The company just announced the locations for World Hack 2012, an event series designed to bring out the best and brightest developers to learn about and get to work on Facebook apps.

Here are the twelve HACK locations this year:

• Austin, USA – August 23
• Mexico City, Mexico – August 27
• Buenos Aires, Argentina – August 29
• São Paulo, Brazil – August 31
• Berlin, Germany – September 11
• Taipei, Taiwan – September 11
• Jakarta, Indonesia – September 13
• Bangalore, India – September 17
• Barcelona, Spain – September 18
• Vancouver, Canada – September 20
• Warsaw, Poland — September 28
• Moscow, Russia – October 1

Each HACK session starts with instructive sessions on the Open Graph, and building for iOS, Android, and the mobiel web.

But the instruction won’t take too long. From the Facebook Developers blog:

[W]e know you’re there to code. We’ll quickly dive into demos and samples to give you everything you need to get started on the HACK itself: an eight hour competition where you get to demonstrate your newfound skills, with hands-on help from Facebook engineers. We finish with team demos and awards for the best apps and projects worked on throughout the day.

Interested parties are asked to register here. Facebook says there will be a “nominal fee” for participation.

From a post on the Facebook Developers blog:

We’ve been gradually rolling out the App Center to ensure a smooth transition for users and developers used to the old Apps and Games dashboard. Based on positive feedback from users and strong performance for developers, today we’re excited to make the App Center available to all Facebook users worldwide.

Facebook also updated the App Center’s Timeline to include the milestone.

Facebook’s App Center compiles and categorizes thousands of apps that use Facebook – both mobile and web. The apps are ranked and displayed based on user feedback, and Facebook has been clear that the App Center is no place for crappy apps (they won’t even make it on there). The App Center is also quite social, with recommendations based on friends’ app use.

The App Center went live for U.S. users on June 8th, and just one moth later began the global rollout by expanding the App Center to more English-speaking countries. Just last week, they made the App Center available in Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey. Now, it’s available everywhere.

“Approximately 80% of people active on Facebook each month are outside the U.S. and Canada. The global rollout of the App Center will continue over the coming weeks so that more people can discover high quality games and apps with friends.”

That global rollout will hit Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey next, “in the coming weeks,” according to Facebook.

If you’re a developer, you can now begin to submit translated apps for the App Center.

Facebook has also launched a new localization tool to go along with the global rollout:

To prepare for the broader rollout, we’ve added the Localize tab to the App Dashboard. There, you can provide translations of your app’s information (name, tagline, and descriptions) for use in the App Center and across Facebook.

That tab will allow developers to select a primary language, choose additional languages, and provide translated content to prospective app users.

Even if you’ve yet to translate your actual app, Facebook suggests that developers translate their app information into languages that are the most common among your app’s users. If you’re planning on submitting a translated app for review, you have until this Friday, July 13th.

Facebook’s App Center launches with more than 600 apps, including expected favorites like Draw Something, Pinterest and Nike+ GPS. As of right now, Pinterest is the top rated app in the App Center.

One thing we knew about the App Center going in was that it would be heavily reliant on social factors – unsurprising considering the massive amount of data available in Facebook’s social graph. Facebook says that “each person will have a personalized experience” when using App Center, as they will get recommendations based on not only their own past activities but their friends’ activities as well.

Another important thing about Facebook’s App Center is its reliance on user feedback. They clearly state that only “high quality” apps will even show up in the App Center. They base this measure of quality on user ratings as well as engagement. For users, this means that they will only see apps that meet the standards of Facebook and their friends – something that could definitely help weed out the less desirable apps out there. For developers, this will hopefully reward people who make good apps.

Facebook App Center is accesible by clicking the icon in your left-hand navigation menu or going to facebook.com/appcenter. Here’s what you’ll see when you land:

As you can see, the apps can be easily organized by either web or mobile at the top left. You can also what category you wish to browse – for instance games, music, news, or travel.

The left-hand column shows you recommended apps, which are personalized based on your activity on the site. The right-hand column shows you apps that your friends are using. The home page also shows you the top rated apps (based on engagement and user rating), trending apps (apps that are on the way up), and top grossing apps (those with the most in-app purchases).

