up to social media and redirect marketing spend their from TV and search.