Facebook is deepening its integration with Windows through a new Skype-to-Facebook feature and a Messenger client for Windows 7 that allows users to access the Ticker, Chat and Notifications.

The Skype-to-Facebook functionality, found in the Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows released last week, allows users to make Skype calls to one another without leaving Facebook. In order to use the feature, users must link their Skype and Facebook accounts and then launch calls from a video call button that appears after selecting a Facebook friend. Facebook first introduced Skype integrations this year, several months before Microsoft acquired Skype in October.

Facebook’s Messenger client for Windows 7 is a bit more involved, enabling users to access three core real-time features of the Facebook platform directly from their desktops. TechCrunch has confirmed that the client is currently in limited beta on the platform and is wholly developed by Facebook — not as part of a new partnership with Microsoft. Facebook has been experimenting with different ways to package Chat in native apps in the past year, including launching a standalone mobile group chat app for iOS, Android and BlackBerry in August.

It may be worth noting that these features move Facebook further into territory that Google has expanded into in recent years as well, while Google is still trying to get Google+ growing to larger scale.

Charity and contests characterized most of the campaigns on our list this week. An interesting combination of celebrity and charity pushed Street King’s growth this week, then realtors in California are trying to promote the importance of their services in that depressed real estate market. A New York tourism company took advantage of Halloween to promote its tour services, MassMutual promotes life insurance with a video campaign and Farmers Insurance enters into its fourth partnership with Zynga.

Below is an excerpt of this week’s full Featured Facebook Campaigns entry in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other Facebook marketing campaigns by top-performing brands and other organization on Facebook.

Street King’s Viral Charity Campaign

Goal: Page Growth, Charity, Network Exposure, Brand Loyalty, Engagement, Product Purchase

Method: Street King is an energy drink from rapper 50 Cent that is also involved in a campaign for the United Nations World Food Programme to provide meals to hungry children. With the purchase of every drink, the company donates a meal.

Core Mechanic: The campaign tightly integrates a celebrity, product, and charity. Engagement has been very high, with news feed posts — that include vulgarity and appear to be written by 50 Cent himself — garners thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of Likes and hundreds of comments. The original goal was to award the United Nations World Food Programme one meal for every Page Like on Facebook to reach million; when the Page came short, 50 Cent donated the difference to feed a million children anyway.

The goal of Street King is to feed a billion children in five years, and the company just launched in September. A star-studded commercial with a parody of “The Hangover” starring Mike Tyson, 50 Cent and boxer Floyd Mayweather was also released as part of the campaign.

Whereas we’ve seen campaigns use Likes as a motivator for charity or product purchase, combining the two and then throwing in celebrity has managed to produce enviable Page growth and exposure for this new product.

Impact: In the past month the Page has grown from tens of thousands to 454,400 Likes, according to PageData. The promotion also has fans talking, primarily because of the fun, celebrity-studded video one might suppose, as the Page recently showed that more than 200,000 people were talking about the product.

Gray Line’s Spooktacular Mystery Contest

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure

Method: Gray Line New York is a double-decker bus and motorcoach tourism company that launched a Halloween-themed contest on its Facebook Page to give away four tickets to its New York Night Tour.

Core Mechanic: The company posted the contest to its Facebook Page, but posted a link to its Tumblr account with the rules, then asked entrants to go back to the Facebook Page to post the trivia answers that count as an entry.

Impact: The contest was not streamlined and required no Liking of the Page so there appeared to be only a handful of entrants. Entry was pretty complicated: users have to read the rules on a blog, then go back to the post to comment their answers. Ultimately, it would have been more successful if it were Like-gated and if made easier by being held entirely on the Facebook platform. The Page is at 1,300 Likes

Want to learn how top brands are designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of hundreds of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Echo Nest Points Out Flaws in Facebook Music – The CEO of Echo Nest, a music industry service provider, published a blog post this week outlining technical problems with Facebook’s music sharing system. It criticizes errors in how Facebook IDs songs that prevents music shared from one service such as Spotify from being played in a different service such as Rdio.

