Facebook is testing a new design for its self-serve ad tool that presents users with a list of pages, apps and other potential ad destinations they’re connected to.

The social network has been experimenting with designs and features of its ad tool in order to make it more intuitive and useful for less experienced advertisers. Although Facebook introduced a number of new options for large advertisers earlier this year, the company also seems to be trying to do more to support the small- to medium-sized businesses who want to advertise on the site.

The latest design, seen above, includes icons and names of all the Facebook objects for which a user has admin privileges. There is also a new “Getting Started” sidebar module with sample ad destinations. Previously, this first step simply included an empty search box called “Destination,” as seen below. The new design is likely to help users find what they want to advertise more quickly. From there, the tool works basically the same as we covered in our walkthrough here. Overall, the tool presents Facebook advertising in easier-to-understand terms and simplifies the steps to starting a new campaign.

 

Facebook posted new jobs for head of policy in Japan and Korea this week. There was also a data center position, marketing and recruiting jobs posted on Facebook’s Careers page. The company’s LinkedIn feed posted an engineering and a few recruiting positions.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Head Of Policy Japan
• Head Of Policy Korea
• Data Center Network Technician (Virginia)
• Manager, Business Operations Data Analytics
• Manager, Corporate FP&A
• Manager, Global Marketing Business Operations
• Manager, Mobile Partnerships (Tokyo)
• Design Recruiter
• Design Recruiter – Contract
• HR Specialist EMEA – Contract (Dublin)
• Creative Strategist (New York)
• Product Analyst
• Analyst, Global Sales Reporting (Hyderabad)
• Analyst, Ad Review Operations – Contractor (Austin)
• Account Manager (Sao Paulo)
• Quantitative Researcher
• People Services Rep – Contract
• Technical Recruiter -Contract (Seattle)
• University Recruiting Coordinator – Contract
• Strategic Partner Manager, Gaming (Seoul)
• Associate, Custom Market Insights (New York)
• Associate, Business Operations
• IT Manager

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Data Engineer, Enterprise BI
• Technology Partner, Supply Chain/Logistics
• IT & Security
• Head of Technical Recruiting
• Manager, User Operations (Dublin)
• Team Lead, User Operations (Dublin)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook hired engineers and marketers this week, according to its LinkedIn feed and Careers page. The company also appeared to hire a manager of State and Local Public Policy – California and legal counsel in its India office.

As we covered Tuesday, the company also hired the team behind Android photo sharing app Lightbox.

New hires per LinkedIn and other sources:

• Alex Bakhturin, Software Engineer – former software engineer at DoubleGIS.
• Steven Kim, Software Engineer – former software developer at Microsoft.
• Ali Amin, System’s Tech Engineer – former mobile test engineer at TeleCommunication Systems.
• Matias Castello, Platform Partnerships – former analyst in venture capital at DN Capital.
• Ray Tong, Decision Support Analyst – former information systems intern at IMAX.
• Glenn Davis, Strategist, Global Marketing Solutions – former manager of society and technology research at Mercedes-Benz.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

• Manager, State and Local Public Policy, California
• Legal Counsel (Hyderabad)
• Data Engineer, Enterprise BI
• User Interface Engineer, Marketing
• Manager Infrastructure Engineering 120401
• Keynote Presentation Designer
• Senior Analyst, Custom Market Insights (New York)
• Research Manager
• Learning and Development Consultant (Hyderabad)
• IT Field Support Manager (Dublin)
• Head of Creative, B2B Marketing
• Head of Retail, Global Vertical Marketing
• Platform Product Marketing Manager
• Partner Engineer, Marketing Solutions (Chicago)
• Partner Engineer, Mobile, HTML5
• Marketing Manager (Singapore)
• Marketing Manager (Sydney) – Contract
• Marketing Manager, Japan (Tokyo)
• Strategic Partner Development, Prepaid Card Partnerships
• Account Manager, Global Marketing Solutions, Politics (Washington, DC)
• Account Manager, QSR (New York)
• Account Manager, Entertainment (Los Angeles)
• Ad Operations Analyst, Global Marketing Solutions (Austin)
• Media Solutions, Norwegian (Dublin)
• Media Solutions, Swedish (Dublin)
• Agency Development Lead – US
• Client Partner, QSR (Atlanta, Dallas or Chicago)
• Client Partner (Tokyo)
• Client Partner (Seoul)
• Head of Sales, Poland/CEE (London)
• Strategic Partner Development, Prepaid Card Partnerships
• Strategic Partner Manager, Gaming (Tokyo)
• Account Manager – Gaming, (Dublin)
• Associate, Business Operations, API
• Analyst, Risk Operations (Hyd)
• Associate, User Operations, Intellectual Property (Austin)
• Technology Partner, Finance
• Associate, Business Operations, Mid-Market Sales (Austin)
• Administrative Assistant (New York)
• Administrative Assistant – Mobile

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook priced its initial public offering at $38 per share, which is at the high end of the range it proposed on Tuesday. The price will raise about $16 billion and give the social network a valuation over $100 billion.

