Muzy.com, Birthdays, BranchOut, Twitter, Merry Christmas and more on this week’s top 20 Facebook apps growing by MAU

Photo editing app Muzy.com took the No. 1 spot on our list of top Facebook apps growing by monthly active users this week with 25 percent gain.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 250,000 and 3 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

A number of birthday apps, as well as an app called Merry Christmas, were also among the top 20 fastest growing apps. These novelty apps typically grow very quickly because they ask users to invite their friends to continue using them.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Thursday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

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New Facebook platform industry hires: Kontagent, TBG Digital, BranchOut

Social analytics company Kontagent hired an engineer, while TBG Digital and BranchOut hired marketing staff this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Kontagent

Dennis Chan, Software Engineer – former software engineer at Shmoop.

TBG Digital

Beatriz De Miguel, Marketing Specialist – former marketing manager at Newton Equipment.

BranchOut

Hyder M. Alikhan, Marketing Associate – former assistant to the head of digital marketing at ITP.Kendall Wangman, University Marketing Associate – former stylist at Cusp.

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

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New Facebook platform industry hires: Kontagent, BranchOut, Involver

Kontagent hired a senior designer, and BranchOut and Involver hired marketing staff this week.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into our next post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes either from the companies themselves or from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

Kontagent

Kristen Stotts, Senior Designer – former freelance designer.

BranchOut

Allison Mirzoeff, Marketing Intern – former sales associate at Urban Outfitters.Amy Andreasen, University Marketing Associate – former intern at Certified financial Planners at UBS.Morgan Phung, Marketing Advocate – former marketing intern at Tencent America LLC.Hyder M. Alikhan, Marketing Associate – former assistant head to digital marketing at ITP.

Involver

Rodrigo Santana, Marketing Intern – former supply coordinator at G-Inter Transportes Internacionais.

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

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Dailymotion, BranchOut, Angry Birds, Pinterest, Spotify, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU

Video sharing site Dailymotion’s Open Graph application topped our list of apps growing by monthly active users this week. Aside from popular games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja Frenzy, apps on the list included BranchOut, Pinterest, Spotify, and other photo, video and Open Graph apps.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 400,000 and 3.7 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Dailymotion is an Open Graph app for a video sharing site that grew mostly in France this week, topping our list with 3.7 million MAU. Turkish app MyVideo also made the list. Yahoo’s Open Graph news app continues to grow, as do BranchOut, Pinterest and Spotify, which all take advantage of the new Timeline features for apps.

Games on the list were led by Angry Birds, followed by Fruit Ninja Frenzy, Diamond Dash, and Bubble Witch Saga, among others. It’s interesting to note that AppData shows these games continue to grow in the U.S., but increasingly in other countries, such as the Philippines and Italy.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

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Facebook Roundup: Sparapani, BranchOut, AdParlor, Mail.ru, Websense and Michael Jackson

Sparapani Leaves Facebook – Tim Sparapani, one of Facebook’s initial Washington, D.C. hires, unexpectedly left as director of public policy this week.

Mail.ru Stock Could Be Down for a While - Mail.ru stock has taken a beating in the stock market and some speculate that this could be a permanent move.

BranchOut, CareerBuilder Partner Up – BranchOut, a professional networking app on Facebook, announced this week the company partnered with the job site CareerBuilder.

AdParlor Reaches Agreement with Getty Images – This week Getty Images and AdParlor agreed to provide access to 1.2 million images directly to AdParlor customers purchasing ads on Facebook. This will relieve advertisers using AdParlor’s Pulse Ads API tool for agencies from having to create their own image or pay to license stock images.

Facebook, Websense Team Up – Web security firm Websense and Facebook teamed up this week to protect users against malicious sites and malware.

Complications with Michael Jackson Livestream – AllThingsD reported this week complications emerged when a Michael Jackson concert that was supposed to be livestreamed on Facebook was cancelled.

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Quotes, Badoo, BranchOut, Photos, VEVO, Videos, Horoscopes and More on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by MAU

Quotes topped our list of the top Facebook applications by monthly active users this week, while the rest of the list was pretty varied, and included dating apps Zoosk and Badoo, the professional networking app BranchOut, Page tab apps, and many others.

The apps on our list gained the most MAU out of any app this past week, and grew from between 623,400 and 8 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

Quotes grew by 4.6 million MAU this week; the quiz app asks users questions about their friends, then posts the answers to their Walls. Then there were the dating and professional networking apps. Zoosk grew by 4.5 million MAU, continuing its growth in the United States, while Badoo grew by 3.9 million in countries other than the US. BranchOut, a professional networking app, grew by 865,200 MAU this week.