Wal-Mart Offers Localized Deals for Fans – Wal-Mart and Facebook have partnered to offer the retailer’s Facebook fans deals localized to its 3,500 locations in the U.S. Facebook is not working with other merchants in a similar way because of a lack of resources. We wrote about similar types of deals previously, when Facebook tested tools allowing corporations to administrate all the Places pages of the local instances of their business.

Ooyala Analyzes Facebook Videos – Ooyala recently released a video analysis tool, Custom Analytics with Business Dimension Reporting. The tool helps users segment audiences based on behavior on the Facebook platform.

Flowtown Acquired by Demandforce - Small business marketing firm Flowtown was acquired by Demandforce, a marketing solutions company.

BrightEdge Leverages Open Graph – BrightEdge released a new solution for Facebook Pages trying to improve their SEO, the S3 edition includes things like open graph tags, improved search rankings help, engagement measurement and more.

Other Announcements:

Buddy Media Opens San Francisco, Singapore Offices – Buddy Media has opened new offices in San Francisco and Singapore.

Votigo Launches Self-Service Platform, Offers – Votigo has launched self-service access to its social media promotions platform this week. As part of the promotion, the company is offering contest and sweepstakes apps for two cents to the first 2,000 businesses creating a promotion with the platform before the end of October.

Online video technology developer Ooyala this week announced its new customizable platform for content owners that want to rent and sell video via Facebook applications. Ooyala Social is just that, with a wide variety of viral and engagement features licensees can include such as live chat, sharing of video clips that can be watched in the news feed,

Ooyala Social is the most engaging social video experience we’ve seen yet. With an inclusive set of payment options including Facebook Credits, PayPal, Credit Cards, and mobile, it could help video content owners turn their Facebook presences into new revenue streams.

We reviewed Miramax’s implementation of Ooyala Social last month. Its ability to let users choose from a variety of different films to rent made it more useful to TV and film studios then Milyoni’s Social Theater app. However, it lacked some important social and viral features found in Milyoni’s app. It turns out, though, that Miramax had simply opted for a more stripped down experience, and that the Ooyala platform it was built off of supports many more social features.

With Ooyala Social, video content owners can allow users to:

• Rent videos for a limited time
• Buy videos, which are then stored online and can be accessed at any time
• Subscribe to an updating series of videos
• Share with friends through Facebook social plugins
• Select between high-definition and standard video quality
• Live chat with other viewers
• Purchase and gift a film to friends
• Leave timed comments
• Watch simultaneously and chat with a specific set of friends by distributing a unique URL
• Begin watching the film on one device or social platform and resume playback from a different device or platform
• Receive recommendations on what to watch based on their interests
• View an activity feed of what friends have watched and shared
• Share video clips that are viewable in-line from the news feed (requires custom Ooyala development)

Pacifico Beer planned parties, Tillamook Cheese made sandwiches, Tic Tac asked people to share about cancer, Consumer Reports gave out free information and ING Direct tried to make currency cool in this week’s roundup of Facebook campaigns. We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below.

You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Pacifico’s Adventures On Tap Roadtrip and Parties

Goal: Engagement, Brand Loyalty, Product Purchase

Core Mechanic: Pacifico beer company traveled to five cities to introduce Pacifico on tap — Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle — then documented the trips with video and created an app on the Page to feature highlights of each trip.

Method: The company planned five parties, one in each city and then took information about each party and trip and placed it within a Facebook app that users can peruse. Using the app users can see that the company did different things in each city, decorated a beer keg differently for the attitude of each city and is generally a young, hip company (mirroring its proposed consumer market).

Impact: The Page currently has 18,300 Likes and this particular campaign seemed to be more about introducing a new product — Pacifico on tap — rather than growing the Page. Now if people want more information about this beer on tap, on Facebook they can find not just the information, but a tightly branded presentation of this information documented in several videos on the Page and this video in general.

Tillamook’s Cheese ‘Wich Photo App

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure, Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: Tillamook created a branded app that allows users to upload a photo to the Page, then have that photo appear as a burn on their Tillamook grilled cheese sandwich.

Method: Users simply upload a photo to the app, created by Hello Design, and then they have the chance to adjust its placement, size, etc. When the user is satisfied with their image on the grilled cheese sandwich they may publish to the stream.