Another draw for developers (and users alike) are the new, uniform info pages for each app. These pages include descriptions, screenshots, ratings, as well as information on which friends use the app. As you can see, the App Center description for Yelp tells me that 46 of my friends use it. That’s the type of social information that could make me decide to make a download:

You’ll also notice the “Send to Mobile” button on the right. This allows users browsing mobile apps via desktop to you mobiel device. If a mobile app requires a download, you’ll be redirected to the App Store or Google Play.

Along with the announcement, Facebook also unveiled some stats about user engagement with apps:

• More than 230 million people play games on Facebook every month
• More than 130 games on Facebook have more than 1 million monthly active users.
• More than 4,500 timeline apps have launched since f8 in September 2011.
• Facebook drove people to the Apple App Store 83 million times in May.
• Facebook drove people to iOS apps 134 million times in May (someone who already has the app and is directed back to it from Facebook.)
• As of May, seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top 10 Android apps have integrated with Facebook.

The App Center is currently only available to U.S. Facebook users, and will roll out for everyone else in the next few weeks. It’s accesible on the web, via iOS app, Android app, and Facebook on the mobile web.

According to a source quoted by Business Insider, that time has come. The App Center will reportedly drop in the next couple of days – even as soon as today or tomorrow.

Facebook’s App Center is pretty simple, but could be a huge step in courting developers to utilize their platform in their apps. Unlike the current way apps are displayed on Facebook (residing on a regular page), the App Center will allow apps to impress users right out of the gate with a full detail page.

Not only that, but Facebook’s App Center will reward quality. Developers will rely on user ratings and engagement to ultimately determine how successful their app performs. “Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won’t be listed,” says Facebook.

To be listed in Facebook’s App Center, your app needs to use Facebook Login. Facebook later detailed that the App Center would not host mobile apps, but rather point users in the right direction with links to the app’s iTunes of Google Play page.

For more general guidelines for developers, you can check out our previous article on the topic.

Another first about the App Center is that Facebook will give developers the option to offer paid apps on the App Center. Unlike in-app purchases, this will let users charge an up-front, flat fee to to the app on Facebook.

This is obviously at rumor level, but it shouldn’t shock anyone if the App Center launches soon – the announcement is nearly a month old. Business Insider points to a “Apps and Drinks” press event that Facebook is throwing on Thursday as a possible timeframe for the big reveal.

To that effect, Facebook announced that they were working to make payments flow better from mobiel web apps, which would make it easier for users to purchase things and charge it to their carrier accounts.

Today, Facebook is rolling out this new mobile payments flow. It cuts the process from seven steps to two and is now available in both the U.S. and the U.K. on the majority of carriers. In the states that means AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. In the U.K. it means O2, Orange, Three, Vodafone and T-Mobile. Facebook says the “low friction” carrier billing it on its way to more operators soon.

It really is pretty simple. Check out the process below:

If you’re a developer who already integrates Facebook payments, you don’t have to do anything. If you want to add Facebook payments, you can do so via the payments API.

That’s at least what analyst and founder of Digital World Research P.J. McNealy is saying in his latest book, “Early Days: The Social Gaming Market And Facebook’s Achilles Heel.” USA Today did a quick run through the book and found some interesting insight into what Facebook is doing to marginalize its own gaming economy.

Zynga is really important to Facebook. The social game developer provides a lot of revenue to the social media platform and in turn Facebook provides Zynga with perks. That’s a problem says McNealy because it’s leaving the other developers out of the loop. He says that while Zynga is getting all these nice perks like increased visibility through “Now Playing” updates; other developers are being left to fend for themselves.

McNealy has also heard word of many developers leaving Facebook. They are moving to other platforms where they have a better chance of being seen. One of the platforms is of course mobile. While mobile has its own problems, like increased competition, developers have more power over their product.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, it’s totally Facebook’s choice to allocate more resources to Zynga. They are the platform’s biggest partner when it comes to getting games on the platform. That means increased revenue from both the games and the advertisements that litter the page. If you have a successful partner, you’re going to do everything in your power to keep them around.

That might soon be a huge problem for Facebook though. As you probably know, Zynga has launched its own gaming platform at Zynga.com. Back when it was first announced, I, and many others including McNealy, speculated that it was a move by Zynga to distance itself from Facebook. Without Facebook, they don’t have to share any of the revenu they make from their games. It’s a big win for Zynga, but a huge loss for Facebook.

