Facebook updated the mobile version of News Feed this weekend so users can like and comment on posts with one tap instead of two.

Previously, users of Facebook’s iOS app, Android app and mobile touch site had to tap a “+” button that would bring up the like and comment options. Now the features are directly under each post, making interaction faster and easier.

Since the social network pulls News Feed from m.facebook.com into its native applications, changes like this can be made without requiring users to download a new version of the app.

Still absent from the mobile feed is the “share” button allowing users to repost content from their friends or pages. Sharing on the desktop version of the site has taken off since Facebook enlarged image thumbnails and began displaying the total number of shares, but users have not been able to take this action from their mobile devices.

Facebook today announced that users will be able to group pages and public figures into “interest lists” so that they can filter their News Feed by topic.

We spotted this feature last week and suggested it would be another challenge to Twitter, which offers a similar list capability. Facebook users have long been able to create lists to organize their friends, but there hasn’t been an option to group pages until today.

Facebook says users will see an “Add Interests” link in their left-hand bookmarks in coming weeks. From there, users can subscribe to lists from other users or create their own. Interest lists can include pages, subscriptions and friends. The top stories from each interest will appear in News Feed with a link to read more posts.

When users view a list, it appears as a filtered version of News Feed, similar to how people can view individual friend lists. The difference is that users can share and subscribe to each other’s interest lists if they make them available to friends or the public. Users can also create lists that only they can see. There are additional controls for users to select what type of stories to include or exclude in the feed. For example, you can select to see only photos from a page or only music and videos from a public figure.

As we noted last week, Facebook has been aggressively pursuing the “interest graph” — the relationship between people and topics. Many have pointed to Twitter as beating Facebook in this area, but with the subscribe feature and now interest lists, the social network is catching up.

It’s too early to tell, but interest lists could change how people view and interact with stories from brand pages. If users see posts among others on the same topic, they might be more engaged than when they see these posts among others from friends and unrelated pages. It also means users don’t have to Like pages in order to see updates from them. This raises questions about how ads will be targeted depending whether a user Likes a page or subscribes to it.

Still, interest lists are likely to be a power user feature. In 2010, Facebook said only 5 percent of users created friend lists, which launched in 2007. With the ability to subscribe to interest lists created by others, however, more users might adopt the feature. The company is also likely to promote the feature heavily in sidebars and other areas, as it has done with “People to subscribe to.”

[Update 3/8/12 11:14 a.m. PT - Facebook is already highlighting interest lists created by public figures. For example "Cast of Glee" created by Ryan Seacrest, "Washington Post Staff" created by journalist Mark Luckie and "NFL Players" by ESPN Adam Schefter.]

You can subscribe to the Inside Network Blogs list here.

Facebook users will now see their friends’ scores and achievements in social games through three new News Feed story types: achievement stories, high score stories and passing stories, the company announced in a blog post. Another unannounced item, “Play It Again,” encourages users to go back to games they’ve already tried.

The social network continues to experiment with ways to drive discovery and re-engagement for games as some developers begin to doubt the viability of the platform. Facebook says there has been a 60 percent increase in new users installing games by clicking on feed stories since launching an aggregate “playing” story. Now it hopes to drive additional traffic through scores and achievements posts. Examples of the three new story types are shown below.

Facebook says the stories that get the most clicks, likes, and comments will get more distribution in News Feed and on Timeline.

We’ve also seen the social network testing a module on the right sidebar that prompts users to return to games they’ve already installed. Facebook’s other efforts at re-engagement have been in the form of bookmarks and notifications.

Our sister blog, Inside Social Games, wrote last week that game discovery on Facebook is still no easy task, but we recognize the company’s creative attempts to solve the problem while protecting the user experience.

It was a busy week for anyone following Facebook. The company overhauled pages and introduced a number of changes to its advertising platform. All the new terminology and features are easy to mix up so we wanted to clarify a few points.

Users will not see paid content in News Feed that could not show up there organically

Facebook is not actually allowing advertisers to serve ads in the News Feed of anyone they want to target. A user must have Liked a page or have a friend who took an action on a page (Like, comment, share, check-in, claim an offer, etc.) in order for a paid story to show in the mobile or desktop feed. If advertisers want to reach people who have not Liked their page or who do not have the endorsement of a friend, then their ads will show up on the right hand side of the page like all other ads.

This is the key difference between Twitter’s promoted tweets and Facebook sponsored stories. Twitter inserts promoted tweets directly in users’ streams, regardless of whether a person follows the company or someone they follow retweeted it. On Facebook, there has to be some existing relationship between a user and the content creator before that content can be shown in News Feed.

