Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer announced Tuesday morning that the company has raised $6 million in Series B funding, led by DN Capital.

The new funding will help the international expansion of SHIFT’s , which provides marketers access to a host of marketing apps, allowing them to reach customers through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This round brings total financing for to $14 million.

, Co-Founder and CEO of SHIFT, commented on the latest round of funding:

2013 has been a huge year for us, we launched our platform and have grown our sales by over 300%, driven by global advertisers adopting the SHIFT Open Marketing Cloud. We are thrilled to have a partner in DN Capital who can help us hit the ground running in international markets. Their experience in helping companies scale in Europe will be integral in helping SHIFT continue to deliver brands and agencies the technology needed to break down data silos and create more efficient ways to execute marketing across organizations.

’s first international office opened in September 2013 in London. The company expects to expand into additional international markets in 2014.

DN Capital is a global early stage and growth capital investor in software, mobile applications, digital media and e-commerce companies with offices in London and Palo Alto.

Through Seasonal Affective Disorder, many people can become saddened or depressed over the winter months. Does this affect your Facebook activity too? That’s what Expion, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, wondered.

discovered that, among 50 top retail brands on Facebook, engagement does tend to dip as the days get colder.

Expion found that there are fewer fan actions on retail Facebook pages in the winter months, especially as consumers get exhausted after Black Friday and Christmas. Users at this time are looking more for discounts and coupons rather than engaging posts.

The company also found that pages post less often during the winter months, typically rising back up in the spring and summer. Expion Chief Marketing Officer noted that many retail brands post more often in the spring and summer because they’re launching new products, utilizing Facebook to stir up some marketing buzz.

Here’s Expion’s analysis of how Facebook fans behave when the temperature sinks:

Heffring discussed these results with Inside Facebook:

The lighthearted part of this was the whole idea of people in winter getting a bit of the blues and I think recharging after Christmas. With Christmas, and Cyber Monday and everything that goes along with that, they’re just kind of exhausted.

So what should brands on Facebook do to still resonate with fans and customers on Facebook during this down time?

You normally see that January and February is the place where people are looking for deals and special engagement kinds of things. Something where, if I’m going to buy or be in the market, does the brand have something special for me? So I think generally you’re probably going to be doing a few more things on rewards, discounts and coupons. I think the other thing that brands can do is capture that season a little bit better. Valentine’s Day in February is one of the biggest days.

Readers: If you manage a Facebook page for a retail store, do you see a dip in engagement after Christmas?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

now makes three of the top 5 Facebook apps, according to statistics from AppData.

Farm Heroes Saga passed up TripAdvisor in our , meaning the three most popular Facebook apps, in terms of monthly active users (MAU), are all made by King.

Look below for a list of the top 25 Facebook apps, ranked by MAU estimates, courtesy of AppData:

Name   1.  Candy Crush Saga 2.  Pet Rescue Saga 3.  Farm Heroes Saga 4.  TripAdvisor™ 5.  Microsoft Live 6.  Dragon City 7.  Bitstrips 8.  Spotify 9.  Pinterest 10.  Bing 11.  Criminal Case 12.  Give Hearts 13.  FarmVille 2 14.  Texas HoldEm Poker 15.  Skype 16.  Words With Friends 17.  Diamond Dash 18.  Yahoo 19.  Papa Pear Saga 20.  Yelp 21.  HTC Sense 22.  Samsung Mobile 23.  Nokia 24.  Bubble Witch Saga 25.  Static Iframe Tab

 

Top image courtesy of King.

One of the belongs to The Fast & The Furious star . The page has gained 2.1 million fans in the past week — the most on our monthly leaderboard outside of Facebook for Every Phone.

Look below to discover the 25 Facebook pages with the most likes, courtesy of PageData.

