As a regular user you aren’t able to enter multiple countries but the revised system has been built to accept them. For the more technical individuals, Facebook has modified their script to accept the “countries” array as an argument rather than a single variable called “country”. There’s not a stated date for full launch but it’s clearly something that will be rolled out in the near future. This is extremely useful for those advertisers that are looking to target globally by interest.

While most advertisers won’t select every country it was previously a tedious process to create individual ads for each country. This will help make the ad creation process more efficient and hopefully contribute to an increase in ad spend as advertisers are able to produce globally relevant ads in a short amount of time. Facebook has been making subtle changes to their ad platform over the past few days including the recently launch of keyword suggestions.

The only thing I’m waiting for now is the improvement of the ad manger area in which multiple campaigns cannot be adjusted simultaneously under the current version. It’s only a matter of time before additional improvements are made.

In other words, any site that has implemented Facebook Connect will request a specific file from Facebook everytime a page is loaded. It’s an effective measure of the combined reach of Facebook Connect enabled sites but it doesn’t count how many people have actually linked their account with sites around the web. We’ve been tracking the number of people connecting via various sites but it’s only a sample so unfortunately I can’t provide an accurate number in this article.

We’ll be providing more Facebook Connect updates over the coming weeks as more sites begin to roll out their implementation of the service.

The insights are relatively useful for people looking to keep track of where their fans are coming from but unfortunately there are still no conversion metrics for Facebook Ads. I’ve written about the need to track conversions as it would boost ad spend across the site on a number of instances. Facebook has at least improved their ads to enable users to become fans when viewing an ad which has most definitely improved overall conversion rates.

Hopefully with this new emphasis on Page Insights we will begin to see more features rolled out that help users improve conversion tracking. What features would you like to see within Page Insights?

The new iteration of the application also has a totally different layout from before, providing large buttons to make the various components of the application easier to navigate to. Another interesting feature is the ability to call people directly from your contact list, turning Facebook into your personal phonebook. Facebook Pages have also become an integral component of the application.

It’s interesting that they don’t just list Pages as part of your friends list as Facebook now does on their website. Then again the developers of the friends area of the site are probably working quicker than Joe who is running the iPhone project alone. Anyways, if you’d like to learn more about the upcoming release of the iPhone application, go check out Joe’s note about the upgrade.

[1:08 PM EDT] - Still waiting (and btw, I’m blogging on a bus, not to be confused with a boat)

[1:10 PM EDT] - Facebook logo just came up in the presentation. Assuming this will start shortly.

[1:13 PM EDT] - And the operator has come on the line.

[1:14 PM EDT] - Brandee Barker has come on the line to introduce Chris Kelly and Leah Pearlman to discuss new privacy features that will be rolled out.

[1:15 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly has come on the phone and is describing Facebook’s mission. Today we’ll be talking about three things: control, simplicity and connecting.

[1:18 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly is letting Leah Pearlman discuss the new granular publisher control system and has provided screenshots of the updated publisher that we wrote about last week.

[1:19 PM EDT] - Leah is discussing how they will be removing regional networks. Something that I also previously wrote about. This is not a new feature and simply that regional networks are being phased out over time.

[1:21 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly is back on the line talking about providing more simple tools for Facebook. Too many privacy options will result in people not fully understanding how these settings work.

[1:22 PM EDT] - Leah is now discussing the new simple privacy settings. The full animation has been condensed into one slide (show below).

[1:23 PM EDT] - We want users to have a single privacy control. There will be four or five options: “Everyone”, “Friends and Networks”, “Friends of Friends”, “Just Friends”, and “Customize”. Customize is something that I’ve written about extensively but it essentially includes friend lists and individual controls for single users.

[1:25 PM EDT] - We are also consolidating all the privacy settings into a single page.

[1:26 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly: We are testing a number of different ways for users to opt-in to new settings. Leah Pearlman is discussing the new transition tool which will be pictured below. We want to ensure that people understand the changes that are taking place so it’s imperative that people understand what’s taking place. We are currently testing six designs of transition tools currently and will select one after user testing.

[1:29 PM EDT] - Facebook is introducing a number of default options for users. Some users will want to make their Facebook experience “limited” which will mean no public people can view their contact information. There are two other buckets as well. Now Facebook is showing another transition tool screenshot that’s currently being tested.

[1:31 PM EDT] - There will be a single confirmation page as well no matter what transition tool the user uses. Leah is now discussing the timetable for the rollout of the new privacy settings.

[1:33 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly is back on the phone discussing these changes using the easy to read slide below

[1:34 PM EDT] - Now there is Q&A. Marshall Kirkpatrick is saying “it seems to me that you are leaning toward encouraging people to share more information with everyone. Is that the case, that you are encouraging public sharing and as more information is being shared will developers have access?”

[1:35 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly (I believe) is giving a relatively political non-answer saying that they want to grant users complete control over their privacy. Leah is also commenting on it. Leah says, “you are right” we are also trying to get people to share more.

[1:38 PM EDT] - Juan Perez is asking a question about terminology where it’s saying “Everyone on Facebook” and other places where it says just “Everyone”.

[1:39 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly is saying that where it says “Everyone” it means everyone on the internet. Where it’s minors it means other minors that are on Facebook.

[1:41 PM EDT] - Jeremiah Owyang is saying that most consumers are not using their privacy settings and is asking what are you going to do to educate users about their privacy settings?