Impact: The Tillamook Page shows steady growth, according to PageData, but this particular campaign seemed to be more about making the cheese personal to exiting fans, given that the app is not Like-gated. The app is interesting because it allows users to personalize the ways in which they love cheese — of all things — and share it with their friends on Facebook in a fun, unique way.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of hundreds of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

More Info on Facebook’s Spartan – TechCrunch reported more information about BoltJS, a UI framework designed by Facebook and written in JavaScript that runs in the browser. Apparently it’s part of Facebook’s Project Spartan, which may not be fully revealed until f8.

Facebook Settles With Lamebook – Lamebook, a humor site publishing funny Facebook posts, and Facebook settled this week. The judge refused to move the suit to California, and thus, some speculate that Facebook settled to avoid jury sympathy for the Austin-based company.

Facebook Extends Comment Period – Facebook extended the comment period for its new privacy policy to 5 p.m. Pacific on September 7. Comments may be left at Facebook’s Site Governance Page.

Facebook Testing Comment Ordering? – AllFacebook reported that Facebook seems to be testing a way for Page admins to order comments based on social ranking, chronology or reverse chronology. [Image via AllFacebook]

Facebook Pays $40,000 in Bounty Program – Facebook’s Bug Bounty program has, thus far, paid out $40,000 to people around the world who have reported issues to the company. Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan wrote a blog about the program this week with more information.

Interesting Insights on Facebook Ads – SocialCode reported some interesting trends about Facebook ads, including: women are 11% more likely to click, older women are more likely to click through and men are slightly more likely to Like an ad.

HTML5 Mobile App Allows for Connect – Nitobi, creators of PhoneGap, launched a new plugin, PhoneGap Facebook Connect. Essentially it allows users to login to HTML and JavaScript apps with their Facebook login.

Social Networks and Patents – Business Week published an interesting story examining the lack of a “patent war” when it comes to social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. One reason the magazine speculated, is that Facebook (for example) only holds 12 patents, which is to say, there aren’t as many patents to fight over.

Facebook Developer Blog: Fluid Canvas – Facebook’s Developer blog posted this week about how to build an app on Facebook with Fluid Canvas, to expand the size of apps, depending on a user’s screen resolution.

Other Announcements:

Appbistro Announces PPI Ads for Page Apps – Appbistro announced that the company now installs apps for Page admins, thus the company has seen a 190% increase in installs, recently hitting 100,000 registered Page admins.

Vitrue Releases SaaS 3.0 – Vitrue released version 3.0 of its social media platform, which includes new localization features, analytics and metrics.

Hootsuite Deepens Facebook Integration – AllFacebook reports that HootSuite has deepened its Facebook integration, specifically adding events, photos, groups, and geo-tool updates.

15% of Posts are Likejacked – Norton’s analysis of 3.5 million video posts in August found that 15% were scams, or like jacking. Norton Safe Web for Facebook is an app that may guard against this type of attack.

UK Won’t Ban Facebook – Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion met with United Kingdom officials Thursday regarding the social networks’ role in summer riots there. The government ended up not moving to restrict access to the social networks in emergencies such as riots.

Facebook Takes Third Spot for Video – Facebook becomes the third largest video site on the Internet, comScore reported. That is 51.5 million people who watched videos on the platform in July.

AT&T to Discontinue Facebook Phone – AT&T is reportedly set to drop its “Facebook phone” called the Status, according to TechCrunch.

Places More Popular Than Foursquare – London developer Golden Gekko reports its clients report much more Facebook check-ins than Foursquare in Europe. Magnus Jern reported that the ratio ranged from 5-10 to 1. However, the future of the service is unclear.

Facebook Hit 1 Trillion Pageviews - Facebook surpassed 1 trillion pageviews according to Google’s Ad Planner tool, although comScore says otherwise.

Facebook Mobile App to Offer Photo Filters - Facebook looks to be competing with Instagram’s classy mobile app by offering almost a dozen photo filters to its mobile own application — following Facebook’s attempt to buy the startup, according to The New York Times. News of the feature first leaked out in June.