The company plans to list 421.2 million shares of its common stock on the Nasdaq on Friday under the symbol FB. Facebook is offering 180 million of its shares. The remainder of the shares come from existing stockholders — a number of whom decided Wednesday to sell a greater proportion of their shares. Additionally, underwriters have the option to purchase up to 63.18 million additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments, which they are expected to sell based on demand seen during Facebook’s roadshow. This would increase the total sale by about $2.4 billion.

The IPO will be largest ever for a technology company and the third largest overall in the U.S., behind Visa and General Motors.

Last month, the social network reported revenues of $1.058 billion for the first quarter of the calendar year — a 45 percent increase from the first quarter last year, but 6 percent less than the previous quarter. Facebook, which was founded in 2004, had $1 billion in net income on $3.71 billion in revenue in 2011. The company generates the majority of its revenue from advertising, with about 15 percent coming from its payments business. Facebook collects a 30 percent cut of revenues from digital and virtual goods purchased with its Credits currency.

Some investors wonder how the social network’s monetization efforts will perform on mobile devices, where it so far has shown a limited number of ads. However, since filing for an IPO in February, Facebook acquired three mobile companies, including popular photo-sharing app Instagram. On Tuesday, the company hired the team from Lightbox, a similar photo-sharing app for Android devices.

Other questions arose about the effectiveness of Facebook’s display advertising when General Motors said this week that it was re-evaluating its paid media efforts on the site after seeing little impact on sales. Other brands, including Ford, came to the defense of the social network and suggested GM might not have applied proper strategy to Facebook.

In its IPO prospectus, Facebook admits that its ad model is nascent. “We believe that most advertisers are still learning and experimenting with the best ways to leverage Facebook to create more social and valuable ads,” it says in the filing.

Music video service Vevo has doubled its total registered users as a result of switching to Facebook-only login and adding more personalized features in March, Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff tells us. The company is also looking at other ways to partner and integrate with Facebook, including advertising.

Vevo gained as many registered users in 60 days as it had previously taken two years to acquire. Although Caraeff won’t reveal the exact total of registered users, he says it is in the single-digit millions. Vevo has also seen a 150 percent increase in referrals to its website from Facebook and a threefold increase from Facebook mobile to Vevo’s mobile apps since March.

“The results have been great,” Caraeff says of the company’s Facebook integration. “It’s been absolutely the right move for our business.”

In January, Vevo launched integration with Facebook Open Graph so that users can automatically share their viewing activity with friends on the social network. In March, it overhauled its website and eliminated the option to log in with services besides Facebook. Although Vevo doesn’t require users to log in to watch videos, it has added a number of features for those users who do. For example, it will create personalized playlists based on users’ Facebook activity and profile information. The company also launched a Facebook canvas application to give users the option of searching, viewing and sharing videos directly from the social network.

Caraeff would not comment on Vevo’s current business arrangement with Facebook besides saying that Vevo is whitelisted to sell and serve ads within its canvas application, as seen in the screenshot below.

“We hope to have an even bigger business of ads with them in the future,” he says of the social network.

For ads served within videos hosted on YouTube, Vevo gives 35 percent of revenue to Google. That means when Facebook users share YouTube links to Vevo videos on Facebook and their friends see an ad before the video plays within News Feed or Timeline, Google is the one that collects ad revenue, not Facebook.

Facebook has significantly expanded and diversified the list of third-party apps and websites that integrate its platform since launching Open Graph in September 2011, but so far it hasn’t taken any steps to directly monetize them. Besides the likely expansion of its Credits payment system, of which it takes a 30 percent fee, Facebook could also introduce an ad revenue sharing model.

Rumors that Vevo would end its deal with YouTube and switch to one with Facebook began to circulate earlier this year after some outlets reported that Vevo was having meetings with representatives from the social network. Caraeff says Vevo has a good relationship with both Google and Facebook, and that the company’s strategy is to be ubiquitous across platforms and devices.

“We want to have music wherever the fan wants it to be,” he says, pointing out that Vevo is available through apps on connected TVs and it syndicates content on a number of other sites. “We’re not telling our audience where to go and we’ve never tried to say our videos should not be available somewhere.”

