We’re at the San Francisco Design center, blogging Inside Network’s third annual Inside Social Apps conference. Founder of Inside Network Justin Smith sat down with Facebook Director of Software Engineering Cory Ondrejka for a fireside chat called “The Future of Mobile App Discovery on Facebook.”

Ondrejka emphasized the value of building HTML5 apps that users can access from any device and how integrating Open Graph will allow users to share their activity without interrupting gameplay.

Ondrejka revealed that half of Facebook’s mobile traffic comes through the mobile website and the other half comes from native applications. He said that the company spent much of 2011 improving its mobile touch site and integrating web technology in its native applications. For example, the iOS and Android apps now pull News Feed stories directly from m.facebook.com so Facebook’s engineers can push design and backend changes without a software update.

“The trend of wanting the web to work really well is something that’s happening,” Ondrejka said. “It’s incumbent on us to write good code, show good examples and make it easy to integrate.”

Although Ondrejka encouraged HTML5 development for cross-platform access, he acknowledged that some apps will require advanced capabilities that are only possible as native experiences. Still, Facebook’s distribution channels function the same for web and native apps.

“The important thing about our platform at this point is that we want all of these to integrate with Open Graph,” he said.

Because the company filed for an initial public offering last week, Ondrejka was unable to discuss possible plans for advertising apps within Facebook’s mobile experiences. He instead focused on the organic channels that are available to mobile developers: Open Graph activity in News Feed and Timeline, app bookmarks and requests.

Facebook apps can now publish continuously to Timeline and Ticker, which Ondrejka said will improve the gameplay experience. The strategy seems to be increase engagement by making games more enjoyable and organic discovery will follow.

“What Open Graph allows you to do is share in this non-interruptive way without saying ‘Hey, player, stop playing to issue a request’ I hope it opens up game design as broad as on other devices,” he said.

Ondrejka cited Pinterest and Washington Post Social Reader as good examples of how mobile apps can utilize Open Graph for discovery.

Facebook’s top developers say the company’s payments infrastructure and virtual currency Credits is converting fewer paying users than they had hoped a year ago.

Facebook made it mandatory for developers to use its payments platform in canvas games in July. That meant developers on the platform had to start handing over a 30 percent revenue share to the company, mirroring a similar split on Apple’s iOS. The hope was that a single, universal currency would make it more frictionless for users to start paying for virtual goods.

“We thought that conversions would go up and be around 15 or 20 percent,” said Kevin Chou, the chief executive of Kabam, a social gaming company that targets a more hardcore demographic, at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco. “But it turned out to be around 5 to 10 percent, meaning that we’re taking a 20 percent net tax.”

For comparison, Facebook’s biggest developer, Zynga, revealed in its prospectus that it had 3.4 million unique payers during the third quarter of last year. That’s out of 152 monthly unique users in the same time period, suggesting a 2.2 percent conversion rate.

Anil Dharni, who co-founded Funzio, which has had hits on iOS and Facebook like Crime City, said the move to Credits ended up being roughly even for the company.

“Facebook credits is a wash for us,” he said. “It increased the conversion rate but we actually saw a gradual decrease in average revenue per paying user. It’s hard to know why.” Funzio has since moved its focus to iOS, where it has launched Crime City and Modern War, both titles that reached the top of the grossing charts.

Continue reading on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Some users are once again seeing the “Discover New Games” module in the right sidebar of Facebook.

The Discover New Games module highlights games a user’s friend is playing or that are otherwise popular. This time around it includes a larger game thumbnail instead of their friends’ profile pictures as we saw in March 2011. The module still includes the prominent “Play Now” call to action.

This is an additional way the social network is trying to please game developers and help them gain users after a period in 2010 when they cut off several viral channels. In a developer blog post on Monday, Facebook announced a few new ways it is promoting games on the platform, including a games-only activity feed and aggregate News Feed stories.

Although we’ve seen the company recently identifying games by genre to encourage users to click over to them, it has not done so in the latest version of the Discover New Games module.

Revenues from Zynga games accounted for 12 percent of Facebook’s 2011 revenues, the social network’s S-1 filing reveals. No other customer represented more than 10 percent of total revenue in 2009 or 2010. Facebook reports that social game devs — most of all Zynga — are currently responsible for almost all revenue derived from Payments.

Aside from in-game transactions conducted with Facebook Credits — of which Facebook gets up to a 30 percent cut as part of a special agreement with the social game giant — and ads bought by Zynga, the CityVille developer also generates a large chunk of pages where Facebook displays ads. While Zynga is locked into Facebook Credits until May 2015, Facebook points out that any trouble in paradise with its biggest game developer could harm its bottom line.

