Inside Facebook

A good number of the Pages on our list of the fastest growing by Facebook Likes seem to have made the list this week as the result of Page consolidations. For example, several grew by a few million or hundreds of thousands of Likes in the span of one day. Most of the Pages revolved around movies, music, or other media-type Pages.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Manga	3,616,265	+1,248,535	+3,392,767
2.	Transformers	8,652,304	+21,626	+1,750,700
3.	Saving Private Ryan	1,308,781	+142	+1,306,606
4.	Back to the Future Trilogy	1,329,403	+1,539	+732,669
5.	The Godfather	5,611,292	+6,191	+612,465
6.	NatGeo	3,080,243	+71,990	+466,494
7.	The Miami HEAT	4,063,727	+4,504	+445,725
8.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
9.	Girl With The Dragon Tattoo	420,131	+314	+408,975
10.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
11.	Music	27,848,019	+47,330	+326,669
12.	Facebook	52,727,244	+49,186	+313,866
13.	Angry Birds	7,492,940	+56,829	+308,560
14.	Harry Potter	34,680,412	+46,970	+307,580
15.	Banda Sinaloense MS	383,725	+1,801	+283,108
16.	The Smurfs	4,316,318	+40,000	+280,756
17.	Rihanna	45,205,913	+45,566	+273,532
18.	FOX Deportes	322,720	+251	+271,943
19.	Fidel Rueda Oficial	403,507	+1,645	+270,123
20.	Leo Messi	24,887,445	+41,047	+269,339

Manga, a Community Page revolving around the Japanese comic books, grew by 3.3 million this week to most of its 3.6 million; it appeared to be a Page consolidation. Similarly, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo grew by 409,000 Likes to 420,100 in a period of two days.

“Transformers” grew by 1.7 million, mostly in a few days, to 8.6 million and has been promoting the Blu ray version of the film. “Saving Private Ryan” grew 1.3 million, most of its Likes this week. The Back to the Future Trilogy grew by 732,700 Likes to 1.3 million in a span of a few days. “The Godfather” grew by 612,500 Likes to 5.6 million, mostly in one day, and has been promoting the new game in Beta from Kabam. Then there was the “Titanic” Page with 409,500 Likes to 13.5 million, “Harry Potter” with 307,600 Likes to 34.6 million and “The Smurfs” with 280,800 Likes to 4.2 million; this last Page has been actively promoting film-related products and Pages very actively.

TV-related Pages included NatGeo with 466,500 Likes to pass 3 million; the Page has actively promoted new shows and seen steady growth. Then there was FOX Deportes with 272,000 Likes, growing to 322,700 Likes, in what seemed to be a Page consolidation.

Music Pages included the Music Community Page with 326,700 Likes to reach 27.8 million. Then there were two Mexican musicians’ Pages, Banda Sinaloense MS with 283,100 Likes to reach 383,700 and Fidel Rueda Oficial with 270,100 likes to reach 403,500, that seemed due to Page consolidations. Finally, Rihanna’s Page reached 45.2 million with 273,500 additional Likes this week; she’s been promoting her appearances and products on the Page.

The rest of the Pages were a mixed bunch. The Miami HEAT’s Page grew by 445,700 Likes to pass 4 million, partly from consolidation. The  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! Page grew by 333,000 to 445,400 Likes. Facebook’s Page grew by 313,900 to 52.7 million. Angry Birds grew by 308,600 Likes to 7.4 million and soccer star Leo Messi’s Page has been recruiting visitors to Like it, resulting in growth of 269,300 Likes to 24.8 million.

A series of films, TV shows, football (soccer) Pages, musicians and game-related Pages made our list of the fastest growing Pages by Likes this week. There appeared to be a few making the list as a result of Page consolidations on the part of Facebook as well; other Pages included Facebook, YouTube and the Dislike button.

