Zynga’s CityVille topped our list of the fastest-growing Facebook pages by the number of Likes, with a few other games making the top 20. Because the social network removed app profile pages on Feb. 1, many game pages were consolidated and had large single-day spikes.

Popular musicians also made the list, as well as several big brands, including Facebook, and then there were movie and TV pages. Pages on our list this week grew from between 673,400 to 19.2 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.	CityVille	23,458,706	273,759	+1,608,482	+19,298,405
2.	UNO	7,735,339	395,531	+476,720	+2,158,107
3.	Adele	17,083,430	1,343,622	+192,895	+1,220,282
4.	Angry Birds	14,762,895	1,294,572	+146,409	+1,030,687
5.	Facebook	60,826,247	956,145	+41,155	+861,203
6.	Titanic	15,296,868	918,272	+57,729	+848,834
7.	Will Smith	26,207,769	884,763	+112,661	+844,186
8.	YouTube	51,968,219	1,010,651	+40,580	+837,998
9.	Bingo Island Community	868,992	21,334	+108,576	+834,736
10.	McDonald’s	15,103,359	815,391	+32,590	+778,953
11.	Bruno Mars	18,078,069	978,311	+99,417	+749,882
12.	Bingo!	1,149,505	12,448	+118,227	+724,815
13.	Bob Marley	35,795,038	874,930	+36,057	+695,716
14.	Google	6,806,757	717,064	+99,895	+695,499
15.	Harry Potter	40,762,375	769,353	+102,041	+693,175
16.	The Simpsons	39,473,758	750,440	+91,447	+679,609
17.	Shakira	45,815,943	889,871	+94,773	+677,131
18.	Rihanna	50,835,991	780,571	+32,845	+675,528
19.	Coca-Cola	38,610,079	747,719	+36,118	+674,198
20.	Shrek	21,079,149	692,753	+94,338	+673,379

CityVille grew by 19.2 million Likes. Other games on the list included: UNO, Angry Birds, Bingo Island Community and Bingo!

Popular musicians that made our list are either currently nominated for music awards, on tour, have hit songs, or in the case of Bob Marley recently had a birthday. Adele’s Page saw 1.2 million new Likes, while Bob Marley’s page saw 875,000. Musicians in between included: Will Smith, Bruno Mars, Shakira and Rihanna. There were popular brands on the list, too. Facebook itself, McDonald’s, which recently released a new product, and the ever popular Coca-Cola, which made a big advertising push around the Super Bowl.

Finally, movies that made our list included not new releases, but long popular films. “Titanic” with 848,800 Likes, “Harry Potter” With 693,200 Likes, “The Simpsons” and “Shrek” rounded out the list.

 [Editor's note: This is a guest post by Peter Vogel, co-founder of Plink, which lets consumers earn Facebook Credits for dining out and shopping online. He argues the rise of Open Graph applications will push Facebook Credits beyond social games and one-off experiments to become a major source of revenue for Facebook and developers.]

Although Facebook Credits is still primarily an in-game currency, in 2011 we began to see a glimmer of what Credits will look like when it grows up.

Movie studios like Miramax, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, not to mention BBC Worldwide began offerings movies and TV shows for rent on Facebook. As an example, in promotion of “Mission: Impossible, Ghost Protocol,” the series’ first three movies were made available for rent on Facebook for 30 Credits per rental. In addition, to promote the launch of “Tower Heist,” Universal Pictures gave away 1 million Facebook Credits ($100,000 value) in an online scavenger hunt. DJ David Guetta began selling MP3s on his Facebook Page (19 Credits per track) and U.K.’s “Big Brother” and “The X Factor” began allowing fans to vote for contestants using Facebook Credits.

These examples, however, were few and far between in 2011 and it’s fair to say that even most Facebook users don’t know what Credits are for. 2012 is the year this will change.