So what can Facebook do to keep its best and brightest developers around? I think the impending launch of the App Center is going to help a lot with that. It’s currently kind of a pain to find games on Facebook and it’s even harder to judge the quality of the game in question. The App Center will hopefully fit into what developers told McNealy they want – “more help and less hostility from Facebook.”

The inclusion of paid apps might also help attract more game developers. Zynga has made a killing off of its in-game purchase model, but paid apps might be the next big thing for social gaming. It has the potential to drive up the quality of apps and sales will hopefully follow.

If game developers do start to leave Facebook in droves, there’s always Google+. I hear they give plenty of perks to game developers who decide to side with their platform.

The big update this week is that a ‘place’ field is now available on the Photo and Status graph API. There is also a ‘place_id’ field on the Photo and Status FQL tables. Check out the update for the proper code to implement this feature.

Facebook always uses the weekly update to announce breaking changes. These are the changes that developers should be aware of in case any of their apps rely on these outdated programs and options. The breaking changes are the same from last week, since the changes are happening on April 4. Facebook did, however, announce a new schedule for breaking changes announcements.

The list of new breaking changes will go out on the first Wednesday of each month now. It used to be that breaking changes were announced on the first of each month, which sometimes fell on the weekend. With this change, all breaking changes will be announced during the work week.

The bug report is fascinating as always and gives us a look into how hard the guys at Facebook are working to make the platform stable. Over the past week, 200 bugs were reported. Out of those 200 bugs, 39 were accepted, nine were by design, 21 bugs were fixed and 88 bugs were duplicates. Check out the page for the full list of bug fixes.

Check back next week for more Operation Developer Love to keep up with the development platform on Facebook.

Facebook will be getting rid of the old sponsored story creative types on May 1.

“Prior to this change Sponsored Stories were defined by choosing the correct Ad Creative type for the specific Sponsored Story type,” explains Jonathan Dean in a post on the Facebook Developer Blog. “E.g. a page like sponsored story was type 9, a page post like sponsored story was type 17 etc. This made it complicated for developers to incorporate new Sponsored Story types as each Sponsored Story required different fields per story type.”

“By defining Sponsored Stories via Action Specs we are making it easier for new Sponsored Story types to be integrated into Ad Tool apps as they will all make use of the same standard fields,” he says.

In the post, he runs through a couple of examples of the differences, but he also shares the following table illustrating each action spec for its corresponding legacy creative type.

Facebook sponsored stories, or “Featured Stories” if you will, are becoming harder for brands to ignore as it gets harder for messages to gain visibility in the Facebook News Feed organically. More on that here.

Using SSO, developers are able to save their users time and frustration of logging in to their apps repeatedly. The developers also have access to the Graph API to build in-app social experiences.

Facebook recommends the following 4 Pro-Tips for developers:

Pro-tip 1: Include Facebook Login at User RegistrationApps will often only use SSO and Facebook Login when asking the user to enable Facebook features in the app. You should also include Facebook Login anywhere you prompt the user to Register for your app, often times when users launch your app for the first time. Users can enjoy a simplified registration process, and you can request the same information, such as e-mail address, that you would normally collect manually from the user.

Pro-tip 2: Store the user’s session in your appAfter your user authenticates for the first time, you should immediately store the authentication result locally. This way, you can keep the user logged-in to your app without having the user re-authenticate each time.

Pro-tip 3: Request only the permissions your app needsWe have streamlined the SSO permissions dialog, along with all permission dialogs in our recently announced Improved Auth Dialog. You should only request the permissions you need to get the user registered and using your app’s social features.
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve privacy protections for Facebook users, we’ve deprecated the ‘offline_access’ permission. Instead, you now have the option to extend the expiration of existing, valid access tokens for a limited amount of time without requiring the user to login again. Learn more about upgrading access tokens. Also, many apps incorrectly ask for ‘publish_stream’ when using our Feed Dialog. Your app only needs ‘publish_stream’ if it will be publishing to the user’s feed programmatically with the Graph API.

Pro-tip 4: Complete all iOS and Android Fields in your App SettingsBe sure to fill out every field related to your app in your app settings in the Native iOS App and the Native Android App fields. You can access these app settings for your app here. On iOS, If these fields are not configured, we will not be able to drive traffic to your app or the iOS App Store. In addition, we use the iOS Bundle ID to streamline authentication for users who have already authenticated your app.