# Name Total Likes  Daily Growth Weekly Growth 1    Facebook for Every Phone 347,307,484 +515,540 +3,825,717 2    Facebook 106,465,709 +57,588 +353,206 3    Rihanna 80,868,177 +38,841 +275,870 4    Eminem 78,489,583 +44,066 +292,831 5    YouTube 77,067,378 +14,072 +103,551 6    Coca-Cola 76,773,651 +50,108 +314,832 7    Shakira 75,016,698 +60,626 +390,047 8    Texas HoldEm Poker 69,727,441 +4,224 +31,444 9    The Simpsons 68,788,971 +19,632 +131,628 10    Michael Jackson 66,902,110 +34,755 +241,339 11    Cristiano Ronaldo 66,874,032 +55,073 +1,686,160 12    Harry Potter 66,848,093 +21,662 +167,979 13    Lady Gaga 60,881,711 +21,958 +130,473 14    Katy Perry 60,384,935 +38,873 +287,427 15    Linkin Park 58,130,037 +24,726 +160,741 16    Justin Bieber 57,774,479 +20,524 +129,192 17    Candy Crush Saga 55,278,460 +96,617 +723,905 18    Will Smith 55,204,962 +54,227 +497,707 19    Family Guy 54,520,082 +7,189 +50,715 20    Vin Diesel 53,483,783 +164,082 +2,130,737 21    Beyoncé 52,680,200 +18,596 +106,673 22    Bob Marley 52,399,251 +42,681 +292,663 23    AKON 51,297,777 +22,325 +139,552 24    Leo Messi 51,150,489 +29,984 +196,294 25    Taylor Swift 50,937,543 +34,968 +260,561

 

Other changes from November:

• Harry Potter fell from No. 10 to No. 12.
• Cristiano Ronaldo advanced from No. 12 to No. 11.
• Michael Jackson moved from the No. 11 spot to No. 10.
• Candy Crush Saga went from No. 20 to No. 17.
• Beyoncé fell from No. 19 to No. 21.
• Vin Diesel went form No. 23 to No. 20.
• Bob Marley sank from No. 21 to No. 22.
• Akon went from No. 22 to No. 23.

Image courtesy of the .

Readers: How many of these pages do you like?

, a hub for companies large and small on the social network, is going beyond North America. The that the Facebook for Business portal is launching in 11 more languages: Brazilian Portuguese, European Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and UK English.

The site announced this :

These local-language versions of Facebook for Business are designed to help provide the most relevant content to advertisers around the world. In addition to product information, tips for advertising on Facebook and success stories, the international Facebook for Business sites will soon feature new, localized content serving marketers’ needs on a regional basis.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

Facebook recently tweaked its News Feed algorithm to allow for . However, as the News Feed is a finite space, some other posts may see a decrease in reach.

The site  that pages will likely soon see a decrease in organic reach as a result of recent changes to the News Feed algorithm.

The blog noted that in a given day, when someone visits News Feed, they can see up to 1,500 stories. Page posts may get lost in the shuffle, leading to decreased organic reach:

People are connecting and sharing more than ever. On a given day, when someone visits News Feed, there are an average of 1,5001 possible stories we can show.

As a result, competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach. We expect this trend to continue as the competition for each story remains strong and we focus on quality.

Facebook notes that page admins can try advertising and boosting posts to make up for the loss in reach:

As the dynamic nature of News Feed continues to follow people’s patterns of sharing, Page owners should continue using the most effective strategy to reach the right people: a combination of engaging Page posts and advertising to promote your message more broadly. Advertising lets Pages reach the fans they already have and find new customers as well.

Readers: How do you feel about this?

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Facebook continues to be the for many mobile app users, according to a from the company.

It seems that people who are more engaged — and spend more money — than those who use alternative sign up methods. Many apps have seen strong results from their Facebook logins.

Highlights include:

• Applauze: Facebook Login users are 27 percent more likely to be repeat ticket buyers. This app allows people easily discover and buy tickets for concerts and other events. They found that, compared to people that use other sign up options, Facebook Login users account for 70 percent of their top 100 spenders, with 27 percent more likely to be repeat buyers.
• Threadflip: Facebook Login users spend twice as much time using the app, with 38 percent more likely to buy in their first week and 50 percent more like to be repeat customers in the first month.
• Cooliris is a personal media hub for people to view all their photos in one place and share in private groups. Facebook Login users are 50 percent more likely to share their photos, invite 2x more friends to groups, and are 50 percent more likely to initiate conversations within the app.
• Swell Radio lets users listen to personalized news and information radio stations from their mobile device. Users listen on average 8 percent longer per session and like and bookmark tracks more frequently.

Privacy is always a concern as Facebook users’ data is accessed when giving an outside app login permission. Fortunately, Facebook has in place to keep that data secure, one being that they ask only for the permissions that are needed to improve a person’s experience in their app.

#1. Brands will get braver on social, but will they be ready when it’s too much?