Still, Facebook is a powerful driver of traffic and engagement, and Vevo and other apps and sites are looking for ways to benefit. Caraeff tells us he’s interested in doing even more integration with Facebook, though he could not discuss the specifics of any potential new features.

“We want to integrate Facebook more natively with features that are available now or in the future,” Caraeff says. “What we really want to do is enable a continuous-playing, long-form experience.”

Vevo has seen a 750 percent increase in the number of stories being published to Facebook and a 50 percent increase in Likes and comments on those stories since March. The mobile integration has led Facebook to become the largest traffic driver to Vevo’s app download pages. Caraeff says the company is also working on an HTML5 version of its app, which will allow visitors from Facebook and other mobile environments to watch Vevo videos without first downloading a native mobile app.

Vevo currently has 770,000 monthly active Facebook users, according to our AppData traffic tracking service.

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: SponsorPay, Warner Bros, High 5 Games, Kellen Company, Fiveonenine Games, Sociable Labs, King.com, TinyCo, Wooga, Machine Zone, GameHouse,  Ryzing, Sneaky Games, IMVU, PopCap Games and SoJo Studios.

• Integration Engineer
• Senior Mobile Ad Sales Manager
• Mobile Developer Relations Manager

• Business Analyst- Digital Games
• Associate Product Manager, Digital Games

• Director, Audience Insights
• Social Media Analyst

• Communications Specialist

• Director of Monetization

• Social Interaction Designer

• Senior Producer, Skillgames
• Hadoop Developer/Engineer
• Game Artist
• Senior Producer, Social Games
• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Programmer
• Game Developer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator
• Tools Programmer
• Senior Producer, Skillgames
• Hadoop Developer/Engineer
• Game Artist
• Senior Producer, Social Games

• Backend Engineer
• C++ Game Engineer

• Game Improvement Specialist
• Localization QA Analyst
• Marketing Manager
• Player Experience Manager
• Product Manager – Bubble Island

• Senior Graphics Engineer

• Lead Software Development Engineer

• AS3 Flash Developer

• Programmer

• Senior Program Manager

• Lead Animator
• Technical Marketing Campaign Manager

• Mobile Games Lead (PM/Design)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

After starting off the week at an all-time low, Zynga’s stock is beginning to rise again while Facebook’s initial public offering approaches.

The stock closed today at $8.22 a share, down from its opening at $8.75 but still notably higher than where its price was at the beginning of the week. Since Monday, Zynga’s shares have opened above their closing point from the previous day. The stock could be improving as Facebook’s Friday IPO draws near. The social network will likely be valued at over $100 billion with a stock price between $34 and $38 a share.

Facebook recently revealed in an S-1 amendment that Zynga was responsible for 15 percent of its 2011 income. When Facebook’s February S-1 showed 12 percent of its income came from Zynga, the developer’s stock rocketed up to over $14 a share before starting to fall back to previous levels. If the social network’s IPO is as big a success as many believe it will be, Zynga’s stock will likely see an even more dramatic share price increase.

Zynga’s stock still hasn’t taken off like many investors hoped it would when it began trading in December; shares didn’t return to their original price until late January. The stock managed to stay above $10 for February and March, but began a significant slide in mid-April, especially after the company’s Q1 earnings call on April 26. Although the company reported record bookings, it also reported a net loss of $85.4 million and shares dropped from $9.50 to $8.52 the next day. Shares continued to drop over the past two weeks, hitting an all-time low of $7.45 last Friday.

This post originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Facebook has created a standalone page management app for iOS devices, we’ve confirmed following an initial report from 9to5Mac. The app, called Pages Manager, is available in New Zealand but could roll out more widely soon.

Based on screenshots provided in the New Zealand App Store, the app appears similar to Facebook’s existing iOS app, but it adds page notifications and insights, as well as eliminates any features that are not related to pages. The app could help page owners monitor their pages and respond to fans more easily. With the m.facebook.com and the main Facebook iOS and Android apps, page admins can access their pages and write on their Timelines as a page, but there is no ideal way to get notifications or analytics without a third-party service. Pages Manager likely gives admins the option of receiving push notifications about recent page activity.

Making this a standalone app makes sense in order to not further complicate the main Facebook app. Spokespeople from the company did not tell us when the app will be available in all countries or whether an Android version would also be released.

From what we can deduce from a few screenshots, it appears that the recently added private message feature might not be an option from the app. It also does not appear that pages can edit their “About” section on the go, but might be able to manage their admins.

