The company had last claimed 800 million monthly active users  and 350 million mobile monthly active users at its f8 developer conference in September.

Overall, that means the social network has seen a 39 percent increase in monthly active users since December 2010. It saw particularly strong growth in Brazil with a 268 percent increase year-over-year and India with a 132 percent increase. Notably, both of these markets were strongholds for Orkut, an early rival social networking service from Google.

In the U.S., Facebook is starting to hit its saturation point with 161 million monthly active users, a 16 percent increase from the previous year.

It comes as little surprise that a large percentage of users return regularly. Facebook has long said that half of its users access the site daily. The social network had 483 million daily active users in December 2011, an 48 percent increase since December 2010. According to the company’s IPO filing today, 360 million users were active on at least six days a week in December 2011.

Of course, the larger Facebook gets, the harder it may be for it to grow. “We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and as we achieve higher market penetration rates,” the company said in its filing today. “To the extent our active user growth rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement in current and new markets.”

One of the last bastions where Facebook might find an additional 500 million or more users is in China — a country it has explored but never formally entered. In addition to government censorship, it would find many mature rivals there including Sina and Tencent. Prospects there do not look promising, especially considering that Google lost substantial search market share there after a disagreement with the Chinese government. “We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government,” the company’s statement said.

The company defines active user as a registered user who has logged in and visited Facebook through a website or mobile device in the last 30 days. Facebook also shared stats about activity on its platform. As of December 31, 2011, there were more than 37 million pages with ten or more Likes. More than seven million apps and websites have integrated with Facebook.

Note: Because Facebook now rounds traffic to the thousands, our rankings now reflect ties with the letter “T” in the rank field.

We begin with the top 25 games by daily active users, which is the most effective measurement of a game’s core audience. About half of our games on the list saw losses in DAU over the last month, with the largest loss reflected in The Sims Social. That game appears to have reached its early life traffic apex right at the end of September before going into its mature state where traffic declines and the lifetime value of users rises. Note that Zynga’s Mafia Wars 2 technically suffered the “biggest loss” of DAU between November and December as it doesn’t even rank in the top 25 going into this month; on November 1, it would’ve been in the top 10 in terms of DAU. The biggest gainer was newcomer CastleVille at No.2, Zynga’s latest and so far fastest-growing game ever on Facebook while older game Top Eleven makes its debut at No.25:

Turning now to monthly active users, which is a means for gauging a game’s overall reach, we see mostly overall growth with just nine apps losing ground compared to their November numbers. The Sims Social again sees the biggest loss on the list while Mafia Wars 2 sees such a huge loss, it falls off the list completely whereas in November it would have been in the top 10. CastleVille again makes a strong showing at No.5 while Car Town returns to our rankings after a brief absence:

Other somewhat new notable games climbing the rankings for the past several months are Bubble Witch Saga, Tetris Battle, Words With Friends, and Ravenskye City. Each of these games either launched in the last four months or has spent those last four months scaling steadily to arrive in the top 25.

As for overall trends that we’ve observed in the last several months in studying our monthly top 25 rankings charts, it’s clear that “top” games now need a minimum of around 1 million DAU to place. As few as eight months ago, games could get close with around 800,000 DAU — but now there are five games in the 900,000 range, three of which didn’t make the top 25. Another trend is the relative stability of arcade and casino games. Titles like Slotomania and Diamond Dash seem like they’ll never leave this list no matter how old they get.

Join us toward the end of this month for a look back at the top Facebook games of 2011 as the calendar year draws to a close.

This post originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

When we last covered the platform back in 2009 when it was first launched, awe.sm offered content publishers a button-style widget called fbshare.me that allowed clients to Share articles on Facebook and track the clicks through the link. In the last two years, the platform has evolved to include other social networks like Twitter and developed a more sophisticated set of APIs that allows content publishers more insight into who is Liking and Sharing their posts on Facebook, and who among those converts to paying customers for the content publisher.

It’s this extra layer of analysis that makes awe.sm valuable to content publishers; anyone can pay to run a Like campaign on Facebook, but there aren’t a lot of resources that let publishers analyze just how much a Like is worth to them. As awe.sm Co-Founder Jonathan Strauss tells us, viral sharing on Facebook “isn’t as Wild West as it used to be, so this data is more valuable because you can see a results-driven timeline [of your posted content].”