Reach Generator only available to ‘premium’ advertisers

Reach Generator, which helps pages reach more of their existing fan base, is meant for brands spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, on Facebook. These advertisers will pay a fixed rate depending how many Likes their pages have, not on cost per click like many advertisers using Facebook’s self-serve platform or Ads API tools. Pages without that kind of budget can still expand their reach with page-post ads and Sponsored Stories. The difference is that these ads are not necessarily eligible to show within News Feed or on mobile devices.

Pages cannot send private messages to users unless a user initiates the conversation

With Timeline for pages, users can now send direct messages to page admins. This allows organizations to handle customer service issues or other sensitive matters in private. Pages are not able to initiate private messages with fans or any other user.

Any page can create an offer for free, but pay to promote it to non-fans if they want

Creating an offer is meant to be as simple as creating any other post. These will be free and are not subject to Facebook approval, unlike check-in deals, which the company will be phasing out in the next few weeks. Offers will show in fans’ News Feeds on desktop and mobile. People whose friends have clicked to get the offer will also see the promotion in their feeds. In order to reach more people, a page owner could buy a page post ad or sponsored story.

Facebook appears to be testing a new “Interest Lists” feature that allows users to view a filtered version of News Feed similar to how Twitter Lists work.

Currently, Facebook users can create lists to organize their friends, but there hasn’t been an option to group pages. This sorting feature makes sense for the platform as people begin to use Facebook to follow more pages and subscribe to public figures. News Feed is less useful when it’s a mix of posts from loved ones, news outlets, brands and celebrities. Interests lists seem to address that problem, while taking away another advantage Twitter has over Facebook.

We noticed an “Add to Interests” option Wednesday morning when Timeline for pages first launched, but it has since been removed. The feature was available from the drop-down menu beneath the cover photo on pages that switched to the new design. Jason Keath, founder of Social Fresh, says he saw a version of the feature called “Add to Interests Lists.” After clicking the link, he was prompted to start a new list “to see a special News Feed of related posts.” He says the “New List” link did not work at the time he tested it, and is no longer available on any pages.

Facebook did not confirm the existence of Interest Lists. “We are constantly testing new products and features, but we have nothing more to share,” a spokesperson says.

It is unclear whether Interest Lists will be able to include subscriptions and friends in addition to pages. We also wonder whether these lists will be able to be shared publicly. Twitter lists can be public or private. Public lists can then be followed by anyone. On Facebook, people used to be able to display particular friend lists if they wanted to, but this is no longer an option with Timeline.

Having already come to own the “social graph,” Facebook has been aggressively pursuing the “interest graph” — the relationship between people and topics. Many have pointed to Twitter as beating Facebook in this area, but with the subscribe feature and future interest lists, the social network is gaining an edge.

Image credits to Jason Keath at Social Fresh.

Some Facebook users are seeing a new option to hide Ticker, the real-time activity feed in the right sidebar of the homepage.

Although the feature can be distracting, it is a key component of the new Open Graph ecosystem that lets apps continuously publish lightweight stories to Ticker and larger aggregate stories to News Feed and Timeline. Facebook may have found that users are rarely clicking on Ticker stories, but by seeing if users hide the module completely, the company can determine what improvements might be necessary.

Currently Ticker includes many of the same stories that end up in News Feed, giving the feature little value (see image below). The social network found that the ticker on canvas app pages was not driving significant traffic to games or apps so it has removed it for now.

Ideally when more users are using Open Graph apps, Ticker will be filled with actions like “watch,” “run,” or “cook.” The module will show what your friends are doing and News Feed will be for posts they actively share or aggregate stories like “10 of your friends posted about the Super Bowl.” The social network might also consider a layout change to make the page feel less cluttered. News Feed could ultimately appear more like Timeline, with two columns of content and different boxes for different types of activity. Either way, Facebook will need to find a solution to provide the discovery channels apps and pages need to reach their audiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook has partnered with another national restaurant chain to test a feature that lets pages post coupons and promote them with Sponsored Stories. This time around, claiming coupons generates a more prominent story in users News Feeds, which could lead more users to discover offers. The feature has several implications for page engagement and advertising both on the site and on mobile devices.
Sandwich chain Which Wich has been making “offer” posts similar to the “coupon” post we saw BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse advertising in early December. Which Wich first shared a coupon for a free 22-oz. soft drink with purchase of any sandwich on Dec. 27. As of this writing, 4,354 people have claimed the offer — a small percentage of the restaurant’s more than 104,000 fans. The company has also begun using Facebook homepage ads to promote the deal.