Facebook will make an additional 83.8 million shares available in an initial public offering on Friday, according to an eighth amendment to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Most of these shares are being sold by existing stockholders Accel Partners, Digital Sky Technologies, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Mail.ru Group Limited, Tiger Global Management and venture capitalist James Breyer. These entities and individuals likely decided to sell more shares after Facebook increased its price range for the IPO from between $28 and $35 to between $34 and $38.

Other additional shares will be sold by IPO underwriters, including Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. According to today’s amendment, Facebook has granted its underwriters the right to purchase more 63 million additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments. This is sometimes called a “greenshoe” option. Previously, Facebook was offering only about 50 million shares for a greenshoe, but this increased today because the number of over-allotment shares is typically a percentage of the total number of shares being floated.

Facebook itself is still only offering 180 million shares, which will raise about $6.8 billion for the company at the high end of the range. The remaining shares being sold will come from founders, employees and investors. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will exercise stock options and sell 30.2 million shares worth over $1 billion before taxes. Zuckerberg was not among the investors who decided to increase the amount of shares they would sell in the offering.

Facebook’s IPO will likely value the company at over $100 billion. Executives are expected to set the final stock price on Thursday. According to TechCrunch, the company will hold an all-night Hackathon event before Zuckerberg rings the opening Nasdaq bell from the social network’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Friday morning.

Daily Horoscope was the No. 1 gainer on our list of Facebook applications that grew by daily users this week. Additionally, there were two other horoscope apps, Yahoo, a few video websites, mobile apps, Instagram, Facebook’s developer site, and games led by Lost Bubble.

The titles below grew between 100,000 and 1.7 million DAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Name DAU Gain Gain,% 1.   Daily Horoscope 1,900,000 +1,740,000 + 1,088% 2.   Yahoo! 6,500,000 +1,700,000 + 35% 3.   Siz.net 670,000 +530,000 + 379% 4.   Lost Bubble 380,000 +320,000 + 533% 5.   Zynga Slingo 4,000,000 +300,000 + 8% 6.   Candy Crush Saga 2,000,000 +200,000 + 11% 7.   Instagram 2,500,000 +200,000 + 9% 8.   الأبراج اليومية 200,000 +191,000 + 2,122% 9.   Buggle 690,000 +190,000 + 38% 10.   Pyramid Solitaire Saga 480,000 +160,000 + 50% 11.   Zynga 670,000 +130,000 + 24% 12.   Developer Site 120,000 +110,000 + 500% 13.   Chill 1,400,000 +100,000 + 8% 14.   Horóscopo Diário 1,800,000 +100,000 + 6% 15.   HTC Sense 1,600,000 +100,000 + 7% 16.   Klout 1,100,000 +100,000 + 10% 17.   Nimbuzz Mobile 1,900,000 +100,000 + 6% 18.   Nokia 2,300,000 +100,000 + 5% 19.   Pool Live Tour 2,100,000 +100,000 + 5% 20.   Samsung Mobile 3,600,000 +100,000 + 3%

In addition to Daily Horoscope,   الأبراج اليومية and Horóscopo Diário were popular on our list; these apps tend to post daily feed stories when used. Yahoo’s web app was popular, as well as Siz.net and Chill.

Instagram remains on our list, but its video counterpart, Viddy did not. A number of other mobile apps were popular: HTC Sense, Nimbuzz Mobile, Nokia and Samsung Mobile. Then, Facebook’s Developer Site made our list.

Finally, games on the list were led by Lost Bubble, but included several Zynga and King.com titles.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Facebook introduced app ratings and negative feedback metrics to the app insights tool today as a way to help developers gain a better understanding of how users respond to their apps.

Detailed on developer blog post, these new metrics allow developers to go beyond monitoring growth trends and gain. Facebook has used this data to determine what appears in News Feed, but developers previously did not have the ability to see these insights or track their performance over time. Facebook says app ratings and negative feedback will also factor into what apps appear in the recently announced App Center.

The new app ratings dashboard in app insights will show developers how users have rated an app on a scale of one to five stars. Developers can view ratings as absolute numbers or relative percentages across different demographics, including age and gender, country and locale. Before, developers could only see their apps’ average overall rating and could not determine how the rating varied over time or by demographic.

The negative feedback metric will show developers how many times people have chosen to hide stories from an app, reported stories as spam or blocked an app completely. These reports are the same ones Facebook uses in its automated systems to detect spam on the platform, so it will be useful for developers in monitoring their performance over time. The insights will include the ratio of negative feedback to total impressions as well as an overview chart that displays green when an app is doing well and yellow when an app has reached a level for concern. Developers will even be able to compare the type of feedback they get from specific action types, as well as compare how users versus non-users respond to their content.