Though awe.sm now provides tracking across a number of social networks, the developer still has some Facebook-specific features. Strauss explains that there are special systems for tracking results of Likes and Sends generated from external sites (say, from Yahoo News), something he believes is unique in that content producers can track the value of a Like generated off-Facebook versus a Like generated on a Facebook post of the same content. Now that Facebook has introduced seamless sharing for content from certain publishers — like news media outlets — awe.sm can shed some light on how effective the virality and conversion rates are for seamless Like and Share activity compared to Likes and Shares of traditional Facebook posts.

This second round brings awe.sm’s total funding to $5.25 million. The funds will be put toward growing the San Francisco-based company’s five-person headcount.

Correction: A previous draft of this story incorrectly termed this as a first round of funding.

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’s news feed visibility algorithm may be rewarding Pages with high fan counts — including those of big brands. This is because these Pages have essentially been endorsed by hundreds of thousands of users and have more to lose, and therefore may be more likely to publish high quality content. However, the hybrid news feed may make it difficult for newer Pages and those of local businesses to grow organically, increasing their need for paid Facebook ads.

EdgeRank Checker’s data is based on sample of over 600 Pages that have used its service, not just any random Pages. This means these stats are for Pages that have some serious interest in the performance of their Facebook Page. The data isn’t likely to be distorted by Pages with low fan counts that aren’t really trying to produce good content.

We analyzed an EdgeRank Checker released a study two weeks after the news feed changes that showed that show comments up 21%, Likes up 9%, and impressions down 25% on average for Pages across sizes. Now a month after the changes the trends are similar, with comments up 14%, Likes up 16%, and impression down 22%. However, Pages of different sizes show different trends and outliers can skew these averages.

To show what’s happening to the average Page, EdgeRank Checker looked to see what percentage of all Pages grew or shrunk in each of these stats. It found that most Pages were receiving fewer impressions, but that an equal number of Pages were losing and gain Likes and comments. This meant some Pages that were receiving many more Likes and comments were making the average data look for positive than it really is.

As there are many more Pages with low fan counts than those with high fan counts, EdgeRank Checker looked at the median size Page and found some unsettling stats, along with a 24% drop in impressions, Likes were down 15% and comments were down 20%. If the average across all Page sizes was positive but these stats for the median size Page were so negative, fan count must be a contributing variable.

It turns out that the changes have aided popular Pages but hindered unpopular Pages. For Pages of different sizes, here is the average change in the volume of Likes and comments per post:

• Over 100,000 Fans – Up 27.8%
• 10,000 – 100,000 Fans – Up 8.76%
• 5,000 – 10,000 Fans – Up 3.96%
• 1,000 – 5,000 Fans – Up 1.73%
• Less than 1,000 Fans – Down 11.64%

Most major brands tend to have at least 10,000 fans, so this may come as good news — they’re receiving a lot more Likes and comments. However, fledgling brands and local businesses than only appeal to a limited audience may find they’re receiving fewer impressions and engagement. This reduces return on their Facebook marketing investment and make their posts less likely to be reshared, a core way of organically growing their fan counts.

In reality, Facebook’s news feed visibility algorithm was likely tweaked to show users higher quality content, and this reduction in engagement is the unfortunate repercussion for some Pages. Facebook probably wasn’t trying to punish smaller businesses and other types of Pages, its just that smaller Pages are less likely to be devoting as many resources to creating and publishing compelling news feed posts.

If Facebook won’t make the posts of smaller brands and local business more visible to their existing fans until the accumulate more fans, these Pages may need to jump-start their Facebook marketing with paid advertising campaigns. In this way, Facebook is rewarding high quality content producers, but also getting smaller businesses hooked on Facebook ads that it can continue to sell to them as they grow.

Facebook has published a .PDF guide to the Insights upgrade, but it doesn’t go into detail about the dozens of new data types admins now have access to. Below we’ll examine every data field available in the Page Insights spreadsheet exports and graphical user interface and discuss what the most significant additions and subtractions are.