Pages on our list this week required 245,700 and 887,800 Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Amelie	914,631	+2,040	+887,761
2.	Tyler Perry’s House of Payne	1,399,656	+1,354	+488,663
3.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
4.	Best Buy	4,713,507	+16,748	+379,883
5.	Harry Potter	34,378,858	+46,940	+347,620
6.	The Smurfs	4,044,855	+45,818	+336,714
7.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
8.	Neymar Jr. Oficial	1,294,937	+4,872	+330,449
9.	Music	27,524,350	+51,113	+327,684
10.	Facebook	52,423,151	+44,567	+322,175
11.	Rihanna	44,944,006	+39,183	+293,734
12.	Leo Messi	24,655,217	+37,117	+286,251
13.	Cristiano Ronaldo	33,854,205	+37,919	+283,885
14.	Angry Birds	7,176,654	+40,279	+275,940
15.	Eminem	46,801,364	+38,033	+273,049
16.	Texas Hold’em Poker	49,978,274	+3,685	+266,588
17.	YouTube	44,929,018	+34,736	+250,537
18.	Family Guy	37,584,241	+37,407	+248,696
19.	Adele	5,602,289	+36,312	+247,065
20.	FC Barcelona	20,184,504	+31,231	+245,679

Movies on our list this week included “Amelie” with 887,800 Likes to grow to 914,600, although it appears to be a Page consolidation. Then “Titanic” with 409,500 Likes to grow to 13.4 million. “Harry Potter” grew by 347,600 Likes to pass 34.3 million and “The Smurfs” grew to 336,700 to pass a total of 4 million.

TV shows included “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” with 488,700 Likes to grow to 1.4 million and “Family Guy” with 248,700 Likes to 37.6 million.

Football (soccer) figured prominently on the list this week, too with three players’ Pages and one team on the list. Neymar Jr. Oficial grew by 330,500 Likes to 1.2 million, although it appeared to be a Page consolidation. Then Leo Messi by 286,300 Likes to 24.6 million and Cristiano Ronaldo to 283,900 Likes to 33.8 million. Finally the team FC Barcelona grew by 245,700 Likes to 20.1 million.

Music Pages on the list included the Community Page Music with 327,700 Likes to reach 27.5 million, Rihanna’s Page grew to 293,700 Likes to 44.9 million, Eminem’s Page grew by 273,000 to 46.8 million and Adele’s Page grew to 247,100 Likes 5.6 million.

The rest of the Pages included Best Buy with 379,900 Likes to 4.7 million. Facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! grew by 333,000 Likes to 445,400 this week while Facebook’s actual Page grew by 322,200 Likes to 52.4 million. Then Angry Birds grew by 275,900 to 7.1 million, Texas Hold’em Poker grew by 266,600 to 49.9 million and, finally, YouTube by 250,500 Likes to 44.9 million.

iTunes and Amazon take note: musicians are now selling MP3s directly from their Facebook Pages. Electronic music producer and DJ David Guetta this week added a tab application to his Facebook Page that allows him to sell MP3s for Facebook Credits. The Nothing But The Beat app, developed by French marketing agency KRDS, allows users who’ve Liked Guetta’s Page to listen to previews of tracks, publish audio clips of songs to the news feed and the walls of friends, make payments, and initiate downloads.

The enhanced and retention viral features, ability for artists set their own download prices, and the fact that Facebook and iTunes take an equal 30% cut of sales could make Facebook Page tab apps an increasingly popular digital distribution channel for musicians.

Facebook has emerged as a digital media store this year, allowing third-party developers to use its Credits payment system to offer an alternative purchase point to iTunes and Amazon for film rentals, pay-per-view video streams, and now music. Facebook isn’t officially pushing this use of Credits, but may offer a first-party MP3 store or payment portal to streaming services such as Spotify, Mog, and Rdio as part of its anticipated Music Dashboard that’s expected to launch later this month at the f8 developer conference.

David Guetta now has the 39th most popular Facebook Page according to PageData, collecting 23.6 million Facebook fans despite not being a household name. He’s accomplished this by being a savvy early adopter of music technologies, using creative tab apps and partnerships with developers such as MXP4 to frequently reach our fastest growing Pages charts.

Guetta’s app prices MP3s at 19 Credits, or $1.90 apiece, making them 1.47 times more expensive than on iTunes. The app may therefore be designed to attract impulse buys and those looking for convenience rather than savvy music shoppers. However, any artist could develop a similar app and sell tracks for equal or cheaper than other popular music services in order to draw customers to where they have a higher lifetime value.