For now, coupon posts are only available to select companies working directly with Facebook. If these tests show promise, it is likely the social network will make offers self-serve for page owners, as it did with check-in deals in November 2010. Providing an organized way for pages to give out coupons is a good move for Facebook. Studies have found many people come to Facebook pages for exclusive offers and discounts. A number of third-party app developers offer coupon tabs for pages, but the process of receiving a coupon often takes multiple steps and these apps cannot provide the same viral reach as a native Facebook feature would. Nor have these apps made coupons available for download from mobile pages.

As we suggested last month, coupons could be huge for Facebook when it begins showing Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed. The company hasn’t announced plans to do so yet, but it is easy to imagine how coupon ads could function just as well on mobile devices. As on the website, one click sends an offer directly to your email inbox.

For Facebook, maintaining quality offers and ensuring businesses honor them could be a challenge as the feature scales. Check-in deals are approved by Facebook before going live, but few merchants seem to be taking advantage of this service. The social network should consider why that is as it experiments with another coupon program. The company also tried to build a daily deals service on top of its platform last year, but ended the effort after four months.

The new coupon feature has promise because unlike check-in deals, these coupons can be claimed without visiting a location, making them more likely to be shared across the network. Plus, the ability to post an offer to a page and promote it with Sponsored Stories could lead more businesses to try it out. Check-in deals never had these these additional means of discovery.

Some Facebook users are seeing a “Recent Status Updates” module on the right hand side of the page. The social network has shown “memorable stories” and “photo memories” before, but displaying posts from the past two months in this way is new. This could be Facebook’s attempt to share content users might have missed over the holidays.

From what we’ve seen of the feature, the status updates come from friends a user frequently engages with on the site. However, it might be useful for the social network to start showing posts from friends and pages that do not regularly make it into a user’s News Feed. If users interact with this content, it would suggest it is relevant and similar items should be featured in the feed more often. This would improve the EdgeRank algorithm that decides what users see in their streams.

Within the Recent Status Updates module, there is a “Show More” option that refreshes the box with two posts made between November and today. After a few clicks, the module changes to “Previous Status Updates” and shows content from as far back as April 2011. Along with Timeline, this is a way to remind users of the past and suggest the value Facebook has as a place to preserve memories.

Facebook’s “Move fast and break things” mantra was put into action again this year as the company overhauled a number of its products, introduced many new features and eliminated old functionality. Here is a month-by-month review of changes that most affected users, marketers and developers on the platform in 2011.

January

Redesigned Profiles
Facebook started the year with a new look for profile pages. With Timeline on everyone’s minds now, it can be easy to forget that 12 months ago the social network had redesigned profiles to include more photos and information at a glance, eliminating the horizontal tab structure that had been in place since 2008.

All-in-One Messaging
Users began to get access to the new Messages product, which groups all direct messages between users whether they are viewing a conversation from the inbox, chat window or mobile.

Sponsored Stories
In an effort to make advertising more relevant by including social context, Facebook introduced Sponsored Stories that allow advertisers to pay to promote activity on the site, such as likes or check-ins. The company added more Sponsored Story types in April and June.

Memorable Status Updates
Perhaps hinting at the nostalgia-inducing Timeline to come later in the year, Facebook began displaying users’ status updates and stories from the past.

Secure Browsing
Facebook started giving users the option of accessing Facebook over an encrypted connection and encouraged developers to obtain a Secure Sockets Layer certificate to make their iframe apps accessible to users with secure browsing enabled. Since then, the company has prompted users to switch to HTTPS and made SSL certificates mandatory for all developers.

February

Page Redesign
Page owners got a number of new features to help them manage their communities. These included activity notifications, “Use Facebook as a Page,” and a spam filter for comments. Fan pages were also designed to look more like the new user profiles and place pages, which displayed applications vertically on the left hand side rather than in tabs across the top. Advertisers also gained the option of driving ads to any landing tab, not just the default.

Improved Like Button 
Clicking the Like Button began sharing full-sized stories in the News Feed rather than the one-line Recent Activity stories it previously generated. This along with the Send button that came in April have replaced the Share button, which Facebook no longer supports.

Real-Time Commenting
Facebook made commenting more like chat by removing the “Post” button and instead publishing comments after a user hits “enter” on the keyboard. Since this leads to more accidental comments, Facebook later began giving users a 12-second window to edit their comment.

March

Questions
After a Q&A product similar to Quora never made it out of beta in 2010, Facebook relaunched Questions as a poll feature aimed at helping users get recommendations from their friends. Pages began using the feature to engage their fans with questions that had a more viral effect than plain-text posts.