[1:43 PM EDT] - Chris Kelly is saying the primary reason people aren’t using is that the privacy settings are not simple enough. With this update we think more users will take advantage of it.

At this point I’m not writing about any of the other questions as I’m rolling into New York. If there is anything else that’s substantive I’ll be sure to update this post.

Update
I’ve posted a copy of the full presentation below as created by Nicholas Carlson.

Updated
I just spoke with Facebook who stated that the page has been reverted back to its original name and the publisher has been disabled. Apparently this was not a change of policy but instead an internal miscommunication. Generic pages are still allowed but risk having the publisher disabled.

Granular privacy settings for all published content is honestly a transformation that users want but many may be confused as the new features roll-out. Facebook’s privacy settings are already somewhat complicated, and adding increased functionality to those settings could put some users on edge. Today’s presentation is likely to highlight these changes so that more users are clear about the change that’s about to occur.

Within the next couple weeks, Facebook’s ongoing drive to inherit Twitter’s features into their site will be complete. Now the only remaining step is to educate the users how to take advantage of these new features.

While he reportedly had something like $400 million in debt, a large portion of that was owed to Sony Records. Sony has now easily recouped a large portion of those debts through the massive number of songs and records that have been sold since last Thursday. Now the only accomplishment left for Michael Jackson is to become the most popular on Facebook.

Conversation about the pop legend has sparked tons of controversy. Last week I posted something on my profile about him and a debate sparked up instantly with people complaining about how much attention he has been receiving despite his shady history. Regardless of the controversy, he is easily one of the most recognized brands in the world and his growth on Facebook highlights just that.

It will be interesting to see if his death will be able to catapult him to the top of the Facebook Pages leaderboard.

Right now I have over 7,000 fans that have joined this site’s community through the widget in the sidebar but I also have over 5,000 fans on Facebook that like to receive updates. Rather than having these as different communities, they should become one. Right now Facebook hasn’t signaled that they are going to turn Facebook Pages into an embeddable product but it is a logical progression, especially considering that Mark Zuckerberg claims the future of Facebook is off its website.

The only issue with releasing an embeddable version of Facebook Pages is the clear competition with Ning, the product of Facebook board member Marc Andreesen. Perhaps this product evolution was one of the reasons Marc Andreesen decided to become a board member of Facebook. That’s speculation though but ultimately it makes sense for Facebook Pages to evolve in this way.

The Community Platform API

Up until now the Facebook API has mostly been related to users, their relationships, and their profiles. In other words it’s the social graph API. As I wrote two weeks ago, Facebook Pages is the community platform for businesses. That perspective will help Facebook differentiate itself from Twitter (who has rapidly become a customer relations communications tool) and also justify the opening of API features for Pages.

One other thing to suggest that this won’t happen is Facebook’s investment in search engine optimization for their Pages product. This is a pretty weak excuse for not pushing Pages off the site though. Take a look at Ning. Despite the company’s willingness to offer the full community code to companies, the majority of networks are still built on the company’s site.

In other words, there’s little risk in further opening the Facebook Pages API and a ton of upside. Give it a month or two (maybe three) and we’ll witness the next evolution of Facebook Pages: a community platform API and an embeddable community platform product.

Customer Relations Evolved

One thing that I’d like to add to this is how this is also a natural evolution of customer relations. Right now there is a huge shift going on in which the customers have the upper hand in their relationship with businesses. With the emergence of social media, brands must invest in listening and then responding to their customers. There have been countless offerings that enable companies to do this but we are beginning to see a consolidation of public consumer communication platforms.

Customers Like To Complain Because They Know You Are Listening

One thing that’s changing is the way that customers communicate with businesses. On Twitter we now regularly see people complain about their Comcast cable experience because they have learned that Comcast will respond. It gives them an outlet for their frustration and a platform for immediate satisfaction. This is a fundamental shift in consumer behavior.

While many customers still have not learned about the power of Twitter and now Facebook as a customer relations platform, they all will. As consumers we all want to be satisfied and rather than hiding the customer service number on the bottom of the cereal box, customer relations has become a public interactive experience. So where am I going with all of this talk about the evolution of customer relations?

The point is that this new form of customer relations will come to be expected. If social media provides the best customer experience, consumers will use it. The only difference now is that as consumers learn this behavior they will go complain wherever they get the quickest response. “Social media consultants” will tell you that they go to wherever people are talking about them. The reality is that the customers are talking in three places now: Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

There’s MySpace, hi5, Bebo, and many other social platforms but if customers receive the greatest response from businesses on Facebook and Twitter, that’s where they’ll go to complain. While Twitter has already done an amazing job at making information readily accessible, Facebook is still in the process of doing so. The next phase of that is the opening of Facebook Pages and the manifestation of this process as a community platform API.

I’ve played around with the service some and so far the functionality is relatively basic. Hulu hasn’t taken advantage of all the opportunities provided by Connect but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. A number of companies have been rolling out Facebook Connect lately, including the Washington Post, an implementation that we recently wrote about.

One improvement that would be interesting to see is the ability to post watched videos directly to the Facebook feed. For now you can simply connect with friends and then use Hulu’s internal feed which updates you about recent connections among your contacts and recently watched videos. Hulu was slated to be one of Facebook Connect’s initial launch partners and now the implementation is finally live.

If you are logged in to your Hulu account, go visit the find friends page in order to connect your account with Facebook.