Facebook Offers Musicians Better Retention and Virality

With artists increasingly driving their fans to their Facebook Pages that offer strong retention and marketing capabilities, offering MP3 sales from the same presence could be lucrative. Otherwise, musicians must force users to open the iTunes desktop software or direct them offsite to Amazon or other webstores before they can execute purchases. The friction of these extra clicks and load times cause some users to drop off, diminishing sales that might have been completed if users didn’t have to leave Facebook.

Virality and retention is also much better on Facebook than on other music stores. By hosting MP3 sales apps on their Pages, musicians can gain the opportunity to market to users in the future, especially if they require users to Like their Page to access the app. iTunes only allows users to subscribe to updates about an artist through its failed Ping social network, and Amazon doesn’t offer any long-term retention mechanic.

By using Facebook’s social plugins and stream publishing capabilities, developers can let listeners share albums, tracks, and artists to the news feed with a single click, while iTunes and Amazon require multiple clicks, sometimes through hidden drop-down menus. When users click the Like or Send button on a song through a Facebook app such as Guetta’s, friends can play an audio preview of the track straight from the news feed. iTunes and Amazon’s song shares don’t offer in-line play so users must click through to the desktop app or site to hear a song recommended by a friend.

Since iTunes and Amazon downloads are served from the servers of those services, artists can’t offer free or deeply discounted downloads without approval. On Facebook, though, artists serve downloads from their own servers and don’t need Facebook’s approval for anything. The social network simply gets its 30% cut of any Facebook Credits purchases, so artists can offer free or cheap downloads as loss leaders to win over new fans.

The enormous number of credit cards numbers iTunes and Amazon have collected and their roles as go-to digital media buying destinations means artists aren’t likely to sell exclusively on Facebook. Instead, they’ll add the site as another distribution channel alongside other digital stores, their own websites, and physical retail stores.

Sales on Facebook could cut into those on iTunes and Amazon, though, while creating a new revenue stream for the social network. Established online music stores will need to consider improving their retention and virality mechanics to give artists better access to their customers and improved lead generation through rich media sharing. Otherwise, they could see digital music sale market share slowly slip to Facebook.

A variety of Community Pages made our list this week, as did the retail store Best Buy courtesy of being featured in Zynga’s CityVille recently, then there was music, several football (soccer) Pages and a mix of everything from authors to video games. Pages on our list this week required 290,900 and 2.1 million Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Manga	2,214,848	+2,132,300	+2,157,470
2.	Best Buy	4,353,578	+28,791	+642,390
3.	Official Blink-182	5,178,312	+5,525	+471,702
4.	The Smurfs	3,763,082	+60,276	+418,432
5.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
6.	Twilight	22,210,630	+64,746	+398,748
7.	Facebook	52,143,844	+49,452	+366,933
8.	Harry Potter	34,084,123	+55,366	+364,700
9.	Music	27,248,665	+50,655	+363,342
10.	Anne Rice	540,430	-1,135	+338,800
11.	Call of Duty: Black Ops	10,846,790	+46,597	+337,561
12.	facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake!	445,351	0	+333,025
13.	Twilight Series	415,535	-18	+322,497
14.	Leo Messi	24,368,964	+45,359	+317,135
15.	Texas Hold’em Poker	49,757,711	+45,811	+317,093
16.	Element Skateboards	363,887	+1,090	+312,214
17.	Rihanna	44,688,868	+46,638	+311,563
18.	FC Barcelona	19,983,422	+43,833	+293,300
19.	Angry Birds	6,942,765	+44,542	+293,160
20.	Cristiano Ronaldo	33,612,334	+42,178	+290,948

Manga, a Japanese form of comic books, is a Community Page with 2.1 million new Likes this week. The Music Page grew by 363,300 Likes and the Twilight Series grew by 322,500 Likes. Then, as previously mentioned was Best Buy, which grew by 642,400 Likes; the landing tab on the Page asks visitors to Like it, but being able to place a Bests Buy store in your CityVille city allowed users to collect five popular products up until today. The CityVille feature was advertised significantly on the Page’s news feed.

