With the impending removal of notifications, bookmarks have become exponentially more important for developers. With the increased importance for developers, Facebook has announced this afternoon that they are adding an FBML tag for a bookmark button as well as FBJS methods to get users to bookmark your application. The bookmarks will be required in order to show counters within the redesigned navigation which is expected to launch in the next month or so.

Because of the removal of notifications, getting users to return to the application if they don’t bookmark your application will become increasingly difficult. However if you can get users to bookmark your application, or provide their email via the soon-to-be-released e-mail authentication dialog, you have a much greater likelihood of getting the user to return.

In order to provide developers with more ways to encourage users to bookmark the application, Facebook is providing the new <fb:bookmark /> X/FBML tag. For more information about how to get users to bookmark your application, check out today’s blog post from Facebook.