Facebook strategy software company Zuum today releases a new dashboard interface designed to give marketers an understanding of metrics and trends on a number of Facebook pages at once, regardless of whether they have admin rights to the pages.

With Zuum’s subscription service, companies can monitor between five and 10 pages to follow the competition or see how other industries are using Facebook. Zuum collects and organizes all the pages’ publicly available data, such as People Talking About This, the number of posts per day and engagement per post. Zuum then creates leaderboards, word clouds and and other views of what’s being shared on a page and how it’s performing.

The updated dashboard section of the tool is more visual than the text- and data-heavy dashboard Zuum had previously. The dashboard now includes the following features:

• Leaderboard – A breakdown of how various pages perform across industry benchmarks, including People Talking About This, fan growth rate, engagement rate and community involvement.
• Brand Voice – Subject analysis, media type analysis, People Talking About This and a keyword cloud of the most engaging terms for all brands in the report.
• Most Engaging Posts – A list of the most engaging posts for client page as well as competitor pages.
• Community Health – Includes the most common subjects posted about for both client brand and their competitors, images of the most popular fan posts for all pages and a list of the most engaging fan posts.

Zuum emails a daily, weekly or monthly PDF of the dashboard to subscribers and anyone they work with. Company co-founder and social content strategist Doug Schumacher says some subscribers have been sending the PDF to their whole team or printing it out for brainstorming sessions.

Zuum is commonly used to track competitors but businesses can also monitor pages in order to see what works in different industries and get inspiration. The tool could be useful for marketers working on regular campaigns or preparing for pitches. Zuum offers some historical data going back to January 2010.

As marketers begin to focus more on content and engagement than building large fan bases, features like Zuum provides are increasingly valuable. Unmetric Inc., which offers a similar tool with the objective of letting brands benchmark their success against competitors, raised $3 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners earlier this month. As it happens, Inside Network has its own PageData service that we use for tracking growth and engagement across pages. With Facebook making more insights and demographic data public, these tools can aggregate information in ways that would be very time-consuming and less meaningful if viewed individually on the social network.

A mobile Facebook application’s page topped our list of growing pages this week, as well as several sports-related pages, musician pages and popular movie pages. Pages on our list this week grew from between 407,800 to 3 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

#	Name	Total Likes	People Talking	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Facebook for Ever…	80,790,898	2,818,833	+409,717	+3,094,252
2	Neymar Jr. Oficial	4,445,814	192,932	+57,585	+994,630
3	Titanic	22,183,616	929,544	+116,079	+972,265
4	Adele	27,024,951	768,499	+100,039	+845,502
5	LMFAO	16,163,504	670,358	+105,064	+672,273
6	Eclipse	5,109,773	24,133	+3,285	+668,451
7	Cristiano Ronaldo 7	1,008,868	22,920	+660	+650,258
8	The Simpsons	49,359,384	698,323	+74,991	+612,437
9	Will Smith	30,236,479	542,234	+66,896	+582,162
10	Breaking Dawn	5,637,272	235,682	+33,741	+577,535
11	Bruno Mars	22,524,923	483,186	+69,259	+523,922
12	Shrek	24,984,423	451,007	+58,978	+497,385
13	Harry Potter	45,153,224	679,188	+56,735	+486,619
14	Samsung Mobile USA	4,753,967	493,589	+52,436	+461,300
15	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
16	Pitbull	19,107,971	648,436	+60,939	+449,386
17	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
18	Real Madrid C.F.	27,425,705	1,507,348	+47,111	+426,426
19	FC Barcelona	30,127,581	1,245,044	+54,251	+420,084
20	Snoop Dogg	17,334,450	468,430	+49,096	+407,855

Facebook for Every Phone grew by more than 3 million Likes during the past week. Users of Facebook’s feature phone app are prompted to Like the page when they log in. Sports pages, specifically football clubs and stars, were very popular. Footballers Neymar Jr. Oficial and Cristiano Ronaldo, as well football clubs Real Madrid C.F. and FC Barcelona made the list with growth in the hundreds of thousands. These pages post copious photos and videos related to game activity, rallying fans around the team.

Movie-related pages continue to be very popular, even when they don’t post very frequently. These pages are ready have a tremendous fan base, thus a single post generates a lot of activity. For example, a video on the “Eclipse” page received tens of thousands of Likes and a video on the “Titanic”  page received more than 2,500 comments.

Musicians continue to have momentum on Facebook. Adele, LMFAO, Pitbull and Snoop Dogg made the top 20 this week. These artist pages post photos and other info from tours or performances.

