A few things to watch out for:

• User-to-user messages will be shifted away from notifications and into the inbox. This will use a pop-up similar to the current newsfeed pop-up; this should reduce the number of notifications being sent from apps, decreasing spam. The upside is that messages that are sent are far more likely to be seen and engaged with by users.
• A new dashboard has been launched to make it easier for users to find and keep track of games they’ve been playing – great if your campaign has game elements
• It’s becoming much easier to collect a user’s email address (with their explicit permission) – shifting app-to-user notifications to email instead. This will make them far more engaging and likely to be seen, but will force apps to avoid being spammy to be seen among the sometimes huge amounts of notifications a user receives.
• There is now a live status page for the platform to allow developers to keep track of issues and bugs as well as the general state of the platform in real time.

“These updates are designed to simplify communication for users and developers, improve app discovery and engagement, and provide you with more comprehensive tools for building or expanding your business with Facebook”, wrote Facebook product head Ethan Beard.

Along the announcement, Facebook published a roadmap to help developers “anticipate future changes and opportunities”.  In it, Facebook informs the progress of the planned changes and what they mean for the developers “over the next two quarters”.

Although the Roadmap can be modified, it is useful to know what Facebook is planning. If you have any current applications, it’s important you understand these changes and how they could affect you, and if you’re planning future campaigns they will help you understand what areas to focus on. Get in touch if you need help understanding any of these changes.

12-17s – membership
Bebo is the SNS with more registered teenagers 12-17 (67%); Facebook (FB) 64%; MySpace (MS) 54%

12-17s – usage
FB is used more frequently than Bebo. 53% use FB at least once a week, and this usage increases at the older end; Bebo 42%; MS 30%. Gender is also important: girls are more likely to register with, and use, Bebo.

16-25s – membership
83% have a profile on FB; MS 51%; Bebo 36%. Registrations on FB are evenly spread across all ages, from 16 to 25, but MS and Bebo registrations decrease significantly as age rises.

16-25s – usage
FB is accessed by 70% of 16-25s at least once a week (the second most used website just below Google); MS 23%, but steep decline as age increases.

When Facebook was first growing among the closed university networks, Bebo managed to gain a leadership position amongst a younger audience unable to access Facebook. This is clearly reflected in the stats showing that more 12-17 year olds are registered on Bebo than anywhere else. However, Facebook’s pure relentless pursuit to be the social graph identity provider of the web is now paying huge dividends, with Bebo (and MySpace) falling to the wayside in every single demographic, even taking over Bebo for usage in the 12-17yr old category. We’re strongly recommending all of our clients to focus their strategies on success in Facebook rather than spread themselves thinner across the other networks.

• Every month, more than 70% of users engage with applications developed for the Facebook platform
• There are more than 350,000 active applications currently available on the Facebook Platform
• Over 200 applications maintain an active monthly user base of more than one million
• 15,000, and counting, websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008

As well as the well known stats that there are 250m+ active users, 50% of which are logging in daily – generating 5 billion minutes on Facebook every single day.

Also interesting is that 8 million users ‘fan’ Facebook fan pages every day – an impressive statistic.

Check out the original post for more information.

A similar shift has happened from webmail providers to social networks; whereas a year ago the traffic they generated for e-commerce sites was roughly equal, Hitwise now reports that social networks are generating 58.3% more traffic that webmail providers.

With the UK (and the rest of the world) in a downturn, margins for online retailers are being squeezed, and reducing the cost per acquisition has never been more important. Companies are now showing that it’s possible to generate effective traffic from the social networks, which if done right is far cheaper than paid search; ASOS, the online fashion retailer, is receiving over 13% of its traffic from Facebook alone. Brands which get this right will be have a cheaper CPA and better margins than their competitors, giving an essential edge in this climate.

(Data sourced from Hitwise Intelligence).

However, UK penetration is dwarfed by Brazil – the Google owned social network Orkut has a 70% penetration there, the highest social network penetration of any of the countries in the Nielsen survey.

Brazil is also top in time spent on these sites – 23% of all time spent (1 in 4 minutes), followed closely by the UK with 17% of all time spent online (1 in 6 minutes).

This shows how far social networks have come in terms of personal use – however also points out that despite the seemingly world dominating growth of Facebook, it’s not the total solution if you’re aiming for a global audience.