The Page tab apps saw some significant growth this week, too. Static HTML: iframe tabs grew by about 1.7 MAU, FBML Tab Maker grew by 1.1 million MAU and HTML + iframe + FBML = iwipa grew by 811,200 MAU.

Some apps to watch this week were VEVO for Artists, an app that grew by 1 million MAU and allows users to upload VEVO videos to their Page, being used increasingly by popular artists to feature music videos on Facebook. Then Phrases, with more than 1 million MAU, but is not available in the US. Finally, Facebook for Every Phone from Snaptu grew by 941,000 MAU.

The rest of the apps included photos apps like 60 Photos with more than 4 million MAU; the app allows users to rate friends’ photos, then publishes feed stories to their Walls. Amor grew mostly in Mexico by 1.1 million MAU. Video House grew by 967,100 MAU and is a Turkish video app. Pieces of Flair grew by 868,200 MAU and Daily Horoscope by 754,400 MAU.

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Q&A: BranchOut Founder Rick Marini on How It Raised $18M for a Facebook Professional Network With 6,000 Daily Users

Professional social networking Facebook app and site BranchOut has raised an $18 million second funding round to grow its engineering and sales teams. Previously only available as a destination app, the company is also launching a Jobs tab app for Facebook Pages of companies looking to hire.

We spoke with BranchOut founder Rick Marini about the company’s product roadmap, and why he think Redpoint Ventures, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and Floodgate made a wise investment despite the app’s currently low traffic numbers.

When we first profiled BranchOut in August 2010, a month after its launch, the app had a promising and relatively unexplored idea — offer a Facebook-based professional network that lets users discover where their friends work. While it was fun, the app wasn’t focused on helping users and companies find each other, and forming BranchOut connections with one’s existing friend base seemed redundant.

BranchOut’s founder Rick Marini had initially bootstrapped the company with money he made from the sale of his earlier venture Tickle.com to Monster, and revenues from his previous Facebook app, SuperFan. By September, BranchOut had raised $6 million from Accel Partners.

Since then, the professional network and hiring application spaces on Facebook have grown competitive. Simply Hired created a job-seeker Facebook Connect destination site, and Identified recently launched a professional social network based on Facebook data that properly concentrates on allowing users to be discovered by recruiters and approach companies. Work4 Labs has improved its Work For Us page tab app with impressive relevancy algorithms that suggest users jobs they’re qualified for and friends they should recommend openings to.

Inside Facebook: This new tab app lets Pages post full descriptions of their openings with links to share the postings and a button to apply by email. The app’s current iteration is very basic compared to Work For Us by Work4 Labs, though, which sorts lists of job openings and friends to suggest jobs to by relevancy. Could you explain the impetus for releasing the Page tab app and how it compares to existing solutions?

Rick Marini, Founder and CEO of BranchOut: The Jobs tab is the second in our line of enterprise products. The first was job postings on [BranchOut's destination app]. We were focused on the consumer side, but now we’re shifting gears towards enterprise. Companies told us “I don’t only want the jobs on BranchOut, I also want them on my Page.” We didn’t want to have a hole in our product suite, and since its release we’ve signed up Levi’s Groupon, Kiva, and charity: water. They can either pay us directly to have the jobs tab product, or they can pay a $99 posting fee on BranchOut and we give them the app for free. For volume we give them a discount that depends on the number of jobs they post.

The features you mentioned in Work For Us — all those things are in the works and will be available in BranchOut’s app within the next 30 days. We don’t see the tab as a major breakthrough, but it’s an important part of our suite. Work For Us is a service provider, and we are going to have a very similar service, but we have a community of professional networking folks which goes much deeper.

The third enterprise product is a subscription-based product for recruiters. It offers advanced communication and granularity of search akin to LinkedIn’s competing Pro product.

IF: Speaking of your community, though there is a lot of opportunity for professional networking on Facebook, your app only has 6,000 DAU right now. Do you think that warrants the $18 million in funding?

RM: We turned up our viral features in January and got up to 250,000 monthly active users. We eventually grew to about 500,000 MAU, but people were feeling like we were sending a lot of invites and lot of wall posts – it was feeling a little spammy. We’re building for the long-term so we self-imposted limits on wall posts and notifications. We knew it would bring down the numbers but we didn’t want that stigma of being spammy. We reset our user acquisition method to be driven by our core features — recommendations and badges.