Finally, the popular TV show “The Simpsons” continues to see growth on page based on a combination of popularity and frequent posts, and the Samsung Mobile USA page is currently giving away phones and other related prizes. The Samsung page seems to be running Facebook ads — including premium logout ads — to get new fans.

Facebook added support for creating and managing offers through the API this week, but a spokesperson tells us that this is only available to select partners who already have access to the self-serve version of the feature.

Offers are a new story type for page owners to post coupons that users can collect from News Feed or ad units. The feature is still in beta for premium advertisers and a limited number of pages in the U.S., New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Japan, and Turkey. Facebook says it plans to launch offers widely in “coming weeks,” which might mean months from now based on how Facebook has used the term in the past.

Making offers available through the API means developers can integrate the feature into their social media management platforms. Even though the feature isn’t available to all pages yet, developers will be able to prepare for it. Although offers are free to create, businesses can buy Sponsored Stories to expand their distribution. Companies working with the Facebook Ads API will likely want to bring offers functionality to their ad tools so that advertisers can create and promote an offer from a single dashboard.

There are now more than 42 million Facebook pages and 9 million Facebook apps, according to a recent amendment to the social network’s filing for an initial public offering.

The number of pages on Facebook with 10 or more Likes has increased by 5 million since Dec. 31, 2011, and the number of apps and websites that integrate Facebook are up by 2 million since that date. These new totals show that Facebook’s platform continues to grow in ways beyond new users. It also shows just how much is competing for users’ attention these days.

Facebook did not provide a category breakdown of the 42 million pages on Facebook. However, in a letter to prospective investors, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that more than 4 million businesses have pages on the site. Other pages on the social network — including many of the most popular ones — are pages for popular figures, movies and sports teams. A large proportion of pages are also likely to be fan-generated community pages. Unclaimed locations also account for some of these pages, although Facebook has been working to eliminate duplicates.

The number of apps and websites connected to Facebook is likely to quickly grow past 9 million. With Open Graph integration proving to be a large source of traffic for third-party apps and websites, we can expect many more blogs and media sites, as well as mobile games and other apps to implement aspects of the platform

Along with stats about pages and apps, Facebook provided other updated figures for photo uploads, interactions and friend connections in its filing this week. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, there were more than 300 million photos uploaded to the site each day — up from 250 million per day in Q4 2011. Users also generated an average 3.2 billion Likes and comments each day in the first quarter of 2012 — up from 2.7 billion per day in Q4 2011. And Facebook now has more than 125 billion friend connections between its 901 million monthly active users.

Facebook recently relaunched its “Locations” app that allows users to search directly from a company’s page to find business locations near them.

The feature, which helps organize corporate and local pages, had to be redesigned to fit the new Timeline layout. The Locations app is only available to select brands working directly with Facebook. A spokesperson from the social network could only tell us that pages have to ask Facebook to enable the app, but she could not provide details about what makes a company eligible for the feature.

Facebook’s Locations app first appeared in August 2011 as part of a limited private test of parent-child page management tools. Since then we’ve had a number of readers inquire about when the feature would be available publicly, but it seems Facebook is reserving this for select partners for now.

Corporations like Starbucks, Macy’s and Home Depot are among those with the Locations tab, but it’s unclear whether companies have to make a certain size advertising spend to qualify or simply be well-known. Businesses with access to a Facebook account representative or working with one of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers certified in Pages should connect with those contacts to request access to the app. Other businesses will have to develop their own store locator applications.

Facebook’s native Locations app overlays store information on a Bing map within a tab on a company’s page. The map defaults to a tight radius around the user’s current location, but refreshes with additional results when users re-orient the map. Users can also search by city, state or zip code. The tab is not available from Facebook’s mobile site or applications.

Partners with access to the feature can manage their corporate and local pages using the Pages API and a basic admin interface. Hearsay Social, which was initially involved with Facebook in developing the management system, provides additional features and regulatory compliance for companies with both corporate and local pages. Hearsay CEO Clara Shih says her company was not involved in the latest update to the Locations app, though customers including 24 Hour Fitness use it. She did not have any information about how companies outside of her customer base could get access to the feature.

Here are links to a number of pages’ Location tabs:

• Starbucks
• Macy’s
• 24 Hour Fitness
• Equinox
• Lowes
• Home Depot
• Red Lobster
• Safeway
• Toys-R-Us
• Subway
• Quiznos
• Baskin-Robbins
• Regal Cinemas
• Ann Taylor

Facebook will increase the size of profile pictures on all business and fan pages on Thursday, according to an email the company sent to page owners.

