Social enterprise software company Buddy Media looked at the difference in average engagement rate between page posts that included Super Bowl keywords and those that didn’t. The company explained engagement rate as “total likes and comments as a percentage of the fan base.” It did not reveal what the average engagement rate was so it is difficult to say how meaningful the findings are and how page owners should adjust their strategies if at all.

Buddy Media also looked at page posts from a six-week period leading up to Sunday’s event and found that posts including Super Bowl keywords averaged 60 percent higher engagement rates than those without. The disparity was even greater on game day — Super Bowl related page posts had engagement rates 99.7 percent higher than unrelated posts. However, without knowing what the actual engagement rates are, these findings are not necessarily actionable for page owners. It is possible posts related to the Super Bowl had a 2 percent engagement rate and other posts had 1 percent.

Buddy Media did not indicate how engagement on Super Bowl Sunday compared to other days of the year. Super Bowl posts might outperform non Super Bowl posts on game day, but it’s unclear if that is more or less than the amount of engagement brands see on a typical day. [Update 2/7/12 3:03 p.m. - Buddy Media Communications VP Joe Ciarallo provided us with additional information about how non Super Bowl posts fared compared to normal engagement rates. Posts that did not contain Super Bowl keywords that were posted on Super Bowl Sunday performed 30 percent lower than average Sunday engagement for the past six Sundays. "So not only did they miss riding the “Super Bowl engagement wave,” it also damaged their normal rates of engagement."]

Takeaways for page managers

A cursory look at Buddy Media’s findings might lead page owners to believe they should join the bandwagon of brands making posts about the latest news or events. Timely posts can lead to an increase in likes and comments, but brands should be wary of sacrificing vision and voice for what might be modest short-term gains.

Buddy Media and others interpret this study to suggest that more pages should have posted about the Super Bowl to boost engagement. This could lead some page owners to bad habits of co-opting cultural events in ways that are irrelevant to their businesses. Further, we would interpret the data another way — pages that did not have Super Bowl related content ought to have saved their posts for times when they would have less competition and would not have felt out of place.

Page owners should also be mindful of how the keywords they use will lead their posts to be grouped with others. When Facebook aggregates stories about the same topic, it can hide some posts under a “see more” link. Sometimes this allows older content to be resurfaced, but other times it prevents page posts from being seen at all.

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.

The company had last claimed 800 million monthly active users  and 350 million mobile monthly active users at its f8 developer conference in September.

Overall, that means the social network has seen a 39 percent increase in monthly active users since December 2010. It saw particularly strong growth in Brazil with a 268 percent increase year-over-year and India with a 132 percent increase. Notably, both of these markets were strongholds for Orkut, an early rival social networking service from Google.

In the U.S., Facebook is starting to hit its saturation point with 161 million monthly active users, a 16 percent increase from the previous year.

It comes as little surprise that a large percentage of users return regularly. Facebook has long said that half of its users access the site daily. The social network had 483 million daily active users in December 2011, an 48 percent increase since December 2010. According to the company’s IPO filing today, 360 million users were active on at least six days a week in December 2011.

Of course, the larger Facebook gets, the harder it may be for it to grow. “We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and as we achieve higher market penetration rates,” the company said in its filing today. “To the extent our active user growth rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement in current and new markets.”

One of the last bastions where Facebook might find an additional 500 million or more users is in China — a country it has explored but never formally entered. In addition to government censorship, it would find many mature rivals there including Sina and Tencent. Prospects there do not look promising, especially considering that Google lost substantial search market share there after a disagreement with the Chinese government. “We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government,” the company’s statement said.

The company defines active user as a registered user who has logged in and visited Facebook through a website or mobile device in the last 30 days. Facebook also shared stats about activity on its platform. As of December 31, 2011, there were more than 37 million pages with ten or more Likes. More than seven million apps and websites have integrated with Facebook.

This week games grew quite a bit on our list of Facebook pages with the most new Likes. With the social network removing app profile pages on Wednesday, many game pages are being consolidated and seeing massive single-day spikes.

