With little fanfare, last night Facebook added statistics to application about pages. This is extremely valuable for those looking to calculate the conversion ratio of those visiting the application page versus those actually installing. One missing link currently is the number of application installations from your application about page. Measuring these statistics is critical for those looking to optimize their application for maximum growth.

Combining simple statistics such as number of page views, installations and removals with social statistics such as number of wall posts, new reviews and new fans can be used to determine what the best thing to focus on is in order to maximize growth. Another feature that appears to be missing is the ability to share your statistics with other people the same way that Google Analytics does. I also think viewing a map of visitors would be a great feature.

As it becomes more challenging to make your Facebook application noticeable, focusing on analytics is going to become increasingly critical. The only way to optimize user growth and monetization is through constantly refining the user experience. Just as Facebook and other social sites frequently update their feature set, so too will Facebook applications. Have you spent much time optimizing your applications? Do you use Facebook’s analytics package to track user growth or do you prefer to stick with Google Analytics?