Prediction 1: Facebook adds subscription billing as an option for Facebook Credits

Currently companies who sell virtual goods or products on Facebook can only accept one-time payments via Facebook Credits. For example, a player can use a small amount of virtual currency to buy a new cow in Zynga’s FarmVille. But media companies such as Netflix and Spotify would need a monthly billing plan. Consumers could agree to pay 100 Facebook Credits for monthly access to movies or music and would agree to be billed monthly. Until Facebook adds a monthly billing feature, it will be difficult or nearly impossible for many of the largest media providers to accept Credits.

Facebook will continue to improve the Credits platform in other ways as well to make it more functional and profitable for developers to use. Credits is the primary way, if not sole way, most developers generate revenue, so you can be sure that Facebook is truly committed to making Credits as flexible and effective a currency as possible.

Prediction 2: Open Graph Partners, including Spotify and Netflix, start to accept Credits

During its F8 conference, Facebook announced 17 music partners who would integrate Open Graph, allowing users to share their listening and other behaviors with friends. Spotify initially gave users a six-month free trial. Now, though, the nearly five million new members who’ve been getting unlimited free music will be limited to 10 hours a month and only five plays per song — not that much for a real music fan. Look for Spotify to add Facebook Credits as a payment option for these new users, potentially even offering special introductory rates to entice users to commit to a year-long membership.

In addition, a few notable facts lead me to believe something big is coming from a Netflix/Facebook partnership.

1. Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings joined the Facebook Board of Directors in June of 2011.
2. Netflix recently signed deals with BBC, DreamWorks and Disney to increase the quality of available streaming content.
3. A piece of legislation cleared the House and is on its way the Senate that would reverse a law enacted in 1998 that forbids public disclosure of video rental records. This would prevent the sharing of movies being watched between Facebook users. Much as users now have “Like” or “Listening to …” labels, it’s widely anticipated there would be a “Watching” tag as well.

This increased level of sharing could dramatically increase the number of Netflix movies watched and shared on Facebook, leading to a Facebook-only Netflix plan that could be paid for with Facebook Credits.

Prediction 3: The size of the Facebook Credits economy will double every year for the next five years

Similar to Moore’s Law, which famously predicted that the number of transistors than could be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles every two years and Mark Zuckerberg’s Law that (scarily to some) states that people will be willing to “share” twice as much each year, I believe the Facebook Credits economy will double every year for the next five years.

This is based on the staggering amount of new ways that people will be earning and spending Facebook Credits over the coming years and the international growth, which will follow innovation in the U.S. This is conservative based on reports we’ve already seen that global revenue from Facebook Credits more than tripled in size from 2010, $140 Million, to $470 million in 2011. By 2016, Facebook Credits could be a $15 billion business.

What’s driving this? One example is the efforts by Milyoni, one of Facebook’s leading commerce and video streaming platforms. This year, Milyoni was responsible for hosting the first ever movie available for rent on Facebook, Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight,” at a cost of 30 Facebook Credits. Milyoni also hosted the first ever live pay-per-view concert on Facebook, “Widespread Panic” live from Austin, Texas, at a cost of 50 Credits. This year, according to Dean Alms, VP of strategy and marketing at Milyoni, they have deals in place with 13 movie studios and expect to offer 3,000 movies for rent on Facebook. That’s compared to less than 100 films offered in 2010. In addition, the company has plans to stream 40-50 live concert and events available on a live pay-per-view basis, compared to just two in 2010. Multiply this by other innovative companies and you get an idea of what’s to come this year and beyond.

Final Take:

Facebook has proven that the Credits model can work in social gaming, which represents between 25-30 percent of Facebook users, and will now utilize the same model to first enter the business of music, movies, TV and any other shareable media, before entering larger industries like financial services and health care in the coming years.

While still relatively unknown, Facebook Credits will emerge and begin to mean very real cash to a quickly expanding group of first-mover entrepreneurs and innovators who are just starting to get a whiff of the opportunities presented by the Facebook Credits economy.