A few mobile pages, Snaptu and Nokia, as well as musicians, TV, movies, and big brands like Adidas, McDonald’s, Google and Facebook also took top spots. Pages on our list this week grew from between 616,900 to 7.8 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Happy Aquarium	8,534,594	-1,114	+7,811,629
2.	Snaptu	6,353,083	+1,873,571	+6,083,609
3.	Bingo Blitz	2,467,251	+410,510	+2,215,906
4.	Adele	15,863,146	+184,858	+1,578,528
5.	Nokia	6,680,947	+37,618	+1,433,068
6.	The Treasure Madness Club	1,405,816	-164	+1,353,933
7.	Jeremy Irvine	1,319,540	-350	+1,302,987
8.	Angry Birds	13,732,208	+150,659	+1,172,122
9.	adidas	4,295,571	+75,864	+1,037,988
10.	YouTube	51,130,216	+116,064	+903,364
11.	Friend Cameo Video Chat	1,076,086	+109	+889,056
12.	Marc Anthony	1,054,420	+46,343	+874,440
13.	Titanic	14,448,032	+119,780	+869,267
14.	Facebook	59,965,043	+110,948	+851,298
15.	Bruno Mars	17,328,185	+105,872	+829,843
16.	McDonald’s	14,324,406	+110,772	+816,501
17.	Will Smith	25,363,582	+120,978	+739,522
18.	Bob Marley	35,099,318	+87,889	+670,250
19.	Google	6,111,255	+97,638	+621,761
20.	The Simpsons	38,794,144	+84,671	+616,882

As mentioned, games topped our list, with Happy Aquarium taking the No. 1 spot with 7.8 million new Likes this week. Bingo Blitz followed with 2.2 million new Likes, offering special tips and offers to users who Liked the page. Then there was The Treasure Madness Club, Angry Birds and Friend Cameo Video Chat, a group video chat site, which appeared to make the list due to a page consolidation. There were a pair of mobile-related pages that made the list, Snaptu with 6 million new Likes, it appeared to be a page consolidation. Then there was Nokia, with 1.4 million new Likes, passing 6.6 million, in what appeared to be a response to marketing of its new phone.

Musicians made the list too, with Adele growing her page to 15.8 million. Marc Anthony’s page looked like it  grew as a result of the page consolidation. Bruno Mars picked up about 830,000 Likes while he’s on tour this week. Will Smith has been in the headlines for personal and professional reasons, picking up 739,500 Likes, and the enduring popularity of Bob Marley pushed his page past 35 million Likes.

Actor Jeremy Irvine made the list of what appeared to be a page consolidation. Adidas seems to be gaining traction with the new campaign for its shoes. YouTube, Facebook and “Titanic,” continue to make significant organic gains. McDonald’s marketed its new products and fresh food with several campaigns, Google heavily promoted its political coverage, and finally, the ever popular TV show “The Simpsons” closed out the list as it pushes close to 40 million Likes.

Several Zynga games made our list of top growing Facebook pages this week, with several of them growing by the millions in what seemed to be a page consolidation effort. There were several other pages on the list that also seem to have grown as a result of consolidations, as well as popular brands such as Xbox and Facebook, and popular musicians such as Adele and Bruno Mars. Pages on our list this week grew from between 630,300 to 6.5 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Pioneer Trail	8,959,431	+2,387	+6,599,215
2.	Treasure Isle	7,971,164	+8,352	+5,748,414
3.	Vampire Wars	2,934,625	+5,973	+2,418,598
4.	Xbox	14,181,506	+44,613	+1,942,017
5.	Adele	14,284,615	+371,370	+1,581,342
6.	Farkle – Best Dice Game	1,544,071	-130	+1,527,722
7.	RI MUITO	1,739,681	+36,050	+1,014,755
8.	Jeremy Irvine	996,341	+740,445	+981,540
9.	Texas HoldEm Poker	56,241,575	+164,877	+832,923
10.	Facebook	59,113,739	+164,295	+809,774
11.	Bruno Mars	16,498,338	+175,572	+805,672
12.	YouTube	50,226,847	+179,042	+797,762
13.	Titanic	13,578,764	+131,730	+739,179
14.	McDonald’s	13,507,905	+158,058	+719,285
15.	Pitbull	15,283,017	+161,011	+708,743
16.	CNBLUE	784,047	+899	+684,894
17.	Fireproof the Movie	1,210,821	+5,521	+680,596
18.	Mafia Wars	18,714,106	+2,558	+677,845
19.	The Smashing Pumpkins	2,067,953	+7,486	+666,337
20.	Angry Birds	12,560,084	+196,156	+630,280

Zynga games with top growing pages this week included Pioneer Trail, Treasure Isle, Vampire Wars, Texas HoldEm Poker and Mafia Wars. Some of these pages grew by millions of Likes, but do not have matching Talking About This counts, which suggests the growth was the result of page consolidation. Talking About This includes the number of new Likes and other interactions with a page. Farkle – Best Dice Game is not a Zynga title, but the game saw a similar spike in Likes. Angry Birds, which is not a playable app on Facebook but a popular mobile game, has seen a steady increase in daily growth.

