Inside Facebook

The predictable mix of celebrities, movies and politicos — and The Bible — round out this week’s list of Top 20 Facebook Pages. This week’s list, from February 1 to 8, shows influences from the Grammys and the Super Bowl, as well as the presidential election in the Philippines.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Texas Hold’em Poker	10,315,265	+1,141,668	+12.45
2.	Mafia Wars	8,188,138	+1,014,916	+14.15
3.	Lost	1,702,202	+490,041	+40.43
4.	Pepsi – Refresh Everything	503,509	+203,129	+67.62
5.	Official Avatar Movie	1,330,237	+102,784	+8.37
6.	Barack Obama	7,382,220	+81,569	+1.12
7.	Justin Bieber	1,645,445	+80,713	+5.16
8.	Lady Gaga	5,149,758	+77,769	+1.53
9.	Megan Fox	5,685,734	+75,350	+1.34
10.	Dear John	929,008	+74,976	+8.78
11.	Glee	1,419,231	+73,801	+5.49
12.	Michael Jackson	10,796,535	+71,084	+0.66
13.	Manny Villar	559,513	+70,868	+14.50
14.	Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III	595,066	+70,789	+13.50
15.	Gatorade	465,122	+67,649	+17.02
16.	(RED)	529,930	+66,917	+14.45
17.	Shahrukh Khan	352,288	+64,492	+22.41
18.	Taylor Swift	3,120,853	+61,263	+2.00
19.	The Bible	1,457,621	+61,123	+4.38
20.	GILBERT ‘GIBO’ TEODORO, JR.	136,999	+59,803	+77.47

Zynga ruled the top two spots again this week with Texas Hold’em Poker and Mafia Wars and the number 1 and 2 spots, respectively.  In third was the television show “Lost,” which had  a much-anticipated premiered last week; another popular TV show, “Glee,” came in at number 11 this week.

The Super Bowl’s influence was not lost on Facebook this week as Pepsi’s Refresh Everything page landed at number 4; although Pepsi opted-out of Super Bowl advertising this year, the reason that Pepsi did so well the past week may have been because it got mentioned every time the topic of the big game’s commercials came up. Megan Fox, a regular on the Top 20, also starred in a Motorola commercial, boosting her to the number 9 spot. And Gatorade, which has been promoting its product all over its Facebook page the past week in anticipation of the Super Bowl, rolled in at fifteenth.

“Avatar” may have lost its number 1 spot at the box office to “Dear John” over the weekend, but James Cameron’s alien saga rolled in at number 5 while the chick flick came in at number 10. “Dear John” opened Friday and, with the help of teenage girls, was able to knock “Avatar” out of its domination of the box office and the romance had te highest opening ever for a movie Super Bowl weekend.

Barack Obama held sixth place.

Musicians were also a big part of this week’s list, likely due to the Grammys last Sunday, where Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift performed and Michael Jackson was honored. Justin Bieber came in seventh, Lady Gaga at number 8, Michael Jackson at number 12 and Taylor Swift eighteenth.

The presidential election in the Philippines has allowed two frontrunners, Manny Villar at 13 and Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III at number 14, to be on the Top 20 for weeks. Now, they are joined by Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro, Jr., who closed the list at number 20. The election is May 20, it’ll be interesting to see whether the winner of the election continues to be popular on Facebook after the results are in.

Finally, a mixed bag finished off the list. (RED), the non-profit to fight HIV in Africa, landed at the number 16 spot, probably due to a boost of 62,000 fans on February 6, likely the result of page consolidations. At 17 was the famous Indian actor Shahrukh Khan, whose page got a boost of 57,000 fans on February 4.

The Bible, for reasons unbeknownst to us, landed at the number 19 spot this week after what seems to be really rapid growth that started at the beginning of the month.  A look at the Facebook page doesn’t point to anything in particular that prompted its growth this week.