It’s for real and it’s here.

Peter Vogel is co-founder of Plink, a Facebook Credits-based loyalty program that rewards Facebook members for dining and making purchases at their favorite restaurants and stores. Reach him via email at peter@plink.com or follow him on Twitter @pvogel.

New Screenshots and functionality details of Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile site and application platform have emerged. Documentation of the updated mobile site and platform, externally referred to as Project Spartan, was briefly published to the Facebook Developers site last night, and TechCrunch recorded screenshots before Facebook took the pages down. We dug into the documentation and found many interesting facts about the mobile site that will impacts users and developers.

The Facebook mobile site will receive a significant redesign, users will be able to authorize and use third-party mobile apps from within the mobile site, these apps will be accessed through bookmarks shown alongside Facebook’s in-house apps, and users will have the ability to post to the news feed and send Requests/invites that are delivered as notifications.

For developers, the same SDK and APIs used for Facebook web applications will work on mobile, a new authentication mode called Authenticated Referrals will allow users who’ve already installed an app to login with two taps, and mobile apps will be optimized to work across all iOS and Android devices.

Sources at the company told us last week there would be a major mobile launch in “three weeks” but TechCrunch is reporting that the date has been moved up along with the native Facebook iPad app launch. It will likely come at either Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday or a Facebook press event on Monday. Regardless, these updates are coming, though Facebook will surely continue to refine the mobile platform. How users and developers react will influence the power dynamic between Facebook, Apple, and Android, and could be an important determinant of Facebook’s long-term success. (We first wrote about Facebook’s HTML5 strategy for third-party mobile web apps in February, four months before it was reported in other mainstream press like TechCrunch.)

Here we’ll take a look at the biggest changes evident from the leaked documentation and what they mean:

Mobile Site Redesign

The current design of the mobile site is not especially intuitive. Users must browse to entirely separate screens to access core functionality such as notifications or the publisher. This can makes the browsing experience exhausting and cause users to spend less time on the mobile site.

The new redesign previewed in the leaked documentation and seen here shows a more persistently available top navigation bar that lets users access their notifications, Messages, and friend request with fewer clicks. The notifications button reveals an overlaid drop down rather than opening a different screen, so alerts about new activity can be checked without losing one’s place on the mobile site.

Third-Party App Access From a Bookmarks Menu

News that users would be able to access third-party Facebook apps from mobile leaked months ago, but the documentation reveals exactly how they’ll be accessed. A button on the mobile site’s top navigation bar will slide out a list of all of a user’s installed apps — both Facebook’s in-house apps such as Events and Groups, as well as third-party apps and games.

A bookmark will appear in this menu for any app a user has installed. Thanks to “bookmark synching”, a bookmark will also appear on the homepage of a user’s web version of Facebook. Users will also be able to search for new or previously installed games through the mobile site bookmarks menu. This will make Facebook mobile search engine optimization important for mobile apps looking to gain new users.

Facebook won’t require developers to use a different SDK or set of APIs on mobile than they use to build apps on Facebook.com. This means some developers will simply have to redesign their apps for mobile, rather than having to re-code them. This could help quickly populate the mobile platform with apps. More complicated apps that use flash such as games will need to switch to HTML5, though Facebook has reportedly been working with a large set of top developers to make their apps compatible with the mobile platform.

Two-Tap Login and Requests Notifications for Growth

The authorization given to a mobile app upon install will be valid on the web as well, so users won’t have to grant permissions to an app twice. Once a user has installed an app, they’ll be able to quickly log into it later with a two tap process called Authenticated Referrals – one tap to select the app, and a second to confirm they are entering a third-party app.

Along with using or playing with an app, users can publish content to the news feed through a familiar sharing prompt. They’ll also be able to send Requests to friends, such as an invite to play or a call to complete an in-app action. These Requests are delivered to friends as notifications that they can click through to open an app.