What’s in the New Page Insights

To access the new Page Insights, visit your Page and click the Insights tab in the left Page navigation menu. You’ll then see the graphical user interface. By clicking “Export Data” in the top right, you can choose to download spreadsheets of Page- or post-level data for a specific timeframe.

Several of the metrics measure the volume or reach stories that we’ll call “social mentions”.  These stories include liking your Page, posting to your Page’s Wall, liking, commenting on or sharing one of your Page posts, answering a Question you posted, RSVPing to one of your events, mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page or checking in at your Place. Metrics are followed by the time frame and other ways they can be sliced.

Page Level Export

• People Talking About This - The number of people sharing stories about your page. Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Page Stories - The number of stories created about your Page. Daily, weekly, monthly,
• Lifetime Total Likes - Lifetime The total number of people who have liked your Page.
• Daily Friends of Fans - The number of people who are friends of the Fans of your Page (estimated) (unique users).
• Total Reach - The number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page. Daily, weekly, month, by story type.
• Organic Reach - The number of people who visited your Page, or saw your Page or one of its posts in News Feed or Ticker. These people can be Fans or non-Fans (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Reach - The number of people who saw a Sponsored Story or Ad pointing to your Page (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Reach - The number of people who saw your Page or one of its posts from a story published by a friend. Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Total Impressions -  The number of impressions seen of any content associated with your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Impressions - The number of times your posts were seen in News Feed or Ticker or on visits to your Page. These impressions can be by fans or non-fans (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Impressions - The number of impressions of a Sponsored Story or Ad pointing to your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Impressions - The number of impressions of a story published by a friend about your Page (total count). Includes social mentions. Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw any of your Page posts (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw your Page posts in News Feed or Ticker, or on your Page’s Wall (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Reach of Page Posts – The number of people who saw your Page posts in an Ad or Sponsored Story (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Reach of Page Posts - The number of people who saw your Page posts via a story from a friend (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Total Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions that came from all of your posts (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Organic Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions of your posts in News Feed or Ticker or on your Page (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Paid Impressions of your Posts - The number of impressions of your Page posts in an Ad or Sponsored Story (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Impressions of your Posts - The number of times users saw your posts via stories published by their friends (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Total Consumers - The number of people who clicked on any of your content without generating a story (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly, by consumption type.
• Page Consumptions - The number of times people clicked on any of your content without generating a story (total count). Daily, weekly, monthly, by consumption type.
• Total Frequency Distribution - The number of people your Page reached broken down by how many times people saw any content about your Page (unique users). Weekly, monthly.
• Page Posts Frequency Distribution - The number of people who saw your Page posts, broken down by how many times people saw your posts (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Viral Frequency Distribution - The number of people your Page reached from a story published by a friend, broken down by how many times people saw stories about your Page (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly, by story type.
• Page Stories By Story Type - The number of stories about your Page by story type. Daily, weekly, monthly. The story types have the following definitions: “Fan” is when someone becomes a fan, “Mention” is when a user tags the Page in an update or a photo, “Checkin” is when a user checks in to a Place Page, “Page” is when your Page posts an update or when a user reposts an update originally published by the Page, “Other”: is when a user creates a story about a Page using one of Facebook’s lesser known products such as Recommendations.
• Lifetime Gender and Age - Lifetime aggregated demographic data about the people who like your Page based on the age and gender information they provide in their user profiles (total count).
• Lifetime Countries – Lifetime aggregated Facebook location data, sorted by country, about the people who like your Page (total count).
• Lifetime Cities - Lifetime aggregated Facebook location data, sorted by city, about the people who like your Page (total count).
• Lifetime Language - Lifetime aggregated language data about the people who like your Page based on the default language setting selected when accessing Facebook (total count).
• Weekly Reach Demographics, Country, City, and Language - Weekly total Page reach by age and gender, user country, user city, and user selected language (unique users).
• Demographics, Country, and Language People Talking About This - The number of People Talking About the Page by user age and gender, user country, and user language (unique users). Daily, weekly, monthly.
• Daily logged-In Tab Views - Tabs on your Page that were viewed when logged-in users visited your Page (unique users).
• Daily External Referrers - Top referrering external domains sending traffic to your Page (total count).

