Web analytics firms Quantcast, Compete, and comScore have all recently released updated numbers on Facebook’s US traffic, but they each differ from each other and from Facebook’s self reported numbers. Why? Each service uses different methodologies with different strengths and weaknesses – usually based on some combination of self reporting, ISP reporting, and panel sampling – but together, we can use them to triangulate trends in Facebook’s actual US traffic.

Here’s the latest from each:

1. Quantcast

Quantcast is reporting Facebook’s August US traffic at 94.6 million uniques, up about 6% since the beginning of July, and up about 150% since this time last year.

2. Compete

Compete is reporting Facebook’s US August traffic at 120.6 million uniques (just to www.facebook.com), up from 117 million last month and 40 million a year ago – but down from its extremely rapid US growth earlier this year. Compete’s numbers are well above those reported by any other firm, or Facebook.

3. comScore

According to comScore, traffic to www.facebook.com grew by nearly 14% month over month in July to over 87.7 million US uniques – the highest monthly growth rate Facebook has experienced in the last year according to comScore.

4. Facebook Itself

Finally, Facebook itself reported 81.2 million monthly active users in the US at the end of August in its advertiser tools. While this number is not real-time, it does generally provide a floor for comparison against third party metrics providers.

Summary

All the numbers tell similar stories, just in slightly different ways. Facebook’s US audience is up by over 100% in the past 12 months, and is growing 4-10% each month still, depending who you ask.

As an important aside, measure of Facebook Connect integrations on third party sites can throw off many third party Facebook metrics. Because thousands of sites have implemented Connect (and thus have code loading from a facebook.com subdomain like connect.facebook.com), many more US website visitors traffic all facebook.com domains than just the main Facebook website, www.facebook.com. Each of the firms says they have taken that into account in their numbers above.

Chart: Social Networking US Audience Numbers, July 2009

Source: comScore Media Metrix

Chart: Weekly Share of Visits to Facebook and MySpace within Social Networking Category

Source: Hitwise

Texas Pete Hot Sauce recently handed out 10,000 free samples through Facebook home page engagement ads and its Facebook Page, and the company is hoping to build on that campaign’s success buy recruiting more Fans with the promise of free hot sauce.

To promote its variety of flavors, Texas Pete was offering a limited number of product samples and included discount coupons for Facebook Fans. The company hoped to pass out 10,000 samples over a four week period, but hit that number of requests in just 6 days. Each sample contains a 1.9 oz. bottle of the consumer’s flavor of choice, can koozie (a bottle cooling sleeve) and a coupon. The coupon holds a unique bar code which the company hopes to use to track the redemption rate.

We’ve seen companies have success using Facebook as a springboard for sampling, with Splenda using a dedicated Fan page a few months ago to gather insight into public reaction to one if its new products.

Now that Texas Pete has seen that its Fans are paying attention, it’s looking for more of a Facebook presence. The company is promising to add a coupon for a “Buy One Get One Free” Texas Pete product to its Fan page if it can reach 100,000 Fans by Nov. 15th, Ryan Helmstetler of The Sales Factory, who built the campaign for Texas Pete, tells us. The page is currently around the 35,000 mark, but shouldn’t have a problem reaching the 6-figure mark by the mid-November cut-off date given recent trends in the “Food-For-Fans” campaigns that are becoming popular.

This approach is very similar to the Fan Woody campaign which just netted TGI Fridays a half-million Fans and counting (currently close to 640K) after the promise of a free Jack Daniels burger. While TGI Fridays also promoted their offer through more traditional media outlets, like television, Texas Pete seems happy to let word spread virally from its Facebook page. Given the brand loyalty that the hot sauce enjoys, it should only be a matter of time before Facebook users are flocking to the page to offer themselves up as Fans and get their free goods.

The past two days, we’ve seen a wide variety of companies presenting at TechCrunch50 somehow make use of Facebook — some built apps or used Pages, some accessed profile data, the news stream or photos through Connect. Here’s a quick review of what we saw, in chronological order, including links to other sites that have covered the companies in more detail.

SealTale: This doesn’t seem like a new idea. SealTale lets you place an endorsement widget on a web page, including a simple frame on Facebook. More on CNET.

Udorse: An endorsement site where people can endorse items in their Facebook photos, potentially convincing friends to buy them as well. More on TechCrunch.

Refmob: Cross-site service where people can get paid for referring their friends to jobs; includes a way to refer Facebook friends. More on VentureBeat.

Mota Motors: Used car marketplace site that accesses Connect to let buyers and sellers include their real Facebook profile photos. More on SocalTech.

YourVersion: News discovery engine site that lets you share stories on Facebook. More on TechCrunch.

Metricly: Simple analytics service that includes a way to track fans on Facebook. More on VentureBeat.

Crowdflower: Online workforce placement service that apparently includes a Facebook app where you can earn virtual currencies in exchange (I don’t see the app). More on Caem.la.

Cododot: Event-planning and invitation service focused on women. It lets you post invitations to Facebook. More on Techgeist.

Threadsy: Social stream aggregator site that lets you read information from Facebook along with other social sites. More on CNET.

Radiusly: Imagined as a sort of Twitter-LinkedIn hybrid, the company also lets you post items to Facebook. More on VentureBeat.

[Photo via Noah Hendrix.]

Facebook has just announced it has reached 300 million monthly active users around the world. The company has added 50 million users in just the 75 days, that’s 670,000 users per day. In mid-July, Facebook announced that it had reached 250 million.

Facebook’s global audience has doubled since the beginning of the year, adding 150 million new users since January. Notably, over 71% of Facebook’s userbase resides outside the United States – as of today, the company reports 85 million active American users.

Perhaps even more impressive is that the company also says it is now “free cash flow positive.” From the company blog post on the news, from founder Mark Zuckerberg:

We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

For those not familiar, “free cash flow” means the amount of cash that a company generates after budgeting costs required to maintain and expand itself.

Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is expecting to see “70% growth in revenue year over year” in 2009 and that Facebook will be “cash flow positive in 2010.″ Facebook board member Marc Andreessen also recently said Facebook would do $500 million in revenues in 2009, up from an estimated $280-$300 million in 2008.

What’s driving Facebook’s revenue growth? A combination of revenue streams: Facebook’s self-service ad business has been very strong lately, it continues to invest heavily in brand advertising efforts, and it also continues to release many experimental expansions to its virtual goods and virtual currency business, Facebook Credits. The company is also still deriving revenue from its advertising deal with Microsoft, signed when Microsoft invested in Facebook in 2007.

Update: So what sort of revenue growth has Facebook actually seen? We asked company executive Elliot Schrage: He couldn’t comment on what exactly was growing revenue, nor could he comment on the company’s overall financial numbers today. We don’t expect the company to say much more this year.

While Zynga has partnered with a variety of offer monetization platforms over the years, we’ve been hearing that the company has been increasingly driving some users to an offer network it may either own or be strongly allied with. Now, we know the name of that service – DoubleDing.

While we haven’t been able to confirm if DoubleDing is either owned by Zynga or is a separate entity controlled by the company, its executives, or investors – Zynga has not responded to our request for comment yet – we do believe that it’s part of Zynga’s strategy to bring a greater part of the monetization value chain closer to being in-house.

Why would Zynga want to do so? Two reasons…

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