Right now, these notifications don’t look especially compelling, and therefore might inspire users to try new apps or reengage with old ones. Facebook may need to make mobile app Request notifications more appealing if it wants to attract developers to the Platform with the opportunity for strong viral growth.

Initially, the Like button social plugin will be available for use within mobile platform apps. Developers can use the button to create a lightweight sharing flow. As part of the permissions process developers will be able to request a user’s email address so they can communicate with them, or market to them, outside their apps.

Technologically, there are still some functionality disadvantages of using HTML5 mobile sites rather than native smartphone apps. For example, they only native apps can access device hardware such as the camera and GPS. Facebook will need to make up for this with virality if it wants its mobile Platform to become popular with developers.

There’s no mention in the documentation of Facebook Credits spotted earlier this year, so its still unclear how payments will be processed within mobile apps. A big part of why Facebook needed to create the mobile platform was to allow it earn money from app sales and in-app purchases, which can’t happen if its is merely a social layer within apps sold through Apple or Android’s mobile app stores.

Launching the Platform without Credits support could attract some developers who don’t want to pay Facebook’s 30% tax. However, punching credit card details into a mobile device can be especially difficult and lead to significant drop-off, so developers may actually want Facebook Credits support because it could increase sales volumes. Third-party mobile payments companies could also step in here to facilitate developer monetization.

Facebook is on the cusp of a serious turning point. If it can make the mobile Platform fun for users and attractive to developers, it could create an important new revenue stream, ride the growth of smart phones, and gain leverage against Apple and Google. If users find accessing third-party Facebook mobile app clunky and developers don’t see enough potential for viral growth, though, the Platform could fail and Facebook might get cut out of the mobile money stream.

In the latest Platform Updates to the Facebook Developer Blog, the company announced the ability to manage Pages, change their wall settings, and install tab applications via the Graph API. This should make it easier for developers who manage multiple Pages.

Facebook added a referral attribute to the Send button for tracking which Send Button and what type of Send button story led a user to click back to a developer’s site. Developers can now use the Graph API Explorer with test accounts, and the set of payment methods displayed when users buy Facebook Credits is now optimized by country. In the previous Platform Update, Facebook announced  that developers can now name their test users, and can use the App ID where they previously used their API key.

As the Page management industry grows and developers begin to administrate numerous Pages for clients or their own apps, Facebook has sought to improve the tools for managing Pages as a team , and for single admins to efficiently manage one or many Pages without using the graphical user interface.

To further this effort, Facebook now allows Page admins to retrieve Page access tokens through the Graph API using the call:

https://graph.facebook.com/PAGE_ID
  ?fields=access_token&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

This token can then be used to make changes to the Page. Wall settings such as whether users are allowed to post can be pulled using the /settings connections. These settings can be changed via an HTTP POST to PAGE_ID/settings. For instance, an admin could quickly close the walls of all of their Pages in the event of a public relations crisis or their app breaking.

Developers can also “read, install and manage app tabs for a Page via the /tabs connection.” This allows them to check which tabs are currently installed and  add new ones. For example, a developer could simultaneously install a promotional app across all the local branch Pages of a single business for a coordinated marketing push. Details for managing Pages via the Graph API can be found in the Page object documentation.

Facebook launched the Send button in April to facilitate sharing of content around the web with specific friends rather one’s entire network through the Like button. In May it added Send button metrics to Domain Insights, as well as the Graph API and FQL Insights table.

Now, a referral parameter can be included in implementations of the Send button so developers can be sure which Send button is generating emails, Group posts, and Facebook messages that are leading to referral clicks. Developers can also see which of these three Send types led to the click. The following is an example of an added referral parameter that can be embedded along with a Send button:

<html><body>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:send href="YOUR_SITE_URL"></fb:send>
</body></html>

Clicks to your website will generate a referrer URL containing the ref value and parameter, for example:

http://www.yoursite.com/home?fb_ref=top_left&fb_source=message

This data will help developers optimize the placement and style of their Send buttons, and choose on which web pages to include the social plugin. It will also help developers determine what Send button message type is being used most often. For instance, if they see that their content is frequently being sent to Facebook Groups, they might include messaging on their site encouraging users to share with their Groups.

