"hard numbers" entries

Which social gaming companies are hiring

Disney's announced purchase of Mountain View gaming startup Playdom, follows on the heels of EA's purchase of London-based Playfish last November. Based on active users, Zynga remains by far the biggest online social gaming company. But what other independent companies are growing? To see which companies are expanding, I used our data warehouse of online job postings to detect recent hiring.

Where Facebook's half a billion users reside

Facebook announced that they now reach 500 million active users (just five and half years after launching). But where do these half a billion users reside? Refreshing my post from February, the share of users from Asia continues to rise and now stands at 17% of all Facebook users. Over the past 12 weeks, Facebook added over a million active users in fourteen countries, including 5 in Asia and all three members of NAFTA.

Google's New Marketplace Has over a Thousand Apps

One week into its public launch, the Google Apps Marketplace has just under 1,500 (enterprise) apps. Combined with Salesfore.com’s app exchange (also with over a thousand apps), enterprises interested in moving to cloud apps have an increasing number of software tools to choose from.

1 in 4 Facebook Users Come From Asia or the Middle East

Asia’s share of the more than 400 million active Facebook users recently surged past 15%. With a market penetration of 1.7% in Asia and Africa, the company has barely scratched the surface in both regions. While the company continued to add users in Southeast Asia, there were an additional 2.3 million users from South Asia over the past 12 weeks. In fact according to Alexa, Facebook has already overtaken Orkut in India.

Asia Continues to be Facebook's Strongest Growth Region

With Facebook topping 330 million active users over the past week, the company’s strongest growth region continues to be Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook added close to 17M active users in Asia alone. Since my previous post, the share of active users from Asia grew by 2% (to 13.5% of all users), and roughly 1 in 7 users now come from the region. With a market penetration under 2%, Facebook is poised to add many more users in Asia (and Africa).

There are Over a Million People Actively Using Facebook Right Now

A little over a week ago Facebook reached a major milestone: 300 million active users. The fastest-growth region continues to be Asia, but growth in other overseas regions such as the Americas and Africa have also been strong.

Facebook Adds Million of Users in Asia

Since my previous post on Facebook users by country, the company has grown rapidly in Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook grew 90% in Asia going from 11.4 to 21.7 million active users. With a Market Penetration of only 0.6% in Asia, Facebook has barely scratched the surface in the region.

Being a Suggested User Leads to Thousands of Twitter Followers

Ever since Twitter started suggesting accounts to new users, it was clear that those on the suggested users list were gaining thousands of followers. Setting aside the fact that number of followers is a poor gauge of influence (see our Twitter report for details), I wanted to know how many followers a suggested account gains by appearing on the list.

Active Facebook Users By Country

Since I last posted numbers on Facebook’s user base six week ago, the company has added close to 20 million active users. I’ve had a few requests for detailed numbers by country so I quickly assembled an update. Among countries with at least a million users, the fastest-growing are Indonesia and the Philippines.

Facebook is Growing Fast in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East

With Facebook recently passing 175 million users, I decided to update my analysis of its user base. The weekly growth in number of users has remained steady, with the last 5 weeks being exceptionally strong: Facebook added over 25 million users since early February. The share of U.S. users inched up slightly from 30% to 31%. The company added users…