Deals Subscription Service
Facebook seemed to be taking on Groupon when it began a new pre-paid deals service for users in select cities, but it discontinued the test in August.

April

Updated Groups
Ahead of the rumored Google+ launch, Facebook made improvements to its Groups product aimed at helping people share with subsets of their friends. Most notably, group admins gained the ability to approve people before they are added to the group. Users could now also upload photo albums or ask Questions within groups.

Send Button
The Send button was introduced as a way for people to share articles and third-party websites with groups of friends, whereas the Like button posts to all a users’ friends.

May

New Ad Analytics
Facebook made several changes to its advertising analytics dashboard to focus on performance indicators such as Page Likes, app installs and social reach, rather than older online advertising metrics such as CPM.

Recommend This Place
The social network implemented a recommendation box on place pages (and fan pages that included an address) so that users can share their opinions about a location or a business.

Tag Pages in Photos
Users and pages gained the ability to tag other pages in photos they share on the site. This increases the reach of any given photo and builds additional connections between users and pages.

June

Happening Now: Prelude to Ticker
Facebook began testing a “Happening Now” module on the right hand side of the page. This later became the Ticker, which shows more recent activity from your friends, including comments, page likes and now Open Graph activity like listening to a song in Spotify.

July

Mandatory Credits
All developers on the Facebook platform became required to use Credits as the sole payment option for their social games. The company had announced a July 1 deadline at the beginning of the year and then added additional payment options and feedback channels for developers over the next few months to support the transition.

Video Calling and Group Chat
Teaming up with Skype, Facebook integrated video calling into its chat product. The social network also expanded group chat to friends who were not already in designated groups. Users can now add any friend to a chat conversation.

August

Revised Privacy Controls
The company simplified its privacy settings page and moved controls to the profile editor and news feed publisher. Users also gained the ability to approve tags in photos, check-ins and statuses.

Canvas App Page Changes

Facebook made several changes to the Canvas Page, bookmarking and games stories in the news feed in order to improve game discovery, retention and user experience. The redesign added a real-time activity ticker dedicated to stories about a user’s friends engaging with games.

Expanded Ads API
Facebook brought its ad API out of private beta and began allowing more developers to build tools and services that programmatically create, buy and manage Facebook ad campaigns.

Standalone Messenger App
Moving away from its all-in-one mobile application strategy, Facebook released Messenger as a separate app to rival texting and group chat alternatives.

New Locations App for Pages
Some corporations gained access to a beta product that allows them to designate multiple locations under a parent page and include a store finder on the page.

September

Timeline
At F8, Facebook unveiled a new version of user profiles that organizes stories in a timeline format, giving users the option to add life events to any point in their personal history.

Open Graph Application Platform
Along with Timeline, the company announced a new way to connect people and objects beyond the Like button. Developers will be able to make apps that let users share what they are reading, watching, listening to, cooking and more. Along with this comes “frictionless sharing” and additional avenues for app discovery.

Reconfigured News Feed
To accommodate this new type of Open Graph app, Facebook redesigned the home page to include News Feed and Ticker.

Subscribe
Facebook introduced a new one-way follow dynamic with its Subscribe button. Users can subscribe to the public updates of anyone who allows subscribers. This gives the social network a way to compete with Twitter and Google+.

Smart Lists
The social network introduced Smart Lists to automatically group users’ friends by location, workplace and school. As users become comfortable with Facebook grouping friends automatically, we could see Facebook’s algorithms creating more nuanced lists that compete with Google’s Circles feature.

October

Mobile Platform
After much speculation, the company unveiled a way to help mobile developers market their native and HTML5-based apps through its platform. Developers can now take advantage of bookmarks, requests and the news feed in the same way that Facebook canvas developers do.

Talking About This
Facebook added a new public metric to pages called “Talking About This.” This metric encourages pages to think about engagement, not just accumulating Likes.

iPad Application
Facebook released its official iPad app after months of leaks and rumors about its development.

November

Sponsored Stories in Ticker
The social network began showing Sponsored Story ads in the Ticker, signaling more lines being blurred between paid and organic content in the future. The company later told us Sponsored Story ads will be shown within the News Feed starting in 2012.

December

Timeline Goes Live
Facebook began its global release of the Timeline profile developers had gotten a preview of at F8. Timeline is still opt-in for users until sometime in early 2012. The company also debuted Timeline on mobile devices for the first time.

Coupon Test
We discovered Facebook testing a new coupon post feature for pages that could have big implications for next year. Pages that are part of this beta can offer discounts and promote them with Sponsored Stories.

Private Message Test
We have also seen the social network testing a way for users to privately message page owners. This, too, could have a big impact for people using Facebook for business in 2012.