A few weeks ago, Facebook launched the Graph API Explorer to allow new developers to get acquainted with the API, and experienced developers to test their apps. Now developers can log in to the console as a test account. The permits them to test installing apps, posting content, and taking other actions that generate news feed stories without worrying about clogging the news feeds of friends with tests. Facebook said it received a high volume of requests for this capability.

When developers create their test accounts, they can now name them to more easily keep track of them and to produce tests that look more authentic than tests using unnatural names. The name of a test account will in part determine what email address it is assigned.

Facebook has also changed how payment options for Facebook Credits are displayed. Now, methods will be ordered depending on which is most commonly used in a user’s country. This way, if a mobile payments are more prevalent than credit cards payments, the mobile payment option will appear higher in the list. This should increase the likelihood that users will complete Credits purchase transactions, thereby increasing the number of users with Credits balances and the amount of Credits they have. This should make it easier for apps to turn users into paying customers.

Last, Facebook is phasing out usage of the API key in app settings to remove redundancy in the developer app. Developers can now use their App ID wherever they previously used their API key. This means there’ll be one less code that developers will need to keep accessible.

With Zynga’s IPO filing on Friday, we finally got some numbers to bear out what had been common, but unproven, industry knowledge: that Zynga had been able to overcome handing 30 percent of its revenue to Facebook and weakening virality on the platform by monetizing its existing user base better.

The company appears to have more than doubled average revenue per user across a number of metrics from the first quarter a year ago. So caveat to these figures first: they aren’t perfect estimates since Zynga broke out revenue on a quarterly basis, but showed uniques and actives on a monthly or daily basis. Nor do we have any ARPU figures for individual games, because Zynga did not break out revenue per title in its filing.

But it looks like Zynga boosted monthly ARPU (or average revenue per user) to $0.33 in the first quarter of this year from $0.14 in the same time period a year earlier. We get this figure by dividing reported revenues for that quarter by the number of monthly actives, then dividing again by three for individual months in the quarter.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

Facebook’s Upcoming “Awesome” Announcement Could Be Video Skype – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted to reporters that a big announcement was set for next week, specifically, something “awesome.” A press event has been scheduled for Wednesday, July 6th. Some sources and the invite to the event suggest that Facebook might unveil a video chat system built in partnership with Microsoft’s Skype. Other possibilities include Facebook’s leaked mobile photos app, it’s iPad app, or the Music Dashboard.

Antitrust Complaint Filed Against Facebook Over Credits – Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, has filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding Facebook’s Platform currency, Credits. Their complaint is that Credits is an “anticompetitive” virtual currency that could drive up prices of virtual goods.

Facebook Deals Coming to Three More Cities – Facebook tell us it is expanding the beta test of its prepaid coupon service Deals from its initial five cities to include Charlotte, St. Louis, and Minneapolis. Facebook says early feedback from businesses has been positive, though we haven’t seen much adoption in San Francisco.

Facebook Hires Hacker – Facebook hired George Hotz, the guy who jailbroke the iPhone. He’s now helping Facebook create its iPad app.

Photos From Facebook’s New Office – Gawker published photos from Facebook’s new headquarters in Menlo Park, which the company plans to start moving to soon. The gallery depicts an open office floor plan similar to the current Facebook HQ’s design.

Facebook Pitches Social Program Guide to Media Industry – Facebook’s SVP of Strategic Partner Development Andy Mitchell spoke at at the PromaxBDA conference, telling media industry representatives about how a television program guide that showed what a viewer’s friends watch could get people to watch more.