Facebook is testing a games-only activity feed that groups all friends’ game stories in one place. The social network is also considering scrapping the games-only ticker that appears along side canvas apps.

As detailed on the developer blog, the new games-only activity feed is actually a sub-menu option under the apps and games dashboard called “Friend Activity.” When selected, the view condenses all friends’ game stories into one feed organized by most recent stories first. This effectively creates a one-stop destination for games on Facebook — which is something the social network has tried to avoid in the past even as Google+’s rival games platform embraces it.

Meanwhile, Facebook is deciding whether or not to keep the games activity ticker. The blog reports that the feature hasn’t been a significant driver of traffic and that Facebook is looking into other options “improve and simplify” the games experience. Games bookmarks are here to stay for the time being, however, as Facebook reports they do drive significant traffic and re-engagement. Both features have been updated several times since launching over the summer.

Read the rest on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Facebook COO Shifts Europe focus from privacy to economy -  At a recent conference in Europe, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the audience that the economy is probably more of a concern than privacy. She said so given an impending privacy law draft that would affect 27 European Union countries. Specifically, she suggested that the law could have a negative impact on the EU economy. [Image via Facebook]

Facebook has a €2.6 billion U.K. impact -  A study from Deloitte found that Facebook’s overall economic impact in the United Kingdom was €2.6 billion, or 35,200 jobs in the U.K. and 32,000 jobs in the European Union and Switzerland.

Facebook ads game categories to News Feed -  Facebook now displays the genre category below game names and stories in News Feed stories. As we reported on Inside Social Games, users might be more likely to click on games when they know more about them.

Facebook engineer creates Google hack -  An project called Focus on the User, created in part by a Facebook engineer, provides a bookmarklet that forces Google Search Plus Your World to display results from social networks besides Google+.

Causes now a standalone website – TechCrunch reported that the charity app Causes has re-launched as a standalone website.

85K Arab Facebook logins hacked – ZDnet reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia are in the midst of a hacking war, and 85,000 Arab Facebook logins are one casualty.

Washington state AG targets clickjackers -  Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced suits against two companies thought to encourage clickjacking on Facebook. The suit was announced at Facebook’s Seattle office.

Facebook registers ‘FB Origin’ domain - Facebook registered several domains, .com and .biz for example, for something called FB Origin via the company MarkMonitor.  Fusible speculated that this means the company is set to launch a new product along with Timeline apps.

Dozens of developers have launched Open Graph applications for a range of interests and activities since Facebook expanded beyond “read,” “watch” and “listen” last week.  In our tests we’ve “collected,” “answered,” “recommended,” “nommed,” “wishlisted” and more. Here’s a look at what has launched and what could be to come.

Music

Music apps got a head start after f8 when a few partners gained the ability to auto-publish to Ticker and Timeline. Spotify has dominated since then, but now with Turntable.fm, Soundcloud and others integrating Open Graph, there could be more diversity in how users share what they listen to. Missing, of course, is leading digital music player iTunes, which could not strike a deal with Facebook in 2010 ahead of its Ping launch. Google-owned YouTube isn’t likely to integrate Open Graph either, but Vevo.com activity can be added to Timeline. Pandora, which has partnered with Facebook in the past, is not yet adopting the “frictionless sharing” model introduced at f8. The question is whether users will begin to choose Open Graph music apps over other services, or if they start to appreciate alternatives that don’t share their listening habits.

News

Social news readers were also early to adopt Open Graph because “read” was a pre-approved action. The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, USA Today, Yahoo News and others automatically share what users have read. Culture and entertainment sites BuzzFeed and Wetpaint let readers share their reactions with words like “awesome,” “OMG,” “cute,” “meh,” “LOL” and more. Wetpaint’s custom verbs create some odd constructions on Facebook, but some users might prefer how these sites share just the posts they take action on rather than everything they read. Popular blogs will likely integrate Open Graph to increase traffic, but it’s too soon to tell how Timeline might affect local news organizations.

Travel

There are several apps that have added Timeline features, but none so far that update Facebook’s built-in map feature. TripAdvisor, Gogobot, Wipolo and Where I’ve Been all let users indicate places they’ve traveled to on separate maps. These apps also use different verbs for the same actions — for instance “has been,” “pinned,” “added” and “checked off” instead of “visited” or “traveled to.” Yelp, which was not one of the Facebook partners launching Timeline integrations last week, is the only location-based app we’ve seen that populates Map. Foursquare has not integrated Open Graph yet either, but it is easy to imagine a Timeline app that displays all of a users’ checkins and badges.