Musicians today on the list included Official Blink-182 with 471,700 Likes; the band is releasing new music, touring and updating frequently with updates and contests and the like. Then Rihanna’s Page grew by 311,600 Likes. Popular movies included “The Smurfs” with 418,400 Likes, “Titanic” by 409,500 Likes, “Twilight” by 398,700 Likes and “Harry Potter” by 364,700 Likes.

Football made our list in the form of two famous players and one team. Leo Messi’s Page grew by 317,100 Likes; the Argentine FC Barcelona player has been updating the Page frequently and includes a landing tab asking visitors to Like the Page. Then FC Barcelona was on the list with 293,300 Likes this week. Finally there was Cristiano Ronaldo with 291,000 Likes. Most of these Likes seem to be organic.

There were two games on the list Texas Hold’em Poker with 317,100 Likes and Angry Birds with 293,200 Likes. The rest of the list was a mixed bag. Facebook grew by 367,000 Likes. Novelist Anne Rice saw most of her 338,800 Likes in the span of two days, perhaps a consolidation, although she also recently public “quit” being Christian on Facebook. Call of Duty: Black Ops grew by 337,600 Likes,  facebook realesed the new Dislike Button™! Add it Now!! not a fake! by 333,000 Likes and Element Skateboards with 312,200 Likes.

In the latest of many rumors about Facebook’s yet-to-launch music service, CNBC says today that it is coming at the company’s f8 developer conference next month in San Francisco.

GigaOm reported basically the same thing in June, and described the features in detail then. The service will include a new page called a Music Dashboard, that’s linked to the home page via a Music tab. The interface would allow you to choose from Spotify and a variety of other music services, and include a persistent play button, and a variety of other music-sharing features.

Facebook has bandied a variety of music-related ideas around over the years, and in 2008 it was poised to launch a streaming music of some sort in collaboration with a single music company, such as Lala. Nothing ever happened, largely because record labels didn’t want to agree to a deal to stream content to Facebook users at the time. Most of the potential partners that Facebook talked to then have since failed (also due to label licensing problems) or been acquired, and the project stalled out.

In the intervening years, musicians have formed a significant part of Facebook’s most popular Pages, and a variety of Page management companies have built businesses providing customized music applications for them. The market leader, RootMusic, just raised a second round of $16 million after growing its monthly active users by ten times in the past twelve months to reach around 32 million users a month today. As we noted about that deal this morning, a conceivable threat is what Facebook does with its music service. Are Spotify and other partners going to provide a better fan experience than Facebook Pages in this new service, and focus engagement away from the existing services? Or will Facebook’s Music Dashboard and other features tie the existing music Pages together with the new streaming options.

Either way, the new service sounds like a big win for the millions of Facebook users who love music, and for the partners who are part of the launch.

Among other launches that we expect at f8, the HTML5 efforts is looking increasingly mature, and there’s been a variety of leaks around upgrades to photos and its mobile app. Lastly, Facebook could finally launch its long-awaited iPad app.

In an apparently widespread set of Page consolidations, several on our list grew by the hundreds of thousands in the span of a few days but had a daily growth of a few hundred — and most were obscure films, TV shows or bands. There were, however, several films and Pages on the list that we’ve seen before; it appears as though lots of Page consolidation occurred this past week.  Pages on our list this week required 395,800 and 2.1 million Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Listening to music	2,198,884	+1,547,089	+2,169,587
2.	Everything	1,022,236	+741,595	+1,001,686
3.	My Family	1,096,491	+697,562	+979,006
4.	Vodafone Egypt	942,203	+972	+933,877
5.	Islam KTP	828,523	+455,440	+734,818
6.	Arti Sahabat	672,772	+354,341	+601,958
7.	Official Detroit Red Wings	1,098,639	+227	+494,795
8.	The Smurfs	3,352,945	+72,145	+485,352
9.	Harry Potter	33,719,140	+56,433	+447,013
10.	Detective Conan	471,257	+279,911	+440,909
11.	Music	26,886,202	+59,190	+438,662
12.	The Armada	493,667	+123,204	+431,221
13.	3 Idiots	5,793,257	+204,250	+413,553
14.	Gospel music	3,501,632	+276,453	+410,599
15.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
16.	Facebook	51,780,853	+58,590	+406,539
17.	Harry Potter	17,856,481	+107,924	+405,083
18.	Ghostbusters	800,781	+680	+403,683
19.	Twilight	22,210,630	+64,746	+398,748
20.	Real Madrid C.F.	19,050,371	+32,575	+395,801