Not much has changed since last week on our Monday list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by monthly average users (MAU), taken from AppData: eight of the top 10 are either in the same place they held last week or within a few places.

The top position is still held by Birthday Cards, the juggernaut from RockYou, as it has been almost since the holidays. And Calendario de Amigos, an app your friends important dates (like birthdays) has also held onto its number two spot:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Birthday Cards	45,831,329	+4,588,556	+10.01
2.	Calendario de Amigos	7,648,511	+3,062,019	+40.03
3.	Zoo World	18,008,311	+1,802,177	+10.01
4.	Static FBML	14,461,689	+1,566,016	+10.83
5.	FarmVille	76,677,249	+1,200,774	+1.57
6.	Truth about friends	590,265	+590,117	+99.97
7.	Yearbook	5,361,039	+574,707	+10.72
8.	Happy Island	11,146,511	+534,124	+4.79
9.	Gangster City	1,233,329	+527,156	+42.74
10.	My City Life	798,564	+520,032	+65.12
11.	FacéDouble Celebrity Look-alike Doppelganger	544,157	+455,167	+83.65
12.	Little Warrior	1,497,204	+440,125	+29.40
13.	My Top Fans	2,520,300	+415,414	+16.48
14.	My Town	1,961,793	+410,417	+20.92
15.	Wild Ones	2,603,987	+406,294	+15.60
16.	Friend Quiz	10,589,293	+386,364	+3.65
17.	Which Celeb Do You Look Most Like ?	359,109	+356,532	+99.28
18.	MindJolt Games	16,454,075	+344,935	+2.10
19.	Translations	345,882	+342,742	+99.09
20.	Go to Hell	347,382	+281,970	+81.17

Zoo World, which didn’t register at all last week, has crept in at number three. It’s also by RockYou, and has been co-promoted with Birthday Cards. But, as we point out over at Inside Social Games, RockYou is having trouble hanging onto the millions of new players it’s picking up.

Yearbook has risen to number seven. This is an older app that reminisces on Facebook’s original mission: connecting friends from the same schools. While the app’s growth hadn’t budged for a while, it started trending upwards again a couple weeks ago:

And taking Yearbook’s place from last week is FacéDouble Celebrity Look-alike Doppelganger. This face-matching app just popped up on our Friday list of quickly gaining apps with under a million users. However, users seem pretty unanimously unhappy with the results, so it likely won’t stick around for long.

Take a look below for our weekly list of the most quickly growing apps with under a million monthly users on Facebook. We source these lists from AppData, which tracks a number of metrics.

Over on our sister site Inside Social Games, the big news is that Gangster City, the new Playfish challenger to Mafia Wars, has passed a million users. Here, it’s that the list is suddenly free of FarmVille parasites, non-Zynga apps that lure in users with fake gifts purportedly from Zynga’s most popular game. It’s not that Facebook is banning the apps. Instead, users just appear to be getting wise to the scam.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	My City Life	698,494	+535,098	+76.61
2.	Truth about friends	523,925	+523,784	+99.97
3.	Go to Hell	273,931	+257,768	+94.10
4.	FacéDouble Celebrity Look-alike Doppelganger	294,772	+223,025	+75.66
5.	MiniPlanet	558,648	+221,714	+39.69
6.	你問我答	894,879	+159,799	+17.86
7.	Sanalika	501,359	+147,149	+29.35
8.	Horoscope Today	654,510	+146,056	+22.32
9.	Akinator	928,309	+145,403	+15.66
10.	Kingdoms of Camelot	670,480	+133,490	+19.91
11.	The Pink Ribbon	633,857	+119,933	+18.92
12.	FacéDouble Twins Doppelganger	149,280	+116,615	+78.12
13.	Show Some Love!	759,537	+111,542	+14.69
14.	Jumping Dog	108,671	+108,655	+99.99
15.	Funflow	101,589	+101,414	+99.83
16.	Lovers	133,098	+100,885	+75.80
17.	Flowers for Friends	503,076	+100,625	+20.00
18.	Kampanyalar	115,026	+92,508	+80.42
19.	Snaptu	540,236	+90,080	+16.67
20.	SPP Ranch!	186,246	+89,777	+48.20

No apps held over from last week to this one. Despite the lack of Zynga parasites, the usual lack of depth is apparent in most of the new Facebook apps surfacing. One that is fairly interesting, though, is FacéDouble Celebrity Look-alike Doppelganger, which is probably built by the web site of the same name.