Food

Yummly and Foodily have canvas apps that let users share recipes using verbs like “made,” “recommend,” “crave” and “yum.” Foodspotting is a mobile app for users to “spot” the best dishes at restaurants and interact with other users’ food photos with the “want” and “nom” buttons. None of these apps use the obvious actions “cook” or “eat.” Urbanspoon’s mobile app lets users indicate that they “ate at” a restaurant, but doesn’t let users share menu items. We can imagine a number of health apps integrating Open Graph to help users track what they eat, how many calories they consume and other food habits.

Film/Television

Facebook partner Rotten Tomatoes has made frictionless sharing part of its web experience. Users who add the Timeline app are able to “rate” movies they’ve seen and indicate which titles they “want to see.” The same is true for French film site, Cinemur. Although Hulu users streaming video from a canvas app and Netflix users outside the U.S. can “watch” videos, there are not yet any Open Graph apps to share what you’re watching in theaters, for instance. This is an obvious opportunity for IMDB and GetGlue, which let users check into shows or movies they’re currently watching. A number of “smart TV” apps are doing similar integrations to post what people watch to Facebook.

Shopping/Style

A few apps have integrated Open Graph to let users share items they’re interested in. Shopping Mall by Payvment users can “want” things from the canvas app catalog. People can also indicate what they “own.” Lyst.com visitors can “add” clothes, footwear and accessories, and SneakPeeq’s canvas app lets users “peeq” deals on boutique items. With mobile app Pose, people can take and tag photos of their style and “love” other people’s photos. A box on Timeline will track users’ favorite fashion items and brands and display popular items they shared. As with other categories, the obvious verb “wear” hasn’t been put to use yet. This is an opportunity for other mobile apps and major brands. Some Timeline apps like GiftRocket share what users “buy,” “send” or “redeem,” but developers have to be sensitive about automatically publishing stories about purchases given that was a major issue with Beacon in 2007.

Books/Education

GoodReads.com has added Open Graph to help users share what they want to read and ratings of books they’ve finished. E-reader Kobo now populates users’ Timelines with books they’ve read, comments they’ve made and time spent reading. Other apps like Kindle and Nook could do something similar to promote their products on Facebook.

Only two education-oriented Open Graph apps were available at launch. Chegg lets college students add the courses they are taking to a box on Timeline. Grockit is a test-prep site that users can connect with Facebook to share when they answer questions, join study groups and earn badges. It remains to be seen how interested students will be in filling their Timelines with homework activity, but online tutorial sites and flashcard apps could find success with these new sharing mechanisms.

Games

Many games are already very successful on Facebook, but Open Graph presents opportunities for reach and discovery that had been formerly cut off or never available. Words With Friends, CastleVille, Diamond Dash, Bubble Island and Draw My Thing are the few games that have launched Timeline integration. These use the obvious verbs “played” and “earned” to let users share their activity and achievements. We can also imagine games populating Timeline with summaries of time spent, items purchased, characters played most often or combos used most frequently. Additional means of discovery and platform-specific achievements could give Facebook an edge over other platforms like Google+.

Facebook’s latest platform update includes infinite scrolling for the apps and games dashboard and API support for News Feed filters. The company also announced it will require all apps to include a an email address for user support starting April 1.

Developers could benefit from the new infinite scrolling feature on the apps and games dashboard because users will be likely to browse more titles when they don’t have to click a button to load them. This gives apps lower on the list of “Friends Using,” “Recommended Games,” “Recommended Apps” and “Newest” a better chance of being discovered.

The new filter parameter for the Graph API Home connection allows developers to retrieve part of a user’s News Feed. For instance, an app can pull just the stories from a particular friend list. This could be useful now that the social network has automatically created Smart Lists for users and is encouraging them to designate people as “Close Friends” or “Acquaintances.”

Facebook has also decided to start requiring all apps to list a user support email. Developers have had the option to include this in their apps before, but the user support email field will not be mandatory until April 1.

Two breaking changes effective this week are Request 2.0 migration and Requests 2.0 Efficient. The migration from FBML requests to Request 2.0 will be complete on Jan. 15.

The company also announced an improved comments box for mobile, which we cover in more depth here.

For further details on platform changes, see Facebook’s Developer Blog.

