Facebook polls appear in Times Square – Facebook and ad agency R/GA partnered to produce a political polling app, 2012 Matters: What Matters Most. Users can indicate which issues are most important to them and have their answers appear on the Nasdaq digital billboard in Times Square.

Facebook, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter - Involver is powering Facebook and USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter on Facebook.com/sports and other pages. The app allows users to see, rate and share Super Bowl ads before, during and after the game via web or mobile.

Most users get big social return from Facebook – A study from the Pew Research Internet Project found that most users receive more social feedback than they put into the platform. This is due to the fact that there’s a small percentage of power users that is extremely active in liking, commenting and providing other social feedback on the site.

Bday Gift Finder uses data to find gifts – Bday’s Bday Gift Finder is an app that allows users to find the right gifts for friends by utilizing user data to settle on the most appropriate gift card. The app analyzes Likes and the sentiment attached to those Likes. Bday recently received $2 million in Series A funding.

Featured page owners get subscribe button – Fans can now more easily subscribe to Facebook page admins who make themselves visible as “Page Owners.” Facebook added a subscribe button to this featured section of pages on Friday. This only applies to page owners who have enabled subscribers.

Zuckerberg weighs in on SOPA -  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in on the Stop Online Piracy Act on Wednesday, writing in a Facebook post, “We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the Internet’s development.”

Facebook fifth in video viewers – ComScore reported this week that Facebook was the fifth most popular destination for online video behind Google, VEVO, Yahoo and Viacom. This is among the 182 million Internet users in the U.S. who watched online videos in December. Last year Facebook placed sixth, but generally has not seen steady growth in this category. [Image via ZDnet]

Employees increasingly use social media at work -  Palo Alto Networks found a 300 percent increase in social networking on corporate networks this year. Specifically, bandwidth consumption for Facebook apps, social plugins and posting increased from 5 percent to 25 percent since October 2010.

Update on Koobface virus -  Facebook security team posted an update about the Koobface virus this week, noting that after three years the company is been able to keep the virus off the platform, but is still seeking those responsible.

Next gen iPad includes Facebook code - iMore is reporting that buried within the iOS 5.1 beta 3 code for iPad3 are “ongoing references to Facebook.”

MTV uses Facebook for scholarships -  MTV has partnered with the College Board and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to run a campaign called My College Dollars, which guides students to college scholarships for which they can apply.

Facebook teams with Politico – Facebook’s data team is providing Politico with exclusive stats about conversation taking place on the social networking site about the Republican presidential primary candidates. Facebook will also survey voting-age users in South Carolina daily leading up to the primary there and share the results on Politico and the U.S. Politics on Facebook page.

NBC benefits from Facebook partnership – The NBC News/Facebook GOP Debate generated more than 45,000 comments, and viewers asked more than 4,500 questions on the “Meet the Press” Facebook debate tab, according to a note on the U.S. Politics on Facebook page. More than 124,000 people streamed the event live at 9 a.m. on Sunday. NBC saw more than 210,000 on-demand streams of the full debate later on Sunday and more than 860,000 total online streams in the past four days. The “Meet the Press” Facebook page had more than 130,000 views on Sunday.

Facebook employees speak at CES – Facebook product integrations were popular at the Consumer Electronic Show this year, but some Facebook employees got attention too. Facebook Vice President, Digital Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson served on the brand keynote panel on Wednesday. Matt Jacobson, Facebook’s head of market development, spoke as part of the “Masters of Film and Technology” panel. Both are available for streaming on Facebook. Everson’s talk can be viewed here, and Jacobson’s appearance is here.

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul have experienced the most Facebook growth of all the GOP presidential primary candidates this week, according to our Inside Facebook Election Tracker. The two are following similar growth patterns, though Romney had been earning more Likes per day until Thursday.

On the day of the New Hampshire Primary, there were more than 100,000 mentions of Romney in posts, status updates, shared links and comments on the social network, according to survey of all U.S. Facebook users provided to POLITICO by Facebook.
Paul, who finished second in New Hampshire after Romney, had nearly the same number of mentions.

All of the candidates who participated in the NBC News Facebook GOP Debate, except for Mitt Romney, saw higher growth the day after the debate than they had seen the day before. Romney still earned more fans than any other candidate, but he did not experience any boost from the appearance.

Jon Huntsman, whose daily growth has steadily increased since the beginning of the year, enjoyed a small bump in new fans after placing third in the New Hampshire Primary. His page gained 1,495 Likes on Wednesday, but has not maintained that momentum.

Rick Santorum gained 4,546 fans after Sunday’s debate, but his daily growth has dropped considerably since then. Santorum, as we noted last week, experienced sharp growth after a surprisingly successful showing in Iowa. But since placing fifth in New Hampshire, he has seen only about 1,000 new Likes per day.

Rick Perry has been losing fans this week on Facebook, apart from two positive days after the debate aired on Meet the Press.

Newt Gingrich, whose poll numbers have also been falling, has had a long decline in daily Facebook growth. Gingrich had been the top gainer at the end of November and early December reaching up to 2,000 new Likes per day, but only earned 142 Likes in the past day.

Facebook is working with NBC News to implement research polls leading up to U.S. elections. The effort to conduct legitimate online polling is significant as the social network seeks to establish itself as the single source of people’s real identity on the web.

This, along with the co-sponsorship of Sunday’s NBC News Facebook GOP Debate, seems to be part of an attempt to associate the company with the political process. Doing so will make Facebook appear more serious and could improve its positioning should the company decide to go public this year.

To conduct polls, the social network displays questions on the right-hand sidebar to users based on the age and location information in their profile. So far, polls have been taken by residents of Iowa, New Hampshire and nationwide, according to a Facebook spokesperson. NBC has used some of the results on its Meet The Press program. [Update 1/9/20 3:50 p.m. PT: Results from the national survey are available here.]