Pages on our list included Community Pages this week. Listening to music grew by 1.5 million Likes, growing most of that in a few days, to 2.1 million; the Page is dedicated to enjoying music and appears to have no affiliation. The band Everything’s Page grew by more than 1 million Likes; it’s a Community Page that grew most of these Likes, 741,600, in a few days. The Music Community Page grew by 438,700 Likes. Irish rock band The Armada’s Community Page grew 431,200 Likes to 493,700 in a few days. Then the Community Page of Gospel music grew 35 million with 410,600 in the span of a few days.

TV shows included the Indonesian “My Family” with most of its 1 million Likes, 979,000, occurring in a few days. “Islam KTP” is another Indonesian TV show, but this is the Community Page that grew to 828,200 Likes with 734,800 this week. Finally, a Filipino show, “Arti Sahabat” grew more than 354,300 Likes in a few days to 672,800 Likes.

Movies on the list included “The Smurfs” grew by 485,400 Likes to 3.3 million; the Page is running a related contest. “Harry Potter” saw 447,000 Likes this week to grow to 33.7 million; the “Harry Potter” Community Page was also on the list, growing 405,100 Likes to 17.8 million. A 2009 Indian movie, “3 Idiots” grew 413,600 Likes to 5.7 million in the span of a few days. “Titanic” Community Page grew 409,500 Likes to 13.5 million. “Ghostbusters” saw 403,700 Likes this week to grow to 800,800, thought most of that came in the span of a few days. Finally there was “Twilight” with 398,700 Likes to 22.2 million as the next installment in the franchise is set for a November release.

Other Pages on the list included Vodafone Egypt, which seems to be organic growth of 933,900 Likes to 942,200 this week. Sports teams were on the list, too; Official Detroit Red Wings grew 494,800 Likes to pass 1 million in a few days but Real Madrid C.F. grew 395,800 Likes to 19 million this week, all organic it seems. Japanese comic book series, Detective Conan, grew more than 440,900 Likes to 471,300 in a few days and Facebook’s Page grew 406,500 Likes to 51.7 million.

Music marketing software suite developer ReverbNation yesterday launched Promote It, a self-serve Ads API tool that lets musicians create automatically optimized Facebook advertising campaigns and landing pages for as little as $25. Musicians simply choose their spend, enter some similar artists, and pick a song or Facebook Page to promote, then ReverbNation targets, buys, and manages the campaign, optimizing for gaining fans and news feed shares.

Promote It appears to be the first vertical-specific self-serve Ads API tool targeting the long tail of advertisers. It could inspire similar tools aimed at retailers, local businesses, small game developers, and other advertisers who have too little spend and expertise to qualify for most Ads API tools and services aimed at bigger brands.

ReverbNation offers a comprehensive suite of email marketing, CRM, analytics and other business solutions for musicians. It includes Band Profile, the second most popular Facebook Page tab application for musicians looking to promote themselves and stream their music behind RootMusic’s BandPage. It also recently released Venue Profile which offers similar services to concert halls and bars.

Without Promote It, most musicians have had to manually buy Facebook ads to attract new fans for their Pages. At any scale, Facebook’s manual advertising interface doesn’t provide sophisticated enough A/B testing or bid management features to allow users to maximize the performance of their campaigns. Even if it did, most musicians and their teams wouldn’t have the know-how to optimize their campaigns or build compelling landing pages that convert clicks into fans and shares.

Promote It takes care of all these problems, asking musician simple questions and converting their answers into ad campaigns and landing pages. To attain the same outcome, musicians would have previously needed to spend many thousands of dollars a month with a managed spend Ads API service and thousands more for development of landing pages.

To use Promote It, musicians choose Here’s how Promote It works:

1. Which song or Facebook Page to promote
2. Five similar artists whose fans their ads will be shown to
3. Whether they want new local, domestic, any English-speaking or global fans
4. If they want to add any of their own ad copy or images to ReverbNations automatically generated ad creative variants
5. What Facebook account to sync the account with
6. How much they want to spend on the campaign, as little as $25

One drawback of Promote It is the lack of transparency in ReverbNation’s margins on ad spend. Rather than using a traditional cost per acquisition or percentage of total spend model, musicians don’t any goals for their campaign’s budget, and ReverbNation doesn’t cite how much it spends some on ads and how much it keeps.