The matching technology in FaceDouble isn’t perfect, but the app has borrowed Hot or Not style voting to go through potential pairs. You can also choose to view only friends — although it appears that functionality is broken. It could be that the pairs shown are simply pre-picked, and there’s no technology at all behind the app. You’ll also notice FacéDouble Twins Doppelganger further down, which is itself a doppelganger of the Celebrity app.

Horoscope Today, last week’s number one, has dropped down to number eight, and will probably continue to fall. Arrayed around it are a trio with a little more staying power, and one thing in common: none are in English. They’re 你問我答, Sanalika (in Turkish) and Akinator (in French). Sanalika has been slowly, but steadily growing, while the other two, which are also both quiz apps, are about ready to pass a million users.

Last is Show Some Love!. As you might guess, this is a poke-style app for pestering one’s friends. In exchange for doing so, you get “love bucks”. But users appear to like the app well enough; it has appeared on this list consistently for a few weeks.

Earlier this evening, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg formally announced the launch of six new products at the company’s headquarters, as Facebook also celebrated its 6th birthday. To watch Zuckerberg and VP of Product Chris Cox walk through each of the new releases, and reflect on the company’s first 6 years – including the day the News Feed launched on September 6, 2006 – check out each of the videos below. At the end, Product Manager Peter Deng and Ari Steinberg “flip the switch,” pushing the new products live.

(For those who don’t see the videos in your reader, click here to view.)

Tonight’s product releases included:

• The new home page to 80 million of Facebook’s now 400 million users worldwide
• Better chat accessibility (“Improving chat is the biggest request we get from our users,” Zuckerberg said.)
• The games and apps dashboards
• New search type-ahead, and a new method of finding and displaying people whether or not they are your friends
• A new image uploader, built from the ground up by Facebook (“We’ve been using an ActiveX control for years,” Zuckerberg said.)
• HipHop, the new project it open-sourced earlier this week.

Zuckerberg also told us tonight that the updated News Feed UI should alleviate a lot of user confusion between the meaning of “News Feed” and “Live Feed,” and that friend lists are getting demoted from the home page because they’ve “always kind of been a power user feature.”

Here’s a look at Facebook’s worldwide audience growth to date:

Purchase this report The Facebook Global Monitor – Current Edition Buy PDF: $99 USD OR Buy 6 Month Subscription: $395 USD

Today, Inside Facebook has released the February 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor, tracking Facebook’s growth in detail around the world. The Facebook Global Monitor tracks Facebook’s international metrics for marketers, developers, and analysts to spot trends and opportunities.

The Facebook Global Monitor provides vital data and insight to media industry executives, global marketing and communications firms, analysts, and developers for whom Facebook’s rapid international expansion poses significant opportunities or threats.

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $99 per issue, or $395 for a six month subscription. Future monthly updates will be delivered directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic. (Custom reports are also available.) You can reach us at mail AT insidefacebook DOT com with questions at any time.

Each month, the Facebook Global Monitor provides the latest comprehensive data on the expansion of Facebook’s audience in nearly 100 global markets. In addition, the Monitor provides alerts on breakout and cooling markets, as well as our latest in-house projections on Facebook’s growth in each country 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months into the future.

See the full table of contents of the first newsletter below. All reports are based on primary research by Inside Facebook using data from Facebook, and each section is designed to elucidate key actionable trends.

We believe big opportunities exist for developers and marketers to reach and engage the Facebook audience in these rapidly emerging and expanding markets. Cheers to continued growth in 2009!