Hulu Botches Facebook Connect Integration –  A error in how Hulu implemented a Facebook login system on its video site caused people to become logged in to the accounts of other users. Hulu claims responsibility for the problem and says no highly sensitive information was exposed. The site will remove the Facebook integration temporarily before trying another implementation.

Facebook Scores in Ownership Lawsuit – Paul Ceglia, a man in New York who claims to own most of Facebook, has been ordered to give Facebook access to his emails and computer. The company is set to accuse him of forgery.

American Express Launches Free Social Media Monitoring Tool - In a bid to help and attract small businesses, American Express launched a free tool called YourBuzz that lets businesses monitor mentions of them on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other web services.

How the NHL Gained 2.2M Fans - AllFacebook reported an interesting case study detailing the National Hockey League’s efforts to grow its Facebook Page by 2.2 million Likes by targeting its affluent and tech savvy fans. [Screenshot Via AF]

Thailand Bans Facebook Before Vote – The Thai government has banned Facebook political campaigning the day before a Saturday vote for prime minister.

Ifeelgoods, a company that lets businesses offer Facebook Credits as rewards for purchases and signups, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series A funding round led by Idinvest. As Facebook Credits become the sole payment option on the Facebook Platform this Friday, and more types of digital goods including video and music are sold for Credits, the demand for the virtual currency will increase, and more companies will seek to incentivize sales and actions through ifeelgoods.

For these reasons, ifeelgoods has good potential. The company will use the funding to launch new services and court more domestic and international clients.

We’ve been following ifeelgoods since the company’s launch in September 2010. This was back when it started helping clients offer users Facebook Credits in exchange for email signups, Facebook Likes, and sales, even though social game developers had just begun to accept the virtual currency.

For example ifeelgoods allowed the Dallas Mavericks give away five Credits for following the team on Twitter, and the company let ShoeBuy.com customers earn 50 Credits for buying a pair of shoes.

However, with users still able to buy virtual goods directly from developers instead of using Credits, and nothing else to buy with them, demand for Facebook’s virtual currency was low. Still, ifeelgoods saw gamers perceiving the value of these Credits incentives higher than equal amounts of cash, similar to customers are enticed by free shipping. The company had a bright future if a wider audience was interested in earning Credits.

Microincentives Gaining Wider Appeal

Fast-forward nine months and Facebook Credits are about to be the only way to pay in Facebook games, meaning all of Facebook’s gamers (which could be as many as 290 million people) now have a use for Credits. Even though only a small percent of gamers are actively willing to pay money in social games, more might be willing to change their shopping habits or sign up for a newsletter for free Credits.

Meanwhile, developers are starting to offer video rentals and pay-per-view concerts for Credits. Facebook may also allow users to pay Credits for MP3 downloads or music streaming service subscriptions as part of its upcoming Music Dashboard. These developments could make Facebook Credits mainstream, massively expanding the range of customers ifeelgoods clients could attract by offering Credits incentives.

One client set in particular is Facebook Pages. The act of Liking a Page is perfect for incentivizing with Credits, as the action is fast and familiar, it generates a lot of value for brands, and users are just clicks away from spending their reward. Facebook ads for Like-gated Page tab apps offering Credits could become an highly cost and time efficient method of growing Pages.

Update: To be clear, it’s against Facebook’s policy for Pages to directly incentivize Likes. However, they can create a Like-gated Page tab app wherein users take another action that can be incentivized with Credits. Likes are currently often incentivized in this way, but with entry into a sweepstakes as the reward instead of Credits.

The new funding will help ifeelgoods capitalize on the increased client interest foreshadowed by these factors. The round was led by European venture capital firm Idinvest and joined by TugBoat Ventures which contributed to ifeelgoods’ $1.5 million seed round.