The company’s COO Jed Carlson tells us that this is because the “quality of an artist’s music and photo is highly deterministic of what we pay for conversions”. Early tests of Promote It showed artists end up paying around $1 per new fan, though a catchy song and ad creative can significantly reduce this. Still, some musicians might not be comfortable allowing ReverbNation to decide how many new fans they deserve for their spend, even if the service is a big improvement over running the ads manually.

ReverbNation currently has 1.7 million total clients, and 250,000 more use its competitor RootMusic’s Facebook service. Promote It could therefore turn into a huge revenue stream for ReverbNation, as well as a key selling point for attracting musicians seeking to score new fans for their Facebook Pages.

Perhaps even more significant are the implications for the Facebook Ads API and advertising world as a whole. If similar tools for other verticals proliferate, smaller advertisers could gain access to the same performance-enhancing capabilities that major brands use to get the most for their spend. With Facebook recently opening the Ads API after years of private beta testing, developers could help level the playing field for advertisers in specific industries while taking healthy cuts of spend for themselves.

Musicians made up half the list of our growing Facebook Pages this week, there were also a handful of films, as well as a few big brands, “The Simpsons” and footballer Cristiano Ronaldo’s Page. Pages on our list this week required 356,500 and 974,300 Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Rihanna	42,972,075	+104,987	+974,253
2.	Rick Ross	1,571,304	+4,843	+961,758
3.	Harry Potter	32,187,758	+89,363	+664,545
4.	Justin Bieber	34,514,951	+54,656	+654,115
5.	Red Hot Chili Peppers	12,301,876	+17,681	+594,496
6.	The Smurfs	1,687,203	+107,380	+531,237
7.	The Wizard of Oz	539,645	+156	+500,003
8.	Shakira	38,686,979	+69,415	+493,045
9.	Eminem	45,010,290	+63,589	+475,881
10.	Katy Perry	33,563,568	+61,110	+442,526
11.	Texas Hold’em Poker	48,266,719	+63,233	+439,677
12.	Facebook	50,188,314	+50,059	+436,009
13.	Twilight	22,210,630	+64,746	+398,748
14.	YouTube	43,164,872	+48,195	+392,252
15.	Florence and the Machine	1,701,844	+2,315	+383,229
16.	The Simpsons	33,270,481	+45,785	+382,543
17.	Titanic	13,076,634	+55,253	+379,183
18.	AKON	29,138,034	+51,884	+365,498
19.	Lady Gaga	42,083,997	+47,683	+361,823
20.	Cristiano Ronaldo	32,270,870	+48,530	+356,496

Rihanna’s Page grew by 974,300 Likes this week with an average of about 105,000 a day, pushing her total to 42.7 million; she’s currently promoting her upcoming film, concerts, products and music. Justin Bieber saw growth of about 54,700 Likes a day, 654,100 in the past week to total 34.5 million. Red Hot Chili Peppers are currently promoting the pre-order of their upcoming album and grew by 594,500 in the past week, bringing their total to 12.3 million Likes. Shakira’s Page grew by 493,000 Likes after she’s been touring, appearing in TV shows and promoting charity.

Eminem’s Page grew by 475,900 Likes to push him over 45 million Likes; an interesting promotion on his Page involved a special “fan” price for a Kansas City concert in which he participated. Katy Perry’s Page saw 442,500 Likes this week after she’s been promoting her concerts and new single, to bring her to 33.5 million Likes. AKON saw 365,500 Likes this week to total 29.1 million as he’s been promoting his latest single and Lady Gaga has done the same, pushing her Page past 42 million with growth of 361,800 Likes.

There seemed to be some Page consolidations on the list, too, characterized by very small daily Likes growth, but huge weekly growth as evidenced by huge spikes in growth starting around Friday. Musician Rick Ross’s Page grew by 961,800 Likes to 1.5 million, the bulk of his Likes, averaging just 4,800 a day. Florence and the Machine grew by 383,200 Likes, averaging 2,300 daily, pushing her to 1.7 million Likes.