The Facebook Global Monitor

Tracking Facebook in Global Markets

February 2010

Contents

I. Introduction: The Year That Facebook Went Global

II. Global Market Report

1. Audience Size Today

2. Fastest Growing Audience

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

3. Market Penetration Today

4. Largest Market Penetration Increases

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

III. Emerging Market Analysis

1. Growth Projections

• Next 30 days
• Next 90 days
• Next 12 months

2. Technical Alerts

• Breakout Markets: Last 90 Days
• Cooling Markets: Last 90 Days

IV. Regional Summaries

1. Africa

2. Asia / Pacific

3. Europe

4. North America

5. South America

V. Country Updates

1. Argentina

2. Australia

3. Austria

4. Bahamas

5. Bahrain

6. Bangladesh

7. Belgium

8. Bolivia

9. Bosnia & Herzegovina

10. Brazil

11. Bulgaria

12. Canada

13. Chile

14. China

15. Colombia

16. Costa Rica

17. Croatia

18. Cyprus

19. Czech Republic

20. Denmark

21. Dominican Republic

22. Ecuador

23. Egypt

24. El Salvador

25. Finland

26. France

27. Germany

28. Ghana

29. Greece

30. Guatemala

31. Honduras

32. Hong Kong

33. Hungary

34. Iceland

35. India

36. Indonesia

37. Ireland

38. Israel

39. Italy

40. Jamaica

41. Japan

42. Jordan

43. Kenya

44. Kuwait

45. Lebanon

46. Lithuania

47. Luxembourg

48. Macedonia

49. Malaysia

50. Maldives

51. Malta

52. Mauritius

53. Mexico

54. Morocco

55. Netherlands

56. New Zealand

57. Nicaragua

58. Nigeria

59. Norway

60. Oman

61. Pakistan

62. Palestine

63. Panama

64. Paraguay

65. Peru

66. Philippines

67. Poland

68. Portugal

69. Puerto Rico

70. Qatar

71. Romania

72. Russia

73. Saudi Arabia

74. Serbia

75. Singapore

76. Slovakia

77. Slovenia

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78. South Africa

79. South Korea

80. Spain

81. Sri Lanka

82. Sweden

83. Switzerland

84. Taiwan

85. Thailand

86. Trinidad and Tobago

87. Tunisia

88. Turkey

89. Ukraine

90. United Arab Emirates

91. United Kingdom

92. United States

93. Uruguay

94. Venezuela

95. Vietnam

Footnotes & Methodology

This week’s AppData list of top gaining apps by daily active users has some interesting entries. A pair of quiz apps show up near the top, while a mix of utilities and games fill out the rest of the chart. Also notable: there are few apps that carried over from last week. The list is below.

Name DAU Gain Gain, % 1. Zoo World 2,587,470 +579,709 +22.40 2. Social Interview 1,081,799 +407,455 +37.66 3. Calendario de Amigos 586,885 +363,158 +61.88 4. Friends Exposed 1,422,523 +330,651 +23.24 5. Bejeweled Blitz 3,018,298 +211,313 +7.00 6. My City Life 201,903 +190,629 +94.42 7. My Top Fans 262,268 +175,371 +66.87 8. 開心寶貝 476,028 +150,155 +31.54 9. My Town 499,451 +113,418 +22.71 10. Static FBML 791,848 +112,910 +14.26 11. Happy Island 2,919,892 +96,184 +3.29 12. Mafia Wars 6,712,908 +81,514 +1.21 13. Medical Mayhem 271,704 +78,457 +28.88 14. (Lil) Farm Life 998,748 +72,478 +7.26 15. Frases Diarias 275,282 +65,909 +23.94 16. Birthday Calendar 298,660 +64,637 +21.64 17. FamilyLink.com 886,622 +64,052 +7.22 18. Gangster City 220,909 +62,673 +28.37 19. מראה מראה שעל הקיר 68,110 +60,132 +88.29 20. Go to Hell 59,269 +58,680 +99.01

Social Interview and Friends Exposed show up as a pair; just a few weeks ago, we mentioned the two in a post looking at the success of FE.