Post Level Export

Note: all metrics are for the lifetime of the corresponding post.

• Total Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post (unique users).
• Organic Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in News Feed or Ticker, or on your Page’s Wall (unique users).
• Paid Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story (unique users).
• Viral Reach - The number of people who saw your Page post in a story from a friend (unique users).
• Total Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post (total count).
• Organic Impressions - The number of impressions of your post in News Feed or Ticker or on your Page’s Wall (total count).
• Paid Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story (total count).
• Viral Impressions - The number of impressions of your Page post in a story generated by a friend (total count).
• Engaged Users - The number of people who clicked anywhere in your posts (unique users).
• Talking About This - The number of unique people who created a story about your Page post (unique users).
• Stories - The number of stories generated about your Page post, by story type, ie Likes, comments, and shares (total count).
• Consumers - The number of people who clicked anywhere in your post without generating a story (unique users).
• Consumptions - The number of times people clicked anywhere in your posts without generating a story (total count).

Page Insights Graphical User Interface

What’s Been Removed From Insights or Renamed

• Active Users - The number of people who have interacted with or viewed your Page or its posts. This includes interactions from Fans and non-Fans. Active Users has been replaced with the more comprehensive Reach metrics.
• Daily Unlikes – This has been removed from the export and is now available in the Page Insights graphical user interface.
• Lifetime Total Unsubscribes - The total number of users who have hidden your App or Page in News Feed (total count). This metric helped Pages determine if they were posting spammy or irrelevant content, and its removal may be the most significant loss for Page admins of the Insights upgrade. Update: This metric was mistakenly removed by Facebook and has now been re-added.
• Daily Logged-In Page Views (total count and unique users) – These have been removed from the exports bu are now available in the Page Insights GUI.
• Daily News Feed Impressions – This has been replaced by several organic impressions metrics.
• Daily Likes and Comments – This has been replaced by the Lifetime Post Stories by action type.
• Daily Discussion Posts – Facebook will remove the Discussions tab from Pages on October 31st, 2011, so this metric will no longer be necessary.
• Daily Wall Posts and Videos- This has been replaced by the People Talking About This ‘user’ story type.
• Daily Photo Views and Video Views – These metrics can now be found in the Page consumptions by consumption type.
• Feedback - (Comments+Likes)/Impressions. This has been replaced with Virality in the Insights graphical user interface, though that metric also includes shares of a post.
• Daily Internal Referrers - Daily top referrers to your Page on Facebook (total count) — search, stream, or share. The removal of this metric means it will be difficult for admins to tell where non-fans are arriving to their Page from. Admins can use the Like Sources metric in the Insights GUI to tell where non-fans who become fans are coming from.
• Media Consumptions – Video views, audio listens, and photo views by day. This has been removed from the GUI but replaced in the Page level export with Consumptions by Consumption Type.
• Daily Active Users Breakdown – Unique Page Views, Post Viewers, Liked a Post, Commented on a Post, and Wall Posts. This has been removed from the GUI and replaced with Reach metrics, Lifetime Talking About This, and Lifetime Post Stories by Action Type.
• Page Activity – User Mentions, Discussion Posts, Reviews, Wall Posts, and Videos. The Discussions and Reviews tabs are being removed from Facebook Pages, and the remaining GUI metrics are replaced with People Talking About This.

The Most Important Changes to Page Insights

Reach and Consumptions are two of the most valuable new additions to Page Insights, while the removal of Daily Unsubscribes is the worst part of the overhaul. Reach aggregates all types of impressions and engagement, including those reached by People Talking About This, and gives admins a measure of the total audience of their Facebook marketing efforts. This will allow marketers to compare Facebook to other channels to determine where they can gain bring their message to the most people.

Consumptions can be used to track clicks of posted links. While Likes and comments help improve a post’s EdgeRank and get it more impressions, most marketers are looking to drive traffic to specific online presences where they host custom Page tab applications, ecommerce stores, signup pages, and branded content. Admins will no longer have to use URL shorteners to measure clicks. The Consumptions metric will help marketers measure how their Facebook Page post publishing efforts compare to ads in terms of driving traffic to links.