Recapping Facebook’s Bug Bounty – Neal Poole did a basic rundown of Facebook’s Security Bug Bounty program, which included information about multi-line JavaScript URI, redirects preserving fragment portions of URLs, XSS filters and more.

Facebook Wraps Up Farm Bureau Dispute – Facebook and the Farm Bureau had a dispute over Facebook trademarking “FB,” but it seems like the lawsuit is set to be wrapped up.

Milyoni Chart for Credits – Milyoni created a nice chart and whitepaper that includes ways that Facebook Credits can, and cannot, be used.

Facebook to Open Second Campus - Facebook is set to open up an additional campus from its current Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters. The second campus pwill be southwest of the current location, to be constructed in 2013 to accommodate about 2,800 employees.

Ticketmaster Allows Users to Find Friends – Line Nation’s Ticketmaster service launched an app that allows users to see where their friends are sitting on seat maps and tag themselves.

BBC Does Facebook On-Demand Video – BBC has developed an on-demand Facebook application allowing users to rent episodes from the show “Top Gear” for 48 hours.

ShopIgniter, Involver Partner – The two companies are entered into a partnership to help online retail businesses with a management content system.

Miramax film studios released a multi-title movie rental app this week that lets users stream any of 20 films for 48 hours in exchange for 30 Facebook Credits. Users can also earn behind the scenes clips by assigning friend’s to roles in films via wall posts.

The Miramax eXperience app, powered by Ooyala’s video technology, lacks some of the advanced social features such as timed comments and scene sharing found in Milyoni’s film rental app. However, the destination app is special because it aggregates a catalog of films rather than only serving one, and could become a model copied by other content owners including TV networks and record labels as well as other film studios.

The film studio originally planned to host the video on demand storefront on Miramax.com, but CEO Mike Lang told PaidContent the Facebook app was an attempt fish where the fish are. The app is now available with 20 films in the US, and 10 in the UK and Turkey. Purchased films can also be watched through the browser of an iPad or on Google TV. Eventually, Miramax will look to sell fil

Apps allowing users to pay for access to digital media content have sprung up this year, with Milyoni pioneering the space with its Social Theater app for The Dark Knight in March. Credits-for-content apps appeal to media producers because they allow them to generate a direct return on their social media investment rather than just conducting institutional marketing.

Milyoni publishes differently skinned versions of it’s app for each film reducing the likelihood of a single user making multiple purchases. However, the new social features in Social Theater 2.0, including the abilities publish video clips of currently watched scenes to the news feed and leave comments pegged to specific moments in a film, are superior to those in Miramax eXperience.

When users first visit Miramax’s app, they can slide between 20 popular films from the studio’s catalog including Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. Rentals cost 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, per film for 30 days with a 48 hour streaming period. These are almost identical terms to Milyoni’s app. The Ooyala video player runs smoothly, automatically optimizing for definition though users can also select video quality level.

While watching users can share the app via Like and Send buttons, or by leaving a comment and opting to post it to Facebook. However, the stories posted by these social plugins aren’t likely to attract many users since they don’t cite the currently viewed film and therefore appear quite boring. The addition of live chat or timed comments, scene sharing, and richer social plugin shares could significantly increase virality, and give users a reason to rent through the app rather than elsewhere.

Some of this missed opportunity for growth will likely be made up by Casting Call, Miramax eXperience’s embedded sharing app. Users are shown popular characters from Miramax films, asked to “cast” a friend in the role. A publisher dialog encourages users to share their casting selection to the friend’s wall. To comply with Facebook’s policies against incentivized sharing, users are reward with a behind-the-scenes clip of a film of their choice for casting three friends whether they publish the wall stories or not.

By taking a multi-title approach, Miramax can translate positive encounters with its app into additional sales better than standalone Facebook apps for each film. Plus, since Miramax eXperience is linked to from the Pages of all the films it serves, there’s little lose and much to gain by offering a wide variety of content in a single app. Don’t be surprised if you soon see record labels bundling music by different artists or TV networks offering a slate of their shows in aggregated Credits-for-content Facebook apps.