Facebook for Every Phone once again topped our list of growing Facebook pages, reaching almost 3 million new Likes this week. There were several musicians, movies, games, sports, and brand pages that also made the list.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 326,100 to 2.9 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 Every Phone 86,571,250 3,016,214 +414,856 +2,933,819 2   김현중 (Kim Hyun Joong) 2,508,779 2,220 +558 +2,439,528 3   Halo: Reach 2,647,760 20,870 +959 +692,426 4   Titanic 23,470,148 678,984 +80,520 +578,116 5   Adele 28,240,917 675,389 +84,269 +571,319 6   League of Legends 3,300,089 146,988 +4,339 +481,005 7   Guaraná Antarctica 5,423,864 657,801 +50,799 +442,519 8   Jeremy Lin 954,881 552,606 +34,979 +438,508 9   The Simpsons 50,254,983 682,251 +60,670 +417,711 10   AKON 39,018,597 366,913 +38,039 +385,812 11   LMFAO 17,077,805 679,364 +54,578 +380,268 12   Porsche 4,021,632 42,892 +5,148 +373,331 13   Bruno Mars 23,297,335 510,967 +50,673 +354,039 14   Will Smith 30,996,556 478,196 +54,919 +352,121 15   Shrek 25,720,278 385,077 +48,445 +343,413 16   Slotomania – Slot Machines 4,020,120 247,807 +74,318 +341,761 17   FC Barcelona 30,822,638 1,063,145 +47,731 +331,982 18   Target 12,060,776 373,601 +42,153 +328,167 19   Intel 9,991,939 360,375 +46,527 +327,061 20   Facebook 66,473,555 399,247 +51,802 +326,088

김현중 (Kim Hyun Joong) is a Korean artist came in at No. 2, leading other musician pages from Adele, AKON, LMFAO and Bruno Mars.

Halo: Reach took the No. 3 spot, though online games League of Legends and Slotomania – Slot Machines made the list as well. Movies on the list were led by “Titanic.” Actor Will Smith has seen significant growth on his page as he promotes his latest film.

Guaraná Antarctica is a popular beverage company that continues to increase engagement and Likes among users in Brazil. The car company Porsche had a large single-day spike in new Likes, suggesting a page consolidation. Football club FC Barcelona posts in multiple languages about its latest events. Finally, Target and Intel have been running ad campaigns and posting about their latest offerings and promotions.

Facebook has hired the team behind Android photo-sharing app Lightbox, according to a blog post on Lightbox’s website.

The app has already been removed from the Google Play store. It is likely Facebook did not acquire the company or its technology because of its recent acquisition of Instagram. As the social network plans to keep Instagram as a standalone app, the opportunity for Lightbox was diminishing. According to the Google Play store, Lightbox had between 1 million and 5 million installs. Instagram has between 10 million and 50 million.

What Facebook gains is a team that’s focused on mobile and Android specifically. Facebook is seeking to building out its mobile offerings and determine the best way to monetize the rapidly growing user base that accesses the social network from mobile devices. In addition to its $1-billion Instagram purchase, the company also picked up ambient mobile location app Glancee and mobile loyalty startup Tagtile this year.

According to TechCrunch, seven Lightbox employees will join Facebook. This includes Lightbox co-founder Thai Tran, who was previously a product manager for YouTube and Google Maps.

“The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love. We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement.

Exisiting Lightbox users can continue to visit Lightbox.com and download their photos here. Lightbox says it will open-source portions of the app’s code for other developers to build upon.

Facebook had 488 million users access its site through its mobile site or mobile apps in March. On Monday, the social network redesigned its mobile News Feed so that photos display three times larger.

Facebook today increased the expected share price range for its initial public offering to $34 to $38 a share, according to an amendment to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On the high end, the new price range puts Facebook’s market cap over $100 billion.

Previously, the company set a range of $28 to $35, giving it a maximum valuation of $96 billion. Facebook’s initial price range was relatively low considering that company shares went for $44.10 on secondary exchange SharesPost in March. The increased price range suggests there has been significant demand for the stock as Facebook executives met with investors during its roadshow last week. Some reports had said that investors were concerned with how the social network would be able to monetize mobile usage and were showing less interest than expected. Now this does not seem likely to be the case. According to the S-1, underwriters will also sell an additional 50,612,302 shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments.