I don’t think the consideration was around the size of the user base. It’s around leveraging Facebook — the biggest distribution method. We’re by far the largest professional social network on Facebook, we have the right core team, first mover advantage, and a great relationship with Facebook. Investors are looking for a long-term play here.

LinkedIn is a great company, they built a foundation for professional networking online and gave recruiters experience paying for an enterprise service. But I think all networking, professional and social, will happen on Facebook. If recruiters pay on LinkedIn for a similar service, they’ll pay for it on BranchOut. Facebook has 700 million plus users — it’s 15 times larger than LinkedIn. It’s your true support network, the people who will really help because the strength of connection is really strong. This is why people would want to invest in a large series B.

IF: But won’t you need a larger user base to make that third enterprise product valuable?

RM: The size of the database matters. We are looking for other ways to grow the database such as working with companies to sign on all their employees and recruiters. Recruiters can then tap into the friends of employees and ask for warm introductions, because when you authorize BranchOut, it’s not only pulling your data but the data of your friends. The BranchOut database is quite large in this sense.

IF: How exactly will the funding be used?

RM: The funding is going to be focused first and foremost to build out a world-class team. Three areas to beef up are our engineering team, the product team, and now it’s the time to ramp up our sales. Over 40 clients say “we want to do the same recruiting search within Facebook as we can within LinkedIn.” We need to hire a sales team to ramp that up.

BranchOut’s destination app will still need to convince users that its safe to use a professional networking tool that lives within Facebook where sensitive personal and social data is held. It will also need to provide more value to job seekers rather than viral mechanics like the quiz shown above for it to grow to the size where it will become useful as an enterprise solution to recruiters. Now it has the money to get to this point, but with other companies encroaching on its turf BranchOut will have to truly excel to become a success for its investors.

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New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Wildfire, Vitrue, BranchOut, Brighter Option and More

Among the top hires this week among platform companies on Facebook, professional networking application BranchOut lured Chris Merritt away from his position as vice president of global advertiser partnerships at Yahoo. Similarly, ad software provider Brighter Option brought on Randall Lloyd from his previous post as senior vice president of sales at Rock You.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

BranchOut

Chris Merritt, VP of Sales and General Manager of Enterprise Products – Now with BranchOut, just left Yahoo as VP of global advertiser partnerships.Dan Arkind, Advisor - Now with BranchOut, co-founder of JobScore and previously a recruitment consultant/coach at Indico Group.

Brighter Option

Randall Lloyd, Managing Director of North America – Now with Brighter Option and formerly senior VP of sales at Rock You.

Wildfire

Noah Weissman, Social Media Marketing Strategist - Now at Wildfire, also co-founder of Zoku & Juice, and formerly an account manager at Faktura Media Agency.Tom Logan, Sales Associate - Working at Wildfire, previously worked as a government relations intern with Del Monte Foods.Scott Hagedorn, Senior Account Executive – Now at Wildfire, last worked as a business development director at Meltwater Group.

Vitrue

Christian Rauh, Product Manager - Now at Vitrue, most recently a manager of international projects and client services at Channel Intelligence.Mikael Kessler, Strategic Services Analyst - At Vitrue, formerly a creative developer at twiredjobs.com.Wesley Barnes, Strategic Services Manager - Now at Vitrue, also CTO/co-founder of aitendant and formerly in program management/software development at Hewlett-Packard.Sarah Vabulas, Strategic Services Analyst – Now working at Vitrue, formerly the social media and public relations coordinator at The Maximus Group.

Work4 Labs

Armando Gallegos, Key Account Executive - Now at Work4 Labs, formerly a key account executive at Yahoo HotJobs and Monster.Kurt Angier, Key Account Executive – previously a key account executive at Yahoo HotJobs.Simon Bouchez, Project Manager Jobs For Me – formerly credit analyst intern at Société Générale (France).

Votigo

James Berry, Director of Product Management – formerly at Yahoo.Jeff Rozic, Director of Marketing – previously worked at Brand Affinity Technologies and Google.Stephanie Pullen, Director of Project Management & Client Services – Now at Votigo, formerly at Isobar and AKQA.Katie White, Account Director - Now with Votigo, frmerly at Martha Stewart/Omnimedia and A&E.Brad Moore, Account Representative – previously worked as retail account manager at Westword Newspaper.

Nanigans

Karen Harris, Consultant - Now at Nanigans, formerly a controller at Incipient, Inc.

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