Daily Unsubscribes let admins track how frequently their Pages were being hidden from the news feeds of fans. This was a powerful way to measure how spammy or boring a Page’s posts were. When admins saw Daily Unsubscribes go up, they could try posting less frequently, providing more compelling content, or being less aggressive with their calls to action. It will now be more difficult for admins to tell when their Page posts aren’t satisfying fans, which could hinder the process of refining a Page publishing strategy. Update: This metric was mistakenly removed by Facebook and has now been re-added.

With all of the data, admins will be able to see how everything they do impacts the performance of their Page. Through API access to the new data, Page analytics firms will be able to derive trends and provide actionable next steps for their clients to take in order to improve key performance indicators such as Reach, People Talking About This, and Consumptions. By giving admins a better understanding of how users are reacting to their efforts, Facebook may be able to get Pages to publish better content in a way that improves the quality of the site as a whole.

Update 10/20/11: Facebook has contacted us to explain that is has made several changes to Page Insights since this article was published. It had accidentally removed the Daily Unsubsribes metric and has now re-added it to the Page level export. It has also changed the descriptions of some metrics. We’ll be updating this article soon to reflect all the changes.

Learn how to develop marketing strategies from your Page Page Insights in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to advertising and marketing through Facebook.

The reports should come as good news to most marketers, especially direct marketers looking to drive more click throughs to their products. However, the the reduction in Page post impressions since the introduction of the hybrid news feed could hurt some institutional marketers that optimize for exposure or brand lift rather than direct conversions.

EdgeRank Checker based its findings on metrics pulled from an adequate sample size of over 3,5000 Facebook Pages during two weeks before the changes (9/3-9/17) and two weeks after the changes (9/24-10/8). The time frame is still too short for the study to be totally authoritative, and it will take a few more months before users and Page admins become accustomed.

Still, these figures should ease worries that the changes would drastically reduce engagement with Page posts, and help admins adjust their Page publishing strategy for maximum impact.

EdgeRank Checker ran a preliminary analysis of the same data after just one week of complete data following the changes. At that point, impressions were down 33%, Likes up 18%, and comments up 17% versus before the changes. The new numbers should be more accurate as they are based on the same data as the first study plus an additional week of reporting.

The News Feed Favors Compelling Posts More Than Ever

Over the last few months, Facebook has made a lot of changes to the site’s design and functionality  that impact how marketing content and ads reach users, and more changes are on the way. Most significantly, it redesigned the home page, scrapping the two-tabbed news feed interface in favor of a single combined feed with a Ticker of real-time updates on the side.

Previously, some users would visit the Most Recent news feed tab where they could view a more complete stream of updates from all their Liked Pages and friends. The removal of this feed is likely the cause of the 25.15% reduction in impressions per Page post. Users may also be scrolling through less of the news feed because they more quickly find engaging updates thanks to the new design.

The 9.43% increase in Likes and 21.15% increase in comments per Page post may be related to how the hybrid news feed favors posts published recently and that have received a lot of feedback. The combined news feed divides content into three categories that are dynamically ordered on the home page depending on how frequently a user check the news feed:

• Top Stories – Updates that are highly relevant to a user because they have received a lot of Likes and comments or were published by friends or Pages they engage with frequently. Users can also manually mark or unmark updates as Top Stories to teach EdgeRank their preferences. Top Stories are the first thing users see in the feed if they haven’t checked the news feed in several hours or days
• Recent Stories – Updates that were published in the last few minutes or hours. These are shown first if a user has recently checked the news feed.
• From Earlier Today – Additional updates that are deemed somewhat relevant to a user. This is shown after the other two categories.

EdgeRank Checker believes the redesign and improvements to the news feed sorting algorithm have made Facebook’s EdgeRank more focused. In other words, highly compelling updates are receiving more visibility than before.

Previously, a Page post that received a high volume of Likes and comments still wouldn’t be seen if a user logged on a day or two after it was published. Now with Top Stories, users see all the most relevant updates that were published since they last checked the news feed.

Therefore, the first stories in the news feed are now likely to be of a higher quality than before, leading users to leave more Likes and comments. This feedback raises a Page’s EdgeRank giving their posts more visibility in the future, so its more important than ever for marketers to take the time to craft highly compelling updates that draw lots of Likes and comments.