Facebook made another change to its S-1 today indicating that its acquisition of Instagram could be delayed. Previously, the company said the deal would close in the second quarter of 2012, but now it says the deal is expected to close sometime in 2012. This gives weight to reports last week that the Federal Trade Commission would be investigating the deal. An investigation does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, as the FTC regularly reviews acquisitions over $66 million. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. According to the S-1, Facebook has agreed to pay Instagram a $200 million termination fee if for any reason the deal does not close.

Facebook executives are expected to present its IPO pitch to investors in Kansas City and Denver this week. The company is likely to set a final offering price on Thursday before floating the shares on Friday. Some reports say CEO Mark Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell remotely from Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif.

Facebook analytics platform PageLever has added features that let page owners categorize and compare their posts, as well as receive alerts about any changes in key metrics.

With post tagging, PageLever users can indicate which of their posts are related to a particular campaign or employ a certain tactic, for example, asking a question or making a fill-in-the-blank post. Then page owners can quickly compare the performance of different types of posts. PageLever co-founder Jeff Widman tells us one media company that used this feature discovered that posts about Google were, on average, twice as popular as posts about Apple. These insights would be difficult to discover through manual aggregation and analysis.

Another new PageLever feature — page alerts — helps page owners see changes in reach, growth rate and People Talking About This, among other metrics. For example, page owners can see alerts about a higher-than-usual number of fans unliking their page. PageLever users can adjust the sensitivity of alerts to be notified more or less often. Users will see their alerts when they log into the platform, through email or via RSS.

Widman says these features were both part of the original vision for the PageLever platform, which launched in August 2011. He says his team is working on additional features that build upon the existing Facebook Insights API to present information in a way that is more actionable for page owners from small businesses to large agencies.

Facebook today announced a new design for its mobile News Feed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on Timeline.

As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image fullscreen. Fewer stories are visible at one time, but each one stands out more now that Facebook has added a light blue background to the feed.

This could improve engagement with page’s posts on mobile devices. Currently in the desktop feed, photos from pages appear significantly smaller than those from personal profiles. However, the mobile feed treats posts from pages and profiles the same, which could be particularly beneficial for advertisers running Sponsored Stories that appear on mobile devices. Facebook did not comment on whether it would make any changes to the desktop version of News Feed to be more similar the mobile experience.

Nonetheless, pages should consider sharing square photos to maximize the amount of space their posts take up in the mobile feed and increase the likelihood that fans Like or comment on the activity.

These design changes will begin to roll out on iOS, Android and m.facebook.com today. Users will not have to download a new version of the Facebook app to get the new layout.

Facebook proposed a number of changes to its Data Use Policy on Friday, including an updated disclosure about the potential for Facebook data to be used to serve ads on other sites.

The social network also added a number of examples and tips for users to better understand its policies. A pdf of the tracked changes and an explanation of the proposed updates are available from the Facebook Site Governance page. Users have until this coming Friday at 5 p.m. PDT to comment on the changes.

Notably, Facebook has modified its wording about the potential for ads off Facebook to suggest that if it began showing these ads, they may or may not include social context. Part of what makes Facebook ads effective is that they highlight the connections between a business and a user’s friends. However, users might be upset if this information began appearing in ads elsewhere online. Perhaps the company is considering whether to create an ad network that doesn’t show these connections so explicitly. Regardless of whether its ads display social context, the demographic and interest data Facebook has on more than 900 million users could allow Facebook to create an ad network that targets ads more effectively than Google’s AdSense.

Most of the changes Facebook is proposing to its Data Use Policy include editing language related to new features like Sponsored Stories, Timeline and Activity Log. The company has also added clearer examples of what its policy means for users per recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, which audited the social network’s data collection practices last year. Here are some of the significant additions to the policy:

• New language that explains how Facebook will retain data. The company will continue to retain most data received from advertisers for 180 days, but it notes that there may be some times when it will need to keep information longer. For example, if an advertiser creates a Facebook page, the social network won’t delete information the advertiser puts on its page simply because 180 days had passed. Instead, Facebook will delete it when when the page owner deleted it or closed its account.
• New language to explain that, in addition to websites, apps — including those on page tabs — may also use instant personalization.
• New section explaining Facebook’s use of “cookies” and other tracking technologies.
• New language about groups and subgroups to reflect the launch of “Groups for Schools,” which are special groups that are only open to people who have a confirmed email address for a particular school.

Since 2009, the social network has taken a unique approach with its terms of service. Before instituting any new policies, the company shares proposed changes with users, who then have a period of time to comment and ask questions. For example, in April, Facebook proposed revisions to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities based on feedback it received on the first draft in March. In some cases, Facebook even puts issues up to a vote.

Last week the social network created a new hub for all of its terms and policies here.