The company currently services 20 brands including Gap, Gamefly, 1-800-Flowers.com, and Shopping.com from verticals such as clothing and direct sales. It has helped ShopAtHome.com gain 1.3 million new Facebook fans and Shoebuy.com double the click through rate on its Facebook ads by offering Credits instead of cash discounts.

The microincentive model is still relatively unproven, so ifeelgoods will use the funding to build out a sales team to educated and sign clients in the US and abroad. Engineers will be hired to assist with scaling and expand the types of actions that can be incentivized.

Ifeelgoods is tied to the success of Credits, so with Facebook’s virtual currency poised more much greater adoption, Idinvest and TugBoat may have gotten in at just the right time.

Facebook users in Europe will soon have the opportunity to earn Facebook Credits by completing hard offers through the offer walls of social games. Facebook today announced partnerships with SupersonicAds from the United Kingdom and Deal United from Germany to let European users buy magazine subscriptions, online movie rentals, and more to earn Facebook’s virtual currency.

Facebook will only allow Credits to be distributed through offers by approved providers once the July 1st deadline passes and all games to switch to Credits as their payment method. Therefore, attaining approved offers coverage in Europe through these deals is important so developers can still monetize users in the region who won’t pay for Credits directly.

Currently, game developers often work with offer providers like SupersonicAds and Deal United to give users their proprietary premium in-game currency in exchange for making purchases — sometimes known as completing hard offers. Direct response advertisers aggregated by the offer providers earn money from the purchases, and pay out to the game developers for bringing them customers and to cover the cost of the currency.

However, at the beginning of March, Facebook announced that after the migration to Credits, only approved offer providers can dispense hard Credits offers, and the only approved provider at the time was the Mountain View, CA-based TrialPay. Facebook promised more providers would be approved before the July 1st forced migration, and now it’s made good on that promise by blessing SupersonicAds and Deal United. A Facebook spokesperson tells us that “both of these companies will provide offers for Europe, extending the current offers product outside of the United States.”

[Update: To be clear, the approvals of SupersonicAds and Deal United mean those companies will contribute offer inventory they've aggregated from advertisers into Facebook's existing official offer wall, which it runs in partnership with TrialPay. Developers won't have to do anything new to get SupersonicAds or Deal United offers to appear in the offer walls of their games. They won't have to set up any additional offer walls, and users will see offers from these providers blended into the offer mix.]

SupersonicAds co-founder Gil Shoham told us his company has more than 1000 advertisers lined up to work with developers and 5000 live offers that will become available to users through the Facebook Credits partnership. “We have the ability to tap into many offers per country, and provide full localization and translation of offers and landing pages. Our goal is to make sure all users across europe can find relevant offers.”

Facebook tapped SupersonicAds as the only European launch partner for its Credits soft offers program, which allows users to earn Credits for watching video ads while playing games or browsing Facebook.com. Shoham says the program has been a success so far, and that the company has served commercials from Disney, Intel, Sony, Lionsgate, and Warner Bros to Facebook users.

Having both launched on Facebook years ago, today’s move by Facebook is validation for both companies that has been a long time coming. It appears that TrialPay will still have a Credits hard offer monopoly in the lucrative American market, though, as competitors such as Tapjoy and Super Rewards have yet to be approved.

Facebook has been making other preparations to ease both developers and users onto Credits. Yesterday it announced alternative payout options for 13 countries, which will help international developers receive their money from Facebook for the Credits spent on their games. Facebook also began giving away small amounts of Credits to get users accustomed to keeping a balance and spending them, with 1 free Credit being distributed to Ravenswood Fair players.

Approving enough providers for both the hard and soft offers programs will be crucial to injecting enough Facebook Credits into the ecosystem so that developers don’t take a big hit to monetization by migrating to Credits. If Facebook doesn’t establish robust enough Credits offer walls, users who previously spent proprietary virtual currency they earned through the multitude of independent offer providers won’t have adequate choices of ways to earn, and could cease to monetize if they don’t switch to buying currency (although as we’ve noted before, many do tend to start with offers and go direct anyway).