A video chat application topped our list of the fastest-growing Facebook Pages this week, although several game Pages, movie Page sports, music and more comprise the top 20 Pages that grew by the number of Likes. Pages on our list this week grew from between 224,400 to 1.2 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	TinyChat	1,376,523	+2,332	+1,210,209
2.	Bubble Witch	934,269	+544	+903,245
3.	Red Bull	24,880,330	+85,807	+754,215
4.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
5.	Guitar Flash	536,580	+761	+408,982
6.	Mahjong Saga	396,293	+127	+342,370
7.	Fast & Furious	12,169,617	+13,238	+339,318
8.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
9.	Charlie St. Cloud	1,844,356	+533	+310,807
10.	Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D	408,752	+61,101	+296,513
11.	Guaraná Antarctica	2,837,477	+36,205	+287,700
12.	Texas Hold’em Poker	54,463,714	+40,444	+280,882
13.	Facebook	56,934,132	+36,767	+278,439
14.	Adele	10,013,267	+37,403	+275,513
15.	Siz.net	507,262	+115,841	+265,790
16.	NORAD Tracks Santa	999,425	+1,469	+252,924
17.	Stardoll	675,794	+1,676	+231,952
18.	I Love My Daughter	723,308	-1,529	+230,356
19.	Leo Messi	28,043,679	+30,094	+226,219
20.	Harry Potter	37,942,684	+31,778	+224,350

TinyChat grew by 1.2 million Likes this week, in an apparent Page consolidation;  it serves as a video chat application. Then there were a bunch of game-related Pages. Bubble Witch grew by 903,200 Likes to 934,300,  Portuguese music game Guitar Flash grew by 409,000 Likes to 536,600, Mahjong Saga grew by 342,400 Likes to 396,300, Texas Hold’em Poker by 280,900 Likes to 54.4 million and Stardoll by 232,000 Likes to 675,800.

Movies on our list included “Titanic” with 409,500 Likes to grow to 13.4 million, “Fast & Furious” grew 339,300 to 12.1 million Likes, “Charlie St. Cloud” grew by 310,800 Likes to 1.8 million Likes (in an apparent consolidation) and “Harry Potter” grew by 224,400 Likes to 37.9 million.

The rest of the list was assorted.

Red Bull Posted extensively during the holiday season, growing 754,200 Likes to 24.8 million. Facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! Grew by 333,000 to 445,400 Likes. Te quiero ♥… Ver BIEN lejos :D grew by 296,500 to 408,800 Likes. Guaraná Antarctica is a fruit soft drink in Brazil, and the Page saw 287,700 Likes this week, pushing it to 2.8 million. Facebook’s Page grew 278,400 Likes to 56.9 million.

Singer Adele saw 275,500 Likes, pushing her page past 10 million. Turkish high school social network Siz.net grew by 265,800 Likes to 507,300. I Love My Daughter group by 230,400 to 723,300 Likes and athlete Leo Messi’s Page grew to a 26,200 to surpass 28 million Likes.

Last, but not least, the NORAD Tracks Santa page saw a huge jump over the Christmas holiday, with status updates noting Santa Claus’ progress across the globe, growing 253,000 to reach 999,400 Likes.

Facebook has updated its games platform today to introduce games stories to the mobile news feed, as well as providing developers with updated categories for identifying their games, and marrying the games and apps dashboards.

The mobile news feed is a bold step as it will likely increase engagement for cross-platform games that can be accessed via Facebook’s HTML5-based mobile platform. The stories will appear to both gamers and non-gamers, depending on how frequently the games are played by their friends. Developers can track referrals to games from stories that appear in mobile news feed by looking for ref param “feed_gameplay”. Facebook also recently announced plans to introduce Sponsored Stories to the news feed in 2012. We expect those to end up in the mobile feed soon, too.

The updated game categories addresses the rise of new genres on Facebook in the last year. The all-new categories include “Casino,” “Family,” “Sports,” “Strategy,” and “Word.” Old categories “Role-playing” and “Virtual world” now appear as “Adventure,” and “Simulation,” respectively. This brings Facebook’s total count of game categories to 12.

Lastly, Facebook has combined the the apps and games dashboards into a single dashboard called “Apps and Games.” Facebook explains on its blog that this is intended to “grow the apps and games ecosystem by creating a single place where users can discover and re-engage with [their] apps.” Friend invites appear at the top of the dashboard with a “top apps” section below that showcases what apps a user’s friends are accessing the most.

Facebook has also updated the number of app bookmarks from four to six. The social network reports that an early result of this small change is a 20% increase in referrals from canvas bookmarks to games. Additionally, bookmark counters on the home page now clear automatically when clicked by the user, similar to how notifications behave. Lastly, the platform now features a Games Tutorial for developers just starting out on Facebook.