Facebook has nearly doubled the size of “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed by adding a recent post from the page to the story.

It is unclear whether the change will make these ads more effective in helping advertisers get new Likes. However, because the unit also includes a recent post, advertisers can get across a more specific message and promote engagement in the form of commenting or sharing. Previously, pages could not get their posts featured in News Feed unless a user’s friend took action on that specific post. Now, a recent post will be displayed with any Page-Like story.

Facebook seems to be trying to find a design that makes Sponsored Stories effective for advertisers without making users feel their experience is being disrupted by ads. Although the new story takes up more space, it is in some ways less noticeable than the previous version, which looked very different from any other story in the feed. The old Page-Like stories included a much larger version of the page’s profile picture and listed more friends who Liked the page. This new unit emphasizes a page’s content rather than its logo. Because of that, the “Like Page” call to action has been moved the upper right of the story, which could be unfamiliar for users. However, the unit no longer includes the distracting “Find More Pages” link that took users to the page discovery browser rather than to an advertiser’s own content.

This is the second time the social network has redesigned the Page-Like Sponsored Story unit since it began showing ads in News Feed in January. In March, Facebook changed the unit from being a simple line of text to a much larger one including the page’s profile image and thumbnails of more friends who are connected to the page.

The new design will apply to Page-Like stories that have not been sponsored, but we have not yet seen an example of this.

Here is the previous design for “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories, which first appeared in March:

This is the first iteration of  ”Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed, which we saw in February:

Our list of growing Facebook applications by monthly active users this week was again dominated by Open Graph video apps. In addition, there was dating app Zoosk, several games, and other popular apps such as Skype and Pinterest.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 200,000 and 7.6 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service. However, Facebook has not returned new data for apps since May 10, so it is likely that theses applications have even higher MAU.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain,% 1.   Socialcam 41,800,000 +7,600,000 + 22% 2.   Click Video 10,600,000 +4,100,000 + 63% 3.   Zoosk 13,300,000 +3,100,000 + 30% 4.   Chill 7,100,000 +2,600,000 + 58% 5.   Viddy 36,100,000 +2,300,000 + 7% 6.   Mynet 3,400,000 +1,100,000 + 48% 7.   Zapkolik 12,000,000 +1,100,000 + 10% 8.   Metacafe 17,100,000 +800,000 + 5% 9.   Candy Crush Saga 6,000,000 +600,000 + 11% 10.   Pinterest 10,200,000 +600,000 + 6% 11.   Marvel: Avengers Alliance 7,400,000 +500,000 + 7% 12.   Pyramid Solitaire Saga 820,000 +440,000 + 116% 13.   Mystic Ice Blast 1,400,000 +400,000 + 40% 14.   Skype 12,900,000 +400,000 + 3% 15.   schoolFeed 14,700,000 +300,000 + 2% 16.   Le Mie Foto 410,000 +280,000 + 215% 17.   9GAG 3,100,000 +200,000 + 7% 18.   Astro Garden 1,900,000 +200,000 + 12% 19.   Buggle 1,400,000 +200,000 + 17% 20.   Disney Animal Kingdom 1,800,000 +200,000 + 13%

Socialcam outshone every other app again this week, gaining 7.6 million MAU. Last week Socialcam became the top application integrating with the Facebook platform. Other video apps on our list this week included Viddy, Click Video, Chill and Metacafe, as well as a few Turkish video websites.

Pinterest’s Timeline app continued to be popular, as did Skype and comedy website integration 9GAG.

Zoosk was very popular, as well, and a representative recently informed us that the dating app has expanded into other services. Specifically, Zoosk now offers a Couples Profile feature, which allows couples to create and share their relationship milestones and memories in a joint profile. The dating app features a live newsfeed, video and chat, and other features.

Games on our list were led by Candy Crush Saga.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between May 7 and 13.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods.

Monday, May 7

• Emerging free iOS apps: 100 Floors, GifBoom and Race or Die 2
• Rovio’s revenues jump 963% year-on-year to $106.3M in 2011
• Take to the text-based streets in Machine Zone’s Race Or Die 2
• Electronic Arts’ mobile revenue climbs again, up to $87M in Q4

Tuesday, May 8

• Dismember yourself across America with Zombro
• How Japan’s social game regulations will impact GREE, DeNA and the U.S.
• GREE’s net income hits a record high of $167.6M on $578M in sales during Q3