Content is king in 2014 and to break through the noise and reach “uber engagement” brands will become more daring. But, what is the right level of “edge” before brands hit a “Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball” moment?

Taco Bell had to do some fancy footwork this year to deal with the photo of an employee licking taco shells on the brand’s Facebook page. And American Apparel must certainly regret their email campaign touting a Hurricane Sandy Sale. And, yet, in spite of these blunders, brands will continue to work harder to pioneer buzz-creating, edgy campaigns. In 2014, we can expect brands to go even more off-script and off-color in order to create content that is deemed “share-worthy” among the growing legion of youth on social media. However, one thing that will remain constant: the questions “how far is ‘far enough?’” and “how far is ‘too far?’’

#2. Fragmentation forces brands to make tough social platform choices

Facebook’s recent acknowledgment that there was a among ‘younger teens’ drove home the realization that teens are now congregating on places like Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr, and Twitter. More significantly, consumer “fragmentation” among various social platforms is happening across all demographics.

While Facebook isn’t going anywhere, brands have more choices to direct their marketing efforts and spend on the platforms that reflect their particular “zeitgeist.” For instance, highly visual brands will double down on the visual-focused channels of Instagram and Pinterest, while that sell knowledge, experience and insight will inevitably lean toward LinkedIn. In 2014, pragmatism and measurable ROI will win out over the desire to be omnipresent.

#3. 2014: the year that brands will finally “get” LinkedIn

In 2014, brand marketers will come to realize LinkedIn’s unparalleled treasure trove of targeting data. We should expect to see brands, en masse, shift marketing dollars towards the platform in increasingly creative ways; not only through display advertising, but by drafting off of the massive content marketing opportunities the platform offers. In parallel, LinkedIn, aswell as partners developing on the LinkedIn API, will expand capabilities, delivering more opportunities for brand marketers to personalize content and messaging by professional profile.

#4. Moving on from “just” building a native brand app

For some time now, brands have responded to mobile behavior trends by building native apps for iOS and Android. But, they’ve learned the hard way that the challenges of getting a native mobile app found on app stores, used regularly, and kept up to date, are profound.

In 2014, marketers will correct course. In place of developing mobile apps, many brands will embrace the diverse mobile ad products offered on social platforms. These include Facebook’s sponsored posts in the mobile newsfeed, Instagram’s sponsored brand photos as well as Vine’s and Instagram’s sponsored mobile-friendly short form videos. Twitter will undoubtedly respond to the pressing need of marketers by adding more divergent mobile sponsored products. We may also expect to see micro-second ‘thumb time’ ads on SnapChat.

#5. The corporate website will be redefined

In 2014, we’ll see more brands rethinking their ‘digital home’ — their corporate Website. is the most recent high profile company to do so, which recently declared “content is king, and the corporate website is dead. ”

We’ll see more brands in 2014 turning in this direction. Consumers have become used to thesocial, conversational way of interacting on digital and brands need to mirror this behavior on their corporate websites. “Old style” corporate websites have historically been awful at fostering interaction and conversations; additionally, brands have struggled to organize a coherent storytelling message from the patchwork of social presences they are forced to manage. The “social Web site” alleviates some of these problems. Getting the corporate website infused with social ‘mojo’ and weaving together those social interactions and stories there will be a truly positive move for brands in 2014.

Roger Katz is the CEO and founder of Friend2Friend, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer that works with global brands and media agencies. Launched in 2007, Friend2Friend works with over 100 global brands through its offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona, Spain. 

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

ListenFirst Media, a data platform specific to brands, examined the social fanbase (total Facebook fans and Twitter followers) of the most anticipated franchise and original holiday films of 2013 (with a look back at the top franchise and original films of 2012) and dug up some interesting insights as seen in the infographic below.

ListenFirst discovered that blockbuster films with the largest social fanbases don’t always equate to the biggest box office winners.

As a configurable platform, ListenFirst Media aggregates and analyzes data streams across social, digital, and traditional channels. The platform tracks 7,000 brands across more than 40 verticals, and establishes industry ­specific benchmarks to give competitive context on a brand’s performance in the marketplace.  They’re currently working with more than 30 clients in the entertainment industry, including major studios (Sony, Warner Bros, Relativity, Universal, DreamWorks, etc.), as well as Broadcast and Cable networks (NBCU, Food Network, Showtime, etc).

Click the image to see the full size graphic.

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.