Credits, free money and fear were used by different brands this week to attract more Likes, customers and promote brand loyalty. Dunkin Donuts, UNO and Publishers Clearing House lured users with free money while the German crime show Notruf Deutschland utilized a user’s profile to instill fear in them. Finally, Milyoni’s new Social Theater app lets users buy movies right on Facebook.

We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Be President of Dunkin’ Nation

Goal: Network Exposure, Page Growth, Product Purchase

Core Mechanic: Dunkin’ Donuts is combining a promotion on its Page with check-in services from Facebook and Foursquare to give away prizes.

Method: Users may check in once an hour up to 10 times per day from one of the location services after registering on the Facebook Page in order to win. Participants who check in often enough may be crowned the “President of Dunkin’ Nation” and other users are eligible to win a daily sweepstakes of prizes including an LCD TV, gift cards, t-shirts, mugs and more.

Impact: The promotion begins today and runs until September 23.

Milyoni’s Social Theater Screening of “The Big Lebowski”

Goal: Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: A Facebook purchase of a movie from the Page that may be viewed an unlimited amount of times in a 48 hours period.

Method: Users simply visit the film’s Facebook Page, click on the Social Theater (beta) tab and then agree to purchase the film with Facebook Credits. Buyers have the chance to share their purchase to the stream and save five of their friends  $1 dollar off the rental price of $3, or 30 Credits.

Impact: Facebook says the Watch The Big Lebowski app has 296 MAU, which isn’t necessarily bad given that it’s a movie rental and it’s currently in beta. The app is part of Milyoni’s new Social Theater app.

Facebook ecommerce developer Milyoni has added new sharing features to its Social Theater app that lets Pages rent videos to users for Facebook Credits. Social Theater, which powers rentals for Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight and the ACL music festival, now allows users to leave timed comments, share specific scenes, chat live with other viewers, Like brands mentioned in the film, and send discounts on rentals to friends. These improvements can now be seen on the Page for film The Big Lebowski, will enhance the Social Theater user experience, and could help instances of the app spread virally across Facebook, increasing sales for content owners.

Milyoni got the attention of the ecommerce and media worlds when Warner Bros first announced it would rent films from its Facebook Page using Social Theater, and would allow users to pay with Facebook Credits. While it opened a new revenue stream to video content owners, we criticized the app for lacking many of the social feature it added this week. Without these, Social Theater wasn’t taking full advantage of Facebook’s communication channels and built-in audience, hampering sales.

The ecommerce developer has since raised $3 million in Series A funding and partnered with Page management company Vitrue to help brands drive direct return on investment on their social media efforts. It’s also been tapped to power on-Facebook rentals of concerts as well as more Warner Bros films including Inception and Harry Potter. Now it is debuting Social Theater 2.0 with rentals of cult hit The Big Lebowski from the film’s Facebook Page.

Once users opt to rent the film they’re shown a landing page with Like and Send buttons for sharing the app with friends, and a Like Box so they can become a fan of the film’s Page. Users then confirm that they’ll pay 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, for 48 hours of unlimited viewing of the film. They’re giving the option to post a link to the walls of friends that lets them get a $1 discount on renting the film.

While watching the film without going into full-screen mode, they see timed comments — text tied to a certain moment in the film —  written by other viewers scroll across the screen. They can add their own comments that are also published to Facebook, though this syndication could be made more explicit to the user.

At certain moments in the film users are are shown prompts to share scenes or popular quotes from to the film to the news feed. This content can be consumed for free by friends right from the news feed, and entices them to click through and rent the film themselves. Users also prompts to Like the Pages related to the film or of brands mentioned in the film, so users get a chance to Like the Page of the film’s main character “The Dude”, and when he asks for a drink of Kahlua, users have the option to Like the alcohol brand.

On the backend, Milyoni has implemented an efficient self-serve admin system that for deployment of the app in less than 24 hours. Admins can also customize pricing, promotion, and app layout.

Social Theater 2.0 is much more engaging and viral than the first version Milyoni launched with The Dark Knight. It gives users a unique, social viewing experience in which they can easily share compelling content and discounts on rentals with friends, and subscribe to updates about the film and related Pages. These elements should allow content owners who license Social Theater to secure more rentals, and help Milyoni turn one-time renters into repeat sales across deployments of its app.