Despite its appearance here, SI appears to be continuing a long-term decline, while FE has climbed a bit in both daily and monthly users; its mechanic of posting quiz answers to friends’ walls appears to keep the growth going. Bejeweled Blitz is losing monthly users, but converting more of its existing players to daily use. We discuss it and the other games at Inside Social Games.

After it comes My Top Fans, a social graph analyzer that tells you who you share with most. Fairly new, this app saw its DAU nosedive early last month, but it’s rising again – possibly a combination of a (slightly) improved algorithm and more promotion.

And to wrap up, there’s Static FBML, coming in at number nine. This app for creating custom HTML on Pages has climbed steadily for several weeks. It’s becoming popular because Facebook counts clicking on an app tab on a Page as engaging with an application, they tell us. As a side note, each time we check, more of the comments and reviews are in Turkish.

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The newly revised, expanded, and hot-off-the-press Facebook Marketing Bible: 50+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook – February 2010 Edition is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been purchased by thousands of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators, and is the leading resource on Facebook marketing today. It is also available in French, Spanish, Italian, and print.

The densely-packed Facebook Marketing Bible contains four detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, Tools for Application Developers, and Tools for Webmasters. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook. Please see the full table of contents below.

In addition, Inside Facebook is happy to announce that through February 28th all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms). Now that Facebook has crossed the 350 million active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience inside Facebook.

The February 2010 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• Detailed updates on Facebook’s latest redesign and privacy updates, and what it means for Page owners and developers. Facebook’s “privacy update” a couple of weeks ago had many users up in arms – but how will it change Facebook marketing? And now that Facebook has moved back to a “Top Stories” view of the News Feed by default, new rules apply for maximizing your reach and engagement within Facebook. We’ve broken down all the new rules and offered detailed and specific advice for marketers hoping to reach more users inside Facebook – including details on other new features like real time search, status tagging, status targeting, Twitter integration, why marketers should choose Facebook Pages over Facebook Groups, key SEO strategies every Facebook Page owner should know, and the best tools to manage your Facebook Page. See the table of contents below for more details.
• The latest updates on Facebook’s advertising tools, including the per post insights, conversion tracking, and powerful new targeting features. Now that Facebook’s new Ads Manager is here, Facebook Ads are becoming more efficient to use than ever before. And, with Facebook’s new “connection” targeting, “friends of connections” targeting, birthday targeting, and time scheduling tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences in more targeted ways – and measure them with Facebook’s improved per post insights. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• Updated details on Facebook’s new Promo/Sweepstakes guidelines for Pages. Facebook recently updated the policies that all marketers must abide by when conducting sweepstakes or promotions inside Facebook. We have all the do’s and don’ts. In addition, we have all the details on Facebook’s new policies for subscription and download ads, and details on recent tweaks to Facebook’s home page engagement ads.
• The latest details on Facebook’s Platform API changes and “Pay with Facebook” virtual currency payment service for application developers. Find out the latest on what Facebook’s latest Platform API changes mean for marketers, and what Facebook’s new payment program means for the future of virtual currency payments on Facebook (and Facebook revenues) – including Facebook’s latest international currency efforts.
• The latest tools for webmasters to drive more traffic to their site and build more social context through Facebook Connect, Facebook Share, and Facebook widgets. With Facebook Connect (now available in dozens of languages) and Facebook Share, publishers have new opportunities for both enriching their sites with deeply social features and leveraging Facebook’s powerful feed system for driving traffic to their site. Get new details on metrics early Facebook Connect partners are seeing, and learn how to optimize your Facebook Share integration.
• New tools for advertisers to target their Facebook Ads better than ever before. With enhanced Facebook targeting tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences in much more powerful ways. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• Plus, more updates on the new Dashboard API, the new “via” feature, and more.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible – Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $49, or $149 with 12 months of free updates emailed directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible – Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