Movies on the list this week included “Harry Potter” with 664,500 Likes (see above) to reach 32.2 million Likes; the film is currently in theaters. “The Smurfs,” also in theaters, grew by 531,200 Likes to 1.6 million, “The Wizard of Oz” also seemed to be a Page consolidation growing to 539,700 Likes with 500,000 in the past week and averaging just 156 Likes a day. There was “Twilight” with 398,700 Likes in the past week and Titanic, a Community Page, which grew by 379,200 Likes to 13 million.

The remainder of the list included Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker Page which grew by 439,700 Likes to 48.2 million, Facebook’s Page which grew by 436,000 likes to more than 50.1 million and  YouTube with 392,300 Likes to 43.1 million. “The Simpsons” grew by 382,500 to 33.2 million after the show was nominated for awards, while promoting merchandise and its actors. Finally there was footballer Cristiano Ronaldo’s Page with grew by 356,500 Likes to 32.2 million after updating about his games and charity activities.

About half of our list of the fastest growing Facebook Pages this week were comprised of musical artists; the others included a handful of movie Pages, some TV-related Pages, Walmart’s Page, Jesus’s Page and a Turkish football team.

Pages on our list this week required 191,800 and 903,600 Likes to make the top 20 this week. We compile these lists with our PageData tool, which counts the number of fans added to a Page each week.

	Name	Likes	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Amy Winehouse	3,089,259	+903,588	+41%
2.	Titanic	12,499,736	+398,988	+3%
3.	Aerosmith	4,400,320	+389,730	+10%
4.	Jesus Daily	7,827,098	+380,544	+5%
5.	Beşiktaş	341,384	+341,384	+0.0%
6.	DirecTV	281,401	+281,401	+0.0%
7.	Food Network	1,845,460	+261,107	+16%
8.	Bruno Mars	10,219,516	+251,929	+3%
9.	Pitbull	9,302,019	+242,708	+3%
10.	Captain America	1,023,434	+238,202	+30%
11.	The Smurfs	880,656	+223,159	+34%
12.	Chris Brown	14,102,179	+219,232	+2%
13.	Kesha	15,731,133	+211,729	+1%
14.	Erykah Badu	1,565,900	+204,027	+15%
15.	Pirates of the Caribbean	8,514,051	+203,804	+2%
16.	Wiz Khalifa	10,316,313	+203,372	+2%
17.	Shrek	16,114,329	+198,892	+1%
18.	Britney Spears	13,151,040	+194,640	+2%
19.	Adele	4,231,315	+191,877	+5%
20.	Walmart	7,939,632	+191,777	+2%

Amy Winehouse’s Page continued to grow, 903,600 new Likes this week, in light of her untimely recent death. There were a few other musicians on the Page, such as Aerosmith with 389,700 Likes and Erykah Badu with 204,000, that seemed to grow as the result of Page consolidations. Aside from that, Bruno Mars saw 251,900 Likes, in part because he’s been updating with lots of photos from performances and about his award nominations; the singer’s Page was also award Spotify accounts to fans. Another singer on our list, Chris Brown with 219,200 Likes, also gave out Spotify accounts to fans.

Pitbull’s Page grew by 242,700 Likes as he promoted his concerts and events. Kesha posted lots of photos and her Page grew by 211,700 Likes. Wiz Khalifa’s Page grew by 203,400 Likes as he was nominated for some awards. Britney Spears, currently on tour, posted photos and videos to that effect and her Page grew by 194,700 Likes. Finally, Adele’s Page grew by 191,900 Likes.

Movie Pages made up a big chunk of the list, too. The “Titanic” Page, though, was the only Community Page on our list with about 399,000 new Likes. “Captain America” grew by 238,200 Likes, in part perhaps by posting exclusive Facebook video content in which stars answer questions from the Page. Then “The Smurfs” grew by 223,200 Likes as the film is currently in theaters. “Pirates of the Caribbean” grew by 203,800 by posting photos and promoting the pre-order of home copies of the films. Finally there was “Shrek” with 198,900 Likes.