While most virtual goods revenue comes from direct purchases, a dip in revenues for Facebook game developers could cause a backlash leading them to turn to other platforms such as iOS or Android, hurting Facebook’s Credits business. The company still has work to do, though, in adding more offers options in Asia, and additional competitors in North America.

Social music app developer MXP4 is launching Bopler Games, a standalone Facebook canvas application in which users play a suite of games that revolve around licensed music. Bopler Games creates a new revenue stream for musicians by paying them royalties when users spend $1 in Facebook Credits to play with the full version of a song instead of a 60-second preview.

If MXP4 can demonstrate that social games can be a significant money maker for musicians, it could convince major record labels to loosen their grip and become more willing to license their songs. Social game micropayments might then help save musicians and record labels that have been struggling to earn money off of recorded music since the widespread adoption of the MP3.

Previously, MXp4 only offered games that musicians could brand and install on their Pages as tab applications, but there were no in-game purchases. This meant that while useful for familiarizing fans with music and drawing users to a musician’s Page, MXP4′s games didn’t monetize directly, making musicians and labels weary to pay the developer or license their most popular songs to it.

Licensed music has been available for listening in some games such as NightClub City, and developers such as CrowdStar have allowed musicians to sell digital downloads through their games. However, this appears to be the first time a prominent developer has allowed users to pay for music that can only be listened to in a game. This is important because these purchases are less likely to cannibalize download sales, and instead create a parallel revenue stream or even encourage download sales.

Along with its existing game Pump It!, which focused on triggering sounds in a style of reminiscent of Guitar Hero and recently reach 1.3 million monthly active users, Mxp4 has added several new game types.

> Continue reading on Inside Social Games.

Facebook held a live webinar called “Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers” earlier today. In it, the virtual currency’s product marketing manager Deb Liu announced that Credits has been adopted by more than 550 games and apps from over 275 developers, and that Credits accounts for over 85% of the transactions on the Platform.

Liu also mentioned that Facebook would soon “substantially increase the number of countries that can receive payouts via PayPal,” and noted that more incentives would soon be available to developers who use Credits as their premium in-game currency (although she didn’t provide further details). Facebook also published a step-by-step guide to adopting Credits today, including an engineering flow diagram illustrating how a Credits transaction is processed.

These new stats, payout countries, incentives, and documentation should serve to draw more developers to Credits, especially ones based in South America or Asia, as Hong Kong is the only nation of those two continents where payouts are supported.

On July 1st, 2011, all Facebook games must use Credits as their exclusive payment method, and those who use Credits as their exclusive premium in-game currency will have access to incentives including Frictionless Payments, Buy With Friends, and the getBalance API. The new incentives Liu discussed would join this suite.

Facebook cited that over 350 games and 150 developers were using Credits by January, but those numbers have now grown by 200 and 125 respectively. These stats provide social proof that developers are switching to and sticking with Credits, which should help onboard those developers still delaying the inevitable.

Last month, Facebook announced support for several additional currencies and payment methods, including many in Asia. However, Facebook currently only allows payouts in North America, Europe, and Hong Kong, likely discouraging developers from Asia who can’t afford to set up a branch in one of nations that are supported. Liu said that additional payout countries, which could include Singapore and Taiwan since they have many app developers, will be added in late May or early June.

The new documentation published today showed developers how to register an app for Credits, generate the pay dialog with the JavaScript SDK, build the callback.php, set the location of an app’s callback, and complete a transaction. The callback.php flow diagram should help developers understand how a request is passed from a user to them to Facebook and back.

Facebook seems to understand that problems with the July Credits transition could seriously harm its relationship with the developer community. The migration to 30% taxed currency is already a touchy subject, and as such, it’s doing everything it can to preempt issues through blog posts, forum responses, and even live question-and-answer periods.