Facebook was also prominently featured on this past weekend’s special episode of Meet The Press, which hosted GOP presidential primary candidates for a debate. The social network secured branding in the name of the debate and backdrops behind the candidates. Ahead of the debate, Facebook users could ask questions through an app. One user had his question featured on the program. A few others had their comments about taxes displayed on the air. The debate was streamed live on Facebook and is available on-demand from the GOP Debate 2012 app.

Image credit: Poynter
Image credit: Meet The Press

Mitt Romney might have edged his opponents in Iowa on Tuesday, but Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both surpassed the former Massachusetts governor in daily Facebook growth after the primary. Santorum gained close to 9,000 Likes in a single day, the most for any candidate since we launched Inside Facebook’s Election Tracker in late September.

Santorum’s fan count ranks No. 8 among GOP presidential primary candidates we’ve been tracking. His page only passed 63,000 Likes today — not much more than double the number of votes he received in Iowa. Santorum had been low in the polls, too, but we saw an interesting upward trend in his Facebook growth last week that suggested his campaign was gaining momentum.

Paul hasn’t gotten as many new fans as Santorum since the election, but he also saw a large boost on Wednesday, earning close to 8,000 new Likes.

Romney, who claimed victory in Iowa by only eight votes, has mostly sustained the growth rate he achieved last week, averaging more than 5,800 new Likes per day.

Michele Bachmann continued to lose fans leading up to the caucus and afterward. She dropped out of the race on Wednesday.

Facebook has partnered with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” to present a multi-platform forum for Sunday’s GOP presidential debate before the New Hampshire Republican primary. The NBC News Facebook GOP Debate will air on MSNBC and stream live on Facebook to create an interactive experience.

As they watch the candidates face off, viewers will be able to react and discuss the issues with their friends and others on Facebook. Leading up to the debate, people can visit facebook.com/MeetThePress or facebook.com/USPolitics to ask questions and interact with others interested in the event. Both pages share an app that includes videos and a Facebook comments plugin prompting users to “Please submit your question.” The app had more than 2,300 comments at the time of this writing.

With this being a presidential election year, expect Facebook to continue to present itself as a means for connecting voters and candidates. Last April the company held a live townhall with President Barack Obama at its Palo Alto headquarters. In November, the U.S. Politics Page offered an app for people to find their polling place and tell their friends that they voted.

The NBC News Facebook GOP Debate will take place at 9 a.m. ET in the Chubb Theatre at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, NH. In addition to the live stream, video from the event will be available on demand afterward on Facebook.

You can follow the progress of the presidential primary candidates and current elected officials with Inside Facebook’s 2012 Election Tracker.

Mitt Romney saw a surge of new Facebook fans between yesterday and today, according to our Inside Facebook 2012 Election Tracker. We have not heard back from Romney’s campaign whether the growth is the result of an ad buy.

Pundits and polls suggest Romney is favored to win in Iowa on Tuesday. His daily Facebook growth had been lower than Ron Paul’s since December 3rd, but Romney edged Paul on Monday and then shot up today with 6,088 new page Likes.

After slower growth last week, Paul’s daily new fan count picked up again. He is currently No. 2 in most polls.

Rick Santorum’s Facebook page also made big gains since Tuesday. Santorum had been earning fewer than 200 Likes per day since mid-December, but saw 1,012 fans between yesterday and today.

Newt Gingrich, who had a small burst of new fans last Friday, only averaged about 375 Likes per day this week. Gingrich has been facing direct attacks on a number of fronts, including TV spots from Pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future, and has fallen in steeply in recent polls.

Most fan growth has slowed among Republican presidential primary candidates since the final debate on December 15th, according to our Inside Facebook 2012 Election Tracker. In recent days, though, Newt Gingrich has seen a small increase in daily new fans and Michele Bachmann has gone into the negative.

There was an uptick in Gingrich’s fan growth today, which could be related to his recent denouncement of attack ads from Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates. A post on Gingrich’s Facebook page Thursday evening — which included a quote from his appearance on The Laura Ingraham Show — has far gotten more likes, comments and shares than any post since December 11th.

Ron Paul saw more than 6,000 new fans the day after the debate and then again after an appearance on Jay Leno. Paul has not been able to maintain that sort of momentum, but he continues to see more daily growth than any other candidate.

Bachmann has lost fans over the last two days, though she is still ahead of where she was a week ago. Her page is graphed below:

Europe Stifling Facebook’s Targeted Ads – The European Union is set to enact legislation to ban some avenues Facebook uses to create targeted ads, specifically by making Facebook be more transparent about what user data it’s collecting.

Spotify Opens Platform to Developers – Spotify announced the company would open its platform to app developers to include things like reviews and song lyrics, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook May Allow Gambling in UK - Facebook is exploring opening up the platform to gambling in the United Kingdom, according to TechCrunch, maybe as soon as 2012.

Mobile Channels Pushing Traffic for SNAP Interactive - SNAP Interactive told TechCrunch that Facebook’s recently launched mobile channels have given the company’s apps a “significant” traffic boost.

WashPo Reader Boasts 3.5M Users – The Washington Post Social Reader now boasts more than 3.5 million subscribers, according to a company statement. The growth came in just two months and is especially popular with users under 35, 83% to be exact.

Other Announcements:

Liquidus Releases Socialink 2.0 - Liquidus released the new version of its marketing application for car retailers, Socialink 2.0. New features include video integrations.

Secure.me App Protects Users on Facebook – Secure.me is an app that protects users from over-sharing or phishing from viruses on Facebook.