The new profile picture will appear as 160×160 pixels and will sit 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top of the page. This will not affect pages that use distinct images for their profile picture and cover photo, but pages that incorporate the profile picture into the cover photo — as seen in the example below — should be aware that the change could affect their designs.

Pages’ profile pictures will now be presented as the same size as users’ profile photos. Previously, pages’ profile pictures appeared as 125×125 pixels, though some pages noticed Facebook testing the new size earlier this month. The confusing thing about profile pictures on the site is that the uploaded image must be a minimum of 180×180 pixels, then Facebook resizes the image on users’ screens.

We’ve provided a visualization of the new specs below. According to Facebook, the change will go into affect sometime on Thursday.

Facebook’s mobile application for feature phones topped our list of the fastest growing Facebook pages by Likes this week. There were plenty of movie and music pages, as well as Converse, “The Simpsons” and others.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 382,200 to 3.1 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

#	Name	Total Likes	People Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Facebook for Ever…	77,696,642	2,280,034	+479,066	+3,197,474
2	Converse	29,512,887	397,693	+40,547	+2,065,672
3	Titanic	21,211,346	1,743,131	+130,778	+1,117,928
4	Step Up Movie	11,738,260	185,637	+8,156	+1,100,743
5	Adele	26,179,444	941,052	+106,249	+822,724
6	The Simpsons	48,746,943	869,740	+79,345	+665,588
7	Will Smith	29,654,312	732,527	+82,076	+611,618
8	Eclipse	4,441,322	26,107	+220,813	+598,822
9	Harry Potter	44,666,605	1,001,687	+92,337	+575,365
10	Breaking Dawn	5,059,737	225,595	+140,838	+544,698
11	Shrek	24,487,036	567,809	+62,927	+507,066
12	Bruno Mars	22,000,999	582,132	+66,426	+493,178
13	Facebook	65,532,191	548,579	+57,599	+469,399
14	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
15	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
16	Snoop Dogg	16,926,591	691,671	+54,131	+419,538
17	Pitbull	18,658,579	715,754	+57,536	+409,857
18	Adam Sandler	30,249,552	502,523	+49,626	+388,941
19	Avatar	29,900,281	558,802	+45,549	+386,526
20	Nicki Minaj	18,205,858	348,512	+49,549	+382,039

Facebook for Every Phone was at the top of our list, growing by almost 3.2 million Likes. The mobile app recently got an update and users are given an option to Like the page when they log in. Converse repeated its formula from last week, posting plenty of photos, including an historic shoe. “The Simpsons” appeared to grow based on its general popularity.

Films that had pages that grew significantly either made the list because they’re in theaters and/or promoting theatrical releases, or due to what appeared to be page consolidations. “Titanic” is currently in theaters, Will Smith is promoting his upcoming movie, as is Adam Sandler; other film pages showed no recent activity and appeared to be consolidated.

Musicians this week included regulars like Adele and Bruno Mars, as well as others who made the list due to a surge in popularity from touring and frequent posting. For example, Snoop Dogg recently performed in a well-received concert alongside a hologram of deceased rapper Tupac. Pitbull is also on tour and promoting his work on a movie soundtrack.

Facebook has implemented a “listen” button on artists’ fan pages that lets users instantly stream songs from an artist’s catalog.

The button, which sits between options to Like and message the page below an artist’s cover photo, plays music using whichever Facebook-connected streaming service a person uses most frequently. Users can play and pause a song with the button, but they have to visit the streaming service to skip to the next song or fast forward through a track.

The feature will help users sample music when they visit an artist page for the first time and could help make Facebook a go-to option for people looking for new music, similar to how many people used MySpace in its heyday. Streaming services will benefit from the traffic and artists will appreciate Facebook linking to legally licensed versions of their work. Page tab application companies like ReverbNation and BandPage could suffer, since one of the key features they offer is music players for artists’ Facebook pages. Some artists, who don’t offer their music through subscription streaming services or who haven’t been able to connect their streaming catalog to their Facebook page, will not have a listen button so they might still turn to third-party developers.

Facebook’s new listen button isn’t the only way users can play music instantly from the site. News Feed stories about friends’ listening activity includes an option to play songs, as do search results, the music dashboard and Timeline summaries. These integrations could help Facebook become a media destination site.

Currently, most users visit the site to see what friends are saying or to share something about themselves. They often discover news, photos, videos and music in the process, but they don’t tend to think of going to Facebook for learning about a particular topic. As users discover features like the listen button, they might be more likely to utilize the social network as a media hub or even a search engine.