Other Pages included the Jesus Daily religious Page posting multiple updates daily with 380,500 Likes, the Beşiktaş Turkish football (soccer) club that grew by 341,400 Likes, DirecTV’s charity-powered growth with 281,400 Likes, the Food Network with 261,100 Likes and finally Walmart with 191,800 Likes.

Facebook yesterday announced that when users post a URL in a comment, a preview of content from that page will be shown in-line. Similar to when users post URLs into the Facebook publisher for sharing to the news feed, comment reels can now show photos, play videos, and display blurbs and images from websites. Unlike wall and news feed posts, the content preview won’t appear until after the URL is published, but comment authors are then given the option to remove the preview.

The ability to show content previews of URLs in comments should make comment reels more engaging, keep users from having to click links blindly, and allow them to compellingly reference off-site content in conversations. It should increase referral traffic driven to third-party site by Facebook.

Facebook has been adding new functionality to comments over the past few months. In March users gained the ability to tag comments with friends as well as Pages, Groups, Events, and apps they’re connected to. In April, it began allowing users to edit comments they’ve posted if they click the ‘x’ on a comment within a few seconds of posting it.

Previously, if users wanted to share a URL in a comment, the link would appear as simple text. Without some kind of image to attract eye balls, these links weren’t clicked as often as the quality of their content warranted. It also meant other users couldn’t tell where the link led by for clicking it, decreasing trust and increasing worry about being scammed such that users might not click through.

A Wide Variety of Rich Content

Now if a user posts a URL into a comment field and publishes, a preview of the URL’s content will appear in-line. The author can then click “Remove preview” if they wish to strip the rich content from the comment. Unfortunately, because the preview doesn’t appear while users are still composing their comment, they can’t choose the delete the URL but keep the preview as they can with wall and news feed posts. This means that a redundant instance of the URL will appear in the comment’s text, making the accompanying commentary by the author more difficult to read.

Photos can be posted in comments by publishing a link leading directly to an image file. If users post the URL of a Facebook photo, the preview will include a link to the photo’s owner and the album it is in. Videos from a variety of sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, and Hulu can be played in-line within comments. Users can share music by posting links directly to MP3s or to streaming sites such as Soundcloud, Grooveshark, and BandCamp.

URLs of websites without rich content will generate a preview that includes a blurb and a thumbnail image if available. Websites can control which images and text are included by marking up their pages with Facebook’s Open Graph tags. Unlike wall and news feed posts, users can’t edit the text of a preview’s headline or blurb caption.

Comment previews should help users find more interesting off-site content to consumer and allow them to click links more confidently. The ability to compellingly reference a news story or video relevant to a discussion should increase engagement and lead to longer comment reel conversations.

Pages will be able to use the feature to respond to comments on their walls with rich content. They’ll also be able to post rich content to the comment reels of other Pages to attract visitors. For instance, if one Page posts a simple text status update, another Page might be able to steal its thunder by posting a video as comment on the post.

Designed to Prevent Spam

[Update: Originally, this article noted that the comment previews could be used for spam because spammers could post links with eye-grabbing previews as comments to Pages, which other users would have to see and might be lured into click. However, the designer of the feature, Facebook's Tom Whitnah, has informed us that comment previews were designed to prevent this kind of spam:

"When you're viewing a comment with a preview, it will be collapsed by default unless you are either friends with the commenter or the commenter is the author of the post. This means that when you're viewing public page posts, you'll have to click Expand Preview to actually see the preview for virtually all comments. So this means for compelling comments, people can still view the previews onsite, while spammy comment previews on pages are likely to never be seen/expanded. Therefore comments with previews should rarely be more compelling vectors for spam and won't be able to attract more attention to their comment with a salacious image."]

Overall, though, comment previews should enrich the user experience and increase the amount of referral traffic Facebook sends to third-party websites. Posts in comment reels send notifications to the original post’s author and other commenters. The rich content these notifications link to may inspire additional comments that in turn generate more notifications, causing comment previews to increase the frequency of return visits to the site.

The more referral traffic Facebook drives, the more that businesses and websites recognize Facebook’s influence. This leads them to devote more resources to optimizing their site through Open Graph tags, developing a presence through Facebook Pages, and buying Facebook ads.