You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

Pretzel Crisps’ Spice Up Your Life Sweepstakes

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

Core Mechanic: A week-long sweepstakes from Pretzel Crisps that both awarded free product to users and asked them to engage with the brand via Facebook app.

Method: The sweepstakes began Monday, September 26, and ran through Friday, September 30 in order to promote the new Pretzel crisps flavors in the Bold & Spicy flavors, specifically Jalapeño Jack and Chipotle Cheddar. Users could enter once an hour to win a case of the new flavors; all told the company would be giving away a case (36 bags) of the new product every hour for 100 hours. Additionally, the grand prize sweepstakes is $5,000 and winners were to be announced on the Sweepstakes tab on the Page.

Once users entered, a feed story was generated. Users could customize each branded entry by selecting a phrase about the product that also described themselves.

We spoke to Pretzel Crisps’ Director of Interactive and Field Marketing Jason Harty, who noted that the two primary goals of the campaign were to build the size of the Page and to engage with customers about the new products. Plus, “I looked at it as a really unique way to seed product to new people in random parts of the country,” he said in reference to the delivery of cases of new product to winners. Harty said he hoped winners would share the new flavors with their family and friends and share their feedback with the company online.

Harty described the role of social media in Pretzel Crisps’ marketing as “very important,” mostly because it’s a two-way dialogue with customers. The company prides itself on its Facebook content that includes more than simply “buy more or eat more,” but suggests different ways for customers to use the product, a dip recipe for example.

Impact: Pretzel Crisps used this campaign, Harty told us, with the goal of reaching the 100,000 Likes milestonefrom 62,000. Ambitious though it may have been, the Page did almost hit this mark, currently standing at 98,700 Likes. The company shared some preliminary results with us, noting that during the sweepstakes the Page received a 57% increase in fans and more than 8,000 Wall posts. PageData showed the Page received about 36,000 new fans during the span of one week.

What Harty highlighted, however, was that the engagement that accompanied the tens of thousands of entries was very high. About 25% of those who entered also posted a branded news story about the product and their entry, which Harty considered high, noting “I view that as genuine, earned media.”

How are top brands in the industry 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.

But if this data holds true over time, Facebook may have succeeded in making the news feed more engaging. Brands trying to reach the biggest possible audience with institutional marketing through their Pages may be hurt by the change, while those aiming to drive clicks and discussion may be helped by the new hybrid feed.

We’ve also seen steep increase in the presence of reshared content, particularly single photos. This may be due to Facebook showing the number of times a post has been reshared next to its comment count, and the increased display size of photos shared to the news feed.

Before the news feed change, Facebook users could choose between a Top News feed of the most relevant content and a Most Recent feed of other posts in reverse-chronological order. Page updates would frequently appear in the Most Recent feed. This meant more savvy users who switched between the two tabs had a place to go to absorb lots of Page update impressions, but novice users who stayed on Top News might only see the occasional Page update

The hybrid feed combines these two tabs, generally showing more popular content while minor updates are displayed as activity stories in the home page’s right sidebar Ticker. It means users who don’t act to filter their news feed may see more Page content, but more experienced users may see less. In the first days after the change, it seemed like the news feed had very little Page content in it, but that those that did appear were generally very popular and compelling.

EdgeRank Checker’s study seems to confirm this hypothesis that Page updates are appearing less frequently but that they’re being targeted better such that they reach users more likely to think they’re relevant and so leave feedback. The study looked at 1500 randomly selected posts over two time periods, from September 14th to 19th and from the 23rd to 28th, and selected to measure impressions, Likes, and comments before and after the news feed change on the same days of the week.

As the study uses both a small sample size and total time frame, the statistics should not be taken as fact. Another Page analytics company would not disclose data, saying it was too early to make an accurate comparison. However, one of our Pages was seeing increased feedback and reduced impressions that approximate EdgeRank Checker’s findings — and the size of the impact makes it worth writing about now.

EdgeRank Checker believes the difference may be in part due to Facebook causing posts to decay faster. This means the news feed is giving more prominence to recently published updates than it did before.