Wednesday, May 9

• Pocket Gems bets on Android with Tap Dragon Park
• Capcom’s grim earnings report boosted by $79.2M in mobile revenues
• Take to the skies (and plummet to the ground) with Rocket Fox
• DeNA sets new earnings record with $529M in sales and $234M in operating income during its fourth quarter
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Sojo, Sneaky Games, GameHouse and more
• Google+ mobile app revamped on iOS, Android update “coming soon”
• New Speakers Confirmed for Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit – June 26th in San Francisco
• At $5 million a month, Fuzio’s sales show how much mobile devs really earn
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model
• Emerging paid iOS apps: Ski Safari, Pandemic 2.5 and Robbery Bob

Thursday, May 10

• Emerging top grossing iOS apps: Kingdoms of Camelot, Crime City and Slots Journey
• GREE continues its bid for North American domination with Dino Life
• Tencent looks to boost mobile content with GameSalad partnership
• New hires in mobile: Atari, Square Enix and GREE
• Drawbridge lands $6.5M round for mobile ad targeting technology

Friday, May 11

• Emerging popular Android apps: Rage of Bahamut, The Avengers Live Wallpaper and Zombie Smash
• East Side Games evolves NomNom Combo with new version 2.0 update
• GameDuell and Vostu sign up for GetJar Gold in hopes of doubling revenues
• Mobile app news roundup: Google Play, Tapjoy and Rovio

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Sojo King.com, Kixeye and more

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, May 7

• Candy Crush Saga still on top of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU
• Become a ‘big cat burglar’ with 6waves’ Ravenshire Castle
• Electronic Arts sees traffic drop in Q4 2012, bringing more brands to social games platforms
• Rumble Games focuses on both casual and core gamers, skips out on traditional social mechanics

Tuesday, May 8

• Zynga’s Bubble Safari takes aim at Bubble Witch Saga’s success on Facebook
• Get by with a little help from your Tribe in Spellbound City 2
• Zynga sues over PyramidVille’s name 15 months after launch

Wednesday, May 9

• King.com continues to top list of fastest-growing games by DAU
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: King.com, Kixeye, PopCao and more
• EA exploring social game publishing with Insomniac Games
• Make the right life choices in Jay-Z’s social game Empire
• Japanese developers abandon kompu gacha mechanics in social games
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model

Thursday, May 10

• Get buff with Self Magazine’s Workout in the Park social game
• New hires in social gaming: Eruptive Games, Mob Science and East Side Games
• Candy Crush Saga and Empires & Allies this week’s gainer and loser among May’s Top 25 Facebook games

Friday, May 11

• 5th Planet Games making $10M in revenue between Facebook, Kongregate
• UberStrike developer CMUNE nets first round of funding, goes cross-platform
• Halfbrick’s Jetpack Joyride blasts on to Facebook
• Social games news roundup: Jetpack Joyride, FarmVille’s sequel and McDonald’s

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Ryzing, Nuukster, King.com and more

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, May 7

• Viddy, Instagram, Pinterest, games, Metacafe, Zoosk, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU
• How Glancee acquisition fits into Facebook’s strategy of letting users share where they are, were, will be
• Data shows social readers have mixed results, but aren’t ‘collapsing’

Tuesday, May 8

• Mobile, Intel, ‘Titanic,’ Adele, FC Barcelona, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook pages
• Facebook asks some users ‘Which ad do you prefer?’
• New Facebook platform industry hires: Unified, TBG Digital, Kontagent, more
• ‘Custom user clusters’ feature appears and disappears from Facebook ad tool
• Facebook tries new prompts to encourage users to organize friends into lists

Wednesday, May 9

• Facebook offers suicide prevention information for military, veterans, families
• Socialcam, Zoosk, Pinterest, games, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU
• Socialcam passes Yahoo, CityVille to become most popular Facebook app by monthly active users
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lowe’s, Townsquare Media, Sociable Labs and more
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model
• Facebook to provide developers with new app ratings metric
• Early Bird Deadline for Social Media Marketing Boot Camp Ends Tomorrow, May 10
• Facebook announces paid app beta program

Thursday, May 10

• Bing expands Facebook integration with new social sidebar on search results pages
• Facebook hires: engineering, design, counsel, more
• Facebook career postings: media solutions, analysts, recruiting, more
• Facebook to give all groups file-sharing capabilities
• Vitrue partners with 7 ad platforms to create loop between paid and owned media

Friday, May 11

• Facebook gauges interest in new way to monetize users: ‘highlighted posts’
• Etsy, Kickstarter, pages, music, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU
• Inside Facebook’s pre-IPO hype
• Facebook roundup: Optimal, Instagram, TBG Digital, action spec ads

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lowe’s, Fiveonenine, SponsorPay and more