Facebook did not provide information about how artists who do not have the listen button on their site could have one implemented.

Converse shoe company topped our list of the fastest-growing Facebook pages this week. There were several movies, musicians, brands such a Target and Walmart, a few games, and a few sports–related pages comprised the rest of the list.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 285,200 to 3.3 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Converse	27,447,210	147,681	+840,161	+3,388,098
2.	Step Up Movie	10,637,515	163,693	+344,929	+942,550
3.	Titanic	20,093,413	1,163,678	+186,181	+776,244
4.	LMFAO	15,116,759	858,346	+44,028	+588,567
5.	Gabriel García M…	1,266,812	39,848	+99,656	+508,186
6.	Resident Evil 5	655,578	15,711	+177,775	+455,448
7.	Adele	25,356,720	370,641	+144,493	+447,608
8.	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
9.	The Simpsons	48,081,353	472,415	+120,916	+428,449
10.	Target	10,951,726	406,182	+49,372	+391,328
11.	Nemo	8,994,798	384,932	+64,534	+385,154
12.	One Direction	4,553,606	523,134	+64,165	+338,499
13.	Texas HoldEm Poker	60,123,032	549,424	+36,533	+329,525
14.	Walmart	14,707,249	456,059	+48,667	+310,030
15.	FC Barcelona	29,326,949	957,956	+64,276	+309,617
16.	Simpsons	2,814,750	353,210	+15,940	+308,609
17.	I ♥ THE WEEKEND	7,147,466	360,160	+7,301	+294,777
18.	Halil Sezai	977,670	28,812	+51,444	+288,540
19.	Samsung Mobile USA	3,940,603	333,818	+38,392	+288,078
20.	Avatar	29,513,754	345,098	+70,888	+285,194

Converse grew tremendously over the course of a few days, possibly as the result of a page post ad. The page shared a photo of a 1917 model of one of its shoes. The photo received 29,000 Likes and about 1,500 shares. Converse typically gets a few hundred or thousand Likes on its posts.

Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Marquez saw a new surge in Likes and engagement with photos that include quotes in English and Spanish.

Movie pages on the list seemed to be the result of page consolidations, although the recent re-release of “Titanic” in 3-D has kept the page on our list for several weeks now. Popular artists LMFAO and Adele, as well as United Kingdom boy band One Direction and Turkish singer Halil Sezai also made the list.

As we mentioned, the rest of the list included a few sports pages — basketball player Jeremy Lin and football club FC Barcelona, which recently started writing its posts in multiple languages. “The Simpsons” continues to grow, especially after revealing the true location of the show’s fictional hometown. Samsung, Target and Walmart have grown as the result of Sponsored Story campaigns.

Facebook appears to be testing a consolidated content publisher on pages, giving new prominence to videos and events while hiding the Questions feature behind a drop-down menu.

The publisher is the area from which page owners make posts to their fans. With the initial rollout of Timeline for pages, the publisher included options to post a status, photo, question or milestone. Milestones are posts that get larger placement on Timeline to commemorate important events or achievements. One problem with the old publisher was that it wasn’t clear that to upload a video, page owners had to click “photo.” See below.

Now the publisher features three sections: status, photo/video and event/milestone+. When page owners click event/milestone, they will see options to create an event, share a milestone or ask a question. (See below.) This makes event creation much simpler than before, when it could take several clicks to add a new event, but it makes the Questions feature much less noticeable. It’s unclear whether Facebook is trying to discourage page owners from using Questions, but its placement suggests it’s a lower priority for the company.

Although only certain partners have access to Facebook offers for now, we are told the ability to create an offer will soon be available from the publisher. We do not know how much prominence the feature will get when it rolls out.

The Facebook publisher has gone through a number of iterations both for users and for pages over the years. The social network seems to go back and forth between offering more or fewer options in the space. At one point the tool included third-party apps under a drop-down menu, but then Facebook eliminated the feature citing low usage. Events were added to the publisher in 2009, but removed a year later. We can likely expect more tinkering with the publisher this year as Facebook tries to find a balance between streamlining the user interface and making people aware of all the options available to them.

It’s worth noting that when page owners choose the “use Facebook as a page” feature, they see an older version of the homepage publisher, which includes separate options for links and videos. Some time in the past few months, the social network grouped photos and videos together, as well as status and links, but it did not update this less frequently used aspect of the site seen below.

Hat tip to AllFacebook for first making us aware of the change.