A few of Zynga’s top games — Texas Hold’em Poker and Mafia Wars — topped this week’s list of Top 20 Facebook Pages while movies, food, television, politics-related sites and iTunes rounded out the rest of the list, tracking growth from Monday, January 25 to Monday, February 1.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Texas Hold’em Poker	9,173,597	+1,067,004	+13.16
2.	Mafia Wars	7,173,222	+279,825	+4.06
3.	Oreo	3,622,460	+227,932	+6.71
4.	Official Avatar Movie	1,227,453	+118,435	+10.68
5.	When In Rome	158,858	+111,796	+237.55
6.	Coca-Cola	4,280,552	+99,825	+2.39
7.	Facebook	6,990,829	+87,483	+1.27
8.	The Artifice	2,007,978	+79,875	+4.14
9.	Glee	1,345,430	+73,408	+5.77
10.	Manny Villar	488,645	+66,118	+15.65
11.	Jersey Shore	771,069	+62,306	+8.79
12.	Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III	524,277	+58,946	+12.67
13.	Dear John	861,728	+56,933	+7.07
14.	Starbucks	5,631,882	+55,880	+1.00
15.	Barack Obama	7,300,651	+54,943	+0.76
16.	YouTube	4,065,562	+52,876	+1.32
17.	iTunes	2,853,553	+46,039	+1.64
18.	The Buried Life	167,502	+45,756	+37.58
19.	Victoria’s Secret	2,574,338	+45,136	+1.78
20.	Twilight	4,808,746	+45,134	+0.95

Texas Hold’em Poker was in first place this week, followed by Mafia Wars in second place — the latter likely grew due to the wide release of Mafia Wars Bangkok last week. In third place was Oreo, which was giving out free cookies until last Monday. Its Wall was pretty active with happy and disappointed Oreo fans.

In fourth place was the movie “Avatar,” which ruled the box offices for the seventh weekend in a row with $30 million. The movie has also surpassed James Cameron’s last blockbuster, “Titanic,” to become the highest-grossing film in history. Another movie, the romantic comedy “When In Rome,” saw a surge of 91,000 fans on Friday when it premiered, and had been maintaining an active Wall with polls and videos of the stars speaking directly to Facebook fans.

Further on down the list were the movies “Dear John” at 13, which premieres this Friday and has seen steady growth moving towards that date. And, oddly, at the bottom of the list at number 20 was the “Twilight” Facebook page which. It was likely aided by Facebook consolidating pages — it grew by 23,000 new fans on January 31. But fans appear to still be excited, with “Twilight: The New Moon” movie going on pre-sale January 26.

Coca-Cola’s Facebook page landed the number 6 spot this week, likely due to the launch last week of a virtual gift of Coca-Cola that doubles as a $1 donation for the Boys & Girls Club, a non-profit benefiting children. This charitable gift is also a part of Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl campaign; as of Monday more than 41,000 of these gifts had been sent from the company’s Facebook page.

Facebook’s page landed the number 7 spot, followed by the much-hyped “The Artifice” and number 8, and the television show “Glee” at number 9, probably the result of its general popularity combined with some high profile wins at an award show last week. Another TV show, “Jersey Shore,” landed eleventh this week, helped in part by a surge of 22,000 fans on January 31 — likely helped by page consolidation — but probably also helped by appearances by stars at award shows and the inertia of a deal on a second season. Towards the bottom another TV show, “The Buried Life,” took the number 18 spot only a few weeks after premiering on MTV on January 18.

At 10 and 12 were Philippine politicians Manny Villar and Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III, respectively. These two are running for president in the Philippines and have been neck-in-neck for Facebook fans leading up to the May 10 election.