Musicians were also popular on our list with of them growing based off of their current popularity. Adele grew by 1.5 million Likes to reach 14.2 million after noting her recent music award nomination and posting about the death of singer Etta James. Bruno Mars and Pitbull are among the most popular musicians on Facebook and their pages continue to grow organically. The Smashing Pumpkins and Korean pop group CNBLUE seemed to have grown as the result of page consolidation since both had sharp one-day spikes in new Likes that have since leveled off.

Xbox grew 1.9 million Likes to pass 14 million, apparently because the company posted tons of promotions, such as demos, contests, prizes and more. RI MUITO is a Portuguese language comedy site that is growing quickly because of its viral images. Star of recent smash movie “War Horse” Jeremy Irvine saw big growth either from that publicity or a consolidation. Facebook, YouTube and McDonald’s continue to organically gain hundreds of thousands of new fans each week. “Titanic” with its impending 3D release, is on our list once again. Wrapping it up was Fireproof the Movie, an independent film from 2008 that seems to have grown solely based on page consolidation.

Small business owners in the U.S. that manage pages on the social network can enter the contest through an app on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page. Entrants with 50 Likes on their page when they sign up for the contest will receive a $50 ad credit for the site. Pages that gain 100 new Likes during the contest period will earn another $100 ad credit. The ten pages with the most new fans will win $10,000 in Facebook ads. In September, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced the company would give $50 advertising credits to up to 200,000 small businesses but did not explain how. This appears to be part of that program, but we have not gotten a response yet from Facebook.

Although the contest materials encourage page owners to increase their Likes, they do not offer practical tips about how to do so. This oversight could lead small business owners to try to grow their pages in ways that devalue the Like — for instance, getting distant friends to Like a business they do not frequent. Contest rules prohibit page owners from obtaining Likes by setting up fake accounts and incentivizing users to Like the page in ways that violate Facebook page terms. However, these guidelines are written as legal documents that might be confusing for many page owners.

The company is hosting events, also called Small Business Boost, around the country to provide tips about how to use the social network to increase business. These events are put on in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business.

The contest, oddly, has not been mentioned in a post on the Facebook Marketing Solutions page, though the app to enter is there. Some page owners, however, have received emails directing them to the site.

The musicians seemed to gain momentum by being nominated for awards and other activity, such as touring, while game Pages seemed to grow with the launch of the apps. Pages on our list this week grew from between 59,100 to 229,100 Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks Page growth across Facebook.

	Name	Likes	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1.	Adele	11,725,821	+229,078	+1,248,968
2.	Leo Messi	29,153,359	+57,196	+824,460
3.	Bola	3,203,494	+759,516	+780,759
4.	Gambino Poker	850,696	+212	+763,364
5.	MBC Action	815,379	+279,293	+686,504
6.	MBC2	821,875	+251,685	+670,453
7.	Cooking Mama	1,093,372	+3,799	+604,429
8.	趣味生活	630,650	+79,646	+602,070
9.	Bruno Mars	15,256,895	+96,156	+600,894
10.	MBC MAX	644,949	+198,498	+536,326
11.	Facebook	57,869,909	+86,971	+526,722
12.	Titanic	12,416,283	+84,289	+525,616
13.	Pitbull	14,195,118	+83,277	+462,168
14.	YouTube	49,032,561	+82,833	+458,395
15.	Titanic	13,486,119	+57,296	+409,479
16.	David Guetta	26,472,639	+73,411	+403,011
17.	FantaBook	620,997	-10	+386,610
18.	Rihanna	48,770,414	+59,254	+368,599
19.	Shakira	43,720,295	+62,687	+367,892
20.	MS Dhoni	933,821	+59,089	+365,078

Adele’s Page grew by 1.2 million Likes to 11.7 million, after the singer was nominated for some music award. Bruno Mars grew by 600,900 Likes to 15.2 million, Pitbull’s Page grew by 462,200 Likes to 14.2 million as he’s currently on tour. Then DJ David Guetta’s Page grew by 403,000 Likes to 26.4 million, Rihanna’s Page grew by 368,600 Likes to 48.7 million and Shakira’s grew by 367,900 to 43.7 million.

Leo Messi saw big growth on his Page, 824,500 Likes, after he won the European Footballer of the Year award, pushing him to 29.1 million. Then cricket player MS Dhoni made the list with 365,100 new Likes to reach 933,800.

Game Pages made our list with fresh growth that in some cases seems to be related to somewhat recent game launches. These include Bola with 780,800 Likes to reach 3.2 million; Gambino Poker with 763,400 to reach 850,700; Cooking Mama with 604,400 to reach just over 1 million and FantaBook, which grew most of its 386,600 Likes in the span of two days to reach 621,000.