We believe this increased time decay may cause Page posts to quickly drop down into the “Recent Stories” portion of the news feed if they don’t see much engagement, reducing impressions. Compelling and relevant updates by Pages may be tagged with the Top Story blue corner, and therefore be given prime placement near the top of the feed, causing users to take the time to read and engage with them rather than skimming by them once they start scrolling.

Another contributing factor may be that if a user hasn’t logged in to Facebook for a few days, they’ll only see massively popular or relevant posts at the top of the news feed, and Page posts don’t usually have such as high EdgeRank score. Therefore, the top spot may be less likely to be filled with a Page update now than before, reducing impressions.

Increased Presence of ReShared Photos

The other most noticeable change we’ve seen in the news feed is the presence of more reshared photos. We don’t have data to support this claim, but single reshared photos seem to be appearing in the news feed much more frequently .There are several factors that may have contributed to this:

• Facebook added the “View Shares” count and link to news feed updates, which identifies popular content and reminds users about the option to reshare
• The ability to change to visibility of updates to Public more easily may be causing more photos to be shared publicly and therefore be eligible for re-sharing
• Photos now appear larger in the news feed, making them more eye catching and likely to be reshared
• The larger photos look great in the news feed, and Facebook may be making them more prominent to create a more instantly satisfying look and feel for the home page

The increased feed prominence of single photos makes Facebook a more powerful viral distribution platform for photo-based memes. Facebook even took advantage of this itself to spread a photo debunking the myth that it might start to charge users for access in the future.

However, the increased prominence has also given rise to spammy apps that publish photos tagging multiple friends. This is because reshares of these photos include links back to the apps that help them grow. One called My Friends DNA by Shoutflow quickly rose to 41,000 DAU but has since dropped to nearly zero, indicating it may have been temporarily shut down by Facebook.

Facebook has plenty of data on the volume of different content types in the old news feed. With time, it may try to align new content volumes with the old ones, or improve the EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithms to favor posts that are frequently Liked, commented on, and reshared, rather than simply viewed.

it will take some time before enough data becomes available to conduct accurate analysis of the impact of the news feed changes. There is a chance that Facebook has decreased the EdgeRank of Page posts, but brands and Page management companies should consider holding their concerns until more data becomes available.

If rolled out to all Page admins, the addition of per post data to Page Insights will make it easier for brands to track what kinds of posts and timing result in the higher exposure and engagement. For example, admins could determine what hour of the day is the best for publishing. The newly available could also encroach on the business of some Facebook Page analytics providers, though these companies also offer advanced analysis of the data.

Amit Lavi, Social Media Director at Abagada was the first to spot the new data. He tells us that “Now, everyone with knowledge of Excel will be able to find the right time of day and day of week to post content. Also, with a bit of manual categorization, admins will also be able to assess which content works better for their Page.”

Facebook added per post data the admin view of Page walls of authenticated Pages with over 10,000 fans in January. Oddly, it didn’t simultaneously begin showing the same data in the Insights user interface or the .XLS or .CSV data exports. We’ve received information that the per post data in the exports doesn’t always go back as far as requested. This means there’s a chance that that Insights data on post impressions and feedback might not be totally reliable, at least at first.

Page management companies that offer analytics services and dedicated Page analytics providers could lose some of their more budget-conscious customers to Facebook Insights. However, to pull actionable lessons from the Insights data, admins will have to do some legwork in Excel.

Professional analytics providers will likely be able to crunch the data more efficiently, derive more sophisticated best practices, and provide benchmark data aggregated from across their clients. For example PageLever used its own collection of per post impressions data to determine that the average Page receives only 7.49 news feed impressions per post per 100 fans. Buddy Media used per post data to figure out that shorter post receive more engagement and that Thursday is the best day to post when looking across industries.

If Facebook makes per post data more easily accessible to all admins, it could also raise awareness of the need to analyze the data, which could in turn drive business for the providers of enterprise analytics tools and services. Either way, with time the data will help brands improve their Page post strategies. This could lead to more engaging branded content in the news feed, improving the Facebook experience for the average user. The next step will be for Facebook to provide data on clicks per post.