Starbucks rolled in at fourteenth, aided by a jump in 26,000 on January 31, but likely also due to Haiti-related relief efforts being plugged on their Facebook page.

President Barack Obama’s page landed at 15, likely due to his State of the Union address last week, and the accompanying material on his Facebook and web sites related to that speech. On a similar note was YouTube’s place at number 16; this Page also grew on January 31 by 26,000, but also heavily plugged the State of the Union speech and also the Grammys on Sunday. YouTube also promoted movie rentals from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

Rounding out the list were iTunes at seventeenth and Victoria’s Secret at number 19. iTunes gained 23,000 fans on January 31 but was also aided by a free downloads promo, the Grammys and more than anything the unveiling of Apple’s iPad last week. Victoria’s Secret is probably on the list this week because of the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, but also benefited on January 31 with 20,000 new fans and has been promoting a Valentine’s Day contest that includes a $500 gift card as one of the prizes.

Facebook has just posted an update to its Developer Roadmap with a new date for the end of application notifications: March 1st. On that date, both application-to-user and user-to-user notifications will be no longer.

What happens exactly at that point, in terms of application traffic, is on the forefront of the minds of app developers and Facebook Platform monetization service providers. While some top developers called the end of notifications “D-Day” after it was initially announced, attitudes have been somewhat more hopeful in recent weeks. Developers are hoping that Facebook will take a balanced approach to the Platform changes, and will make adjustments to help developers if the impact of notifications removal proves to be too severe. The vast majority of developers have been using the notifications channel very aggressively to date, leading to user complaints and decreasing conversion rates in general.

Facebook’s fundamental motivation behind the changes is to improve the fidelity of its communication channels. With the onslaught of often-spammy app notifications, engagement rates for the notifications channel have plummeted, which is a big red flag to the product team at Facebook. Facebook has created a new email sharing API to make it easier for users to share their email addresses directly with developers, encouraging app-to-user communication to happen outside of Facebook altogether.

What immediate impact will the removal of the notifications channel have on app traffic? Everyone will find out starting in 28 days.

Facebook said it had 350 million monthly active users (MAU) at the beginning of December. But it has been growing fast around the world since then, from what we’re seeing. Notable on today’s list: countries that are big but previously not so for Facebook are now seeing serious new growth, including Brazil, Germany and India.

The company typically updates demographic data in its advertising tool — our source — a little late. For example, we counted around 350 million at the beginning of January. Now, at the beginning of February, we’re seeing 373 million MAU across the world.

Roughly 23 million more people are using Facebook compared to 30 days ago, many in countries with big populations around the world. This is an interesting shift from much of Facebook’s international growth to date. Once Facebook began offering the service in multiple languages (it’s available in more than 70 of them as of today), it started blowing up in many countries — Canada, Iceland, Norway, South Africa, Chile, etc. — but less so in the biggest countries.

Now, a reasonably largepopulation is required to make our list of the ten fastest-growing countries by absolute audience. See below. Many countries appear to have already hit their top penetration rates — 50%, for tiny Iceland — and no longer have new users left to add.

The United States is at the top with more than 5 million new users; it also continues to be the single largest country on Facebook, with 108 million MAU. That’s 35% of the total US population.

Going down the list, we first see some regulars: Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France. These all have been growing for many, many months. More recent arrivals are showing up, though. Mexico is on its way to becoming the largest Spanish-speaking country on Facebook; with a gain of slightly less than a million new users, it is close to the largest, Spain, Argentina and Colombia.

What do Brazil, India, Germany, The Phillipines and Mexico all have in common? Their populations have all preferred other social networks, until recently. The first two countries are Orkut strongholds, The Philippines Friendster, Germany studiVZ and other regional sites, and Mexico Hi5 and regional sites.

Overall, we expect these five countries to see the most new growth in the coming year, along with other countries that have favored Facebook’s rivals.

You can find more data details on these countries and 90 more in our monthly Global Monitor report — new version coming later this week.