Then there were TV channels that made the list with frequent general posts and video posts. MBC Action grew by 686,500 to 815,400, MBC2 grew by 670,500 to 821,900, and MBC MAX grew by 536,300 to 645,000 total. the rest of the list included a Chinese entertainment Page,  趣味生活,  with 602,100 Likes to reach 630,700. Facebook’s Page grew 526,700 to 57.8 million, YouTube grew 458,400 to pass 49 million, the “Titanic” Page also made the list of 525,600 to grow to 12.4 million.

For now, coupon posts are only available to select companies working directly with Facebook. If these tests show promise, it is likely the social network will make offers self-serve for page owners, as it did with check-in deals in November 2010. Providing an organized way for pages to give out coupons is a good move for Facebook. Studies have found many people come to Facebook pages for exclusive offers and discounts. A number of third-party app developers offer coupon tabs for pages, but the process of receiving a coupon often takes multiple steps and these apps cannot provide the same viral reach as a native Facebook feature would. Nor have these apps made coupons available for download from mobile pages.

As we suggested last month, coupons could be huge for Facebook when it begins showing Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed. The company hasn’t announced plans to do so yet, but it is easy to imagine how coupon ads could function just as well on mobile devices. As on the website, one click sends an offer directly to your email inbox.

For Facebook, maintaining quality offers and ensuring businesses honor them could be a challenge as the feature scales. Check-in deals are approved by Facebook before going live, but few merchants seem to be taking advantage of this service. The social network should consider why that is as it experiments with another coupon program. The company also tried to build a daily deals service on top of its platform last year, but ended the effort after four months.

The new coupon feature has promise because unlike check-in deals, these coupons can be claimed without visiting a location, making them more likely to be shared across the network. Plus, the ability to post an offer to a page and promote it with Sponsored Stories could lead more businesses to try it out. Check-in deals never had these these additional means of discovery.

What is ‘People Talking About This?’

People Talking About This is the number of unique users who have created a “story” about a page in a seven-day period. On Facebook, stories are items that display in News Feed. Users create stories when they:

• like a page
• post on the page wall
• like a post
• comment on a post
• share a post
• answer a question
• RSVP to a page’s event
• mention the page in a post
• tag the page in a photo
• check in at a place
• share a check-in deal
• like a check-in deal
• write a recommendation

Whenever a person takes one of these actions, it counts toward People Talking About This. If a user posts a status update about going to a restaurant, that will not affect People Talking About This unless the user uses the @ function to tag the restaurant’s page or checks in to the restaurant from a mobile device. For now, plain text mentions of a topic do not influence People Talking About This, which is meant to indicate how well a page is engaging fans, not simply how popular something is.

Because the metric tracks unique users interacting with a page over a seven-day range, if a fan leaves more than one comment or both likes and shares a post within that time, it adds only one point to People Talking About This. However, the number changes daily so it is important to engage fans consistently to keep this number up.

Anyone visiting a page can see the total People Talking About This on the left side of the page under the number of Likes. Although Likes are counted and displayed in real time, People Talking About This data is typically two days behind. This means the number doesn’t tell admins how many people are talking about their page right now, but how many people directly interacted with the page in some way in the seven days prior to two days ago. It’s no wonder people are having trouble understanding the new metric.

To further complicate things, individual posts also have a People Talking About This count, which only page owners can view. This is the unique number of users who interacted with a post in a way that generated a story, for instance, liking, sharing or commenting on content. When users like specific comments on a post, it does not count toward this total since the action does not generate a News Feed story.

How does ‘People Talking About This’ affect pages?

People Talking About This is an important metric because it emphasizes interactions beyond an initial Facebook Like. Pages that create posts that fans enjoy will benefit. When people interact with pages in ways that generate stories, pages reach an audience beyond their existing fan base. Users benefit, too, from pages providing more relevant content. Pages that have been focused on gaining Likes without an engagement strategy to follow it will suffer from the disparity between the number of Likes and People Talking About This.

The update is not likely to make a noticeable difference for most pages, but it is noteworthy that Facebook is taking action to ensure its data is as accurate as possible. With the redesigned Timeline profile, many users are likely to be updating their information. The new “Life Event” option for users to share that they’ve moved is further incentive for people to keep their location information current. It is valuable for pages to have data that is similarly up to date.

In another small change, Facebook has begun displaying the state or country a city is in under the top cities section of insights. This will make things clearer for page owners who might have otherwise had to look up the information.