现在已有将近一半的美国人成为Facebook用户，这个社交网站在亚洲的发展势头也同样毫不相让。据Facebook的资料显示，亚洲已成为Facebook用户增长最快的地区，在Facebook全球5.8亿的用户中，亚洲用户约占1.12亿。

据游戏邦了解，Facebook去年在马来西亚的用户增长率高达1000%，在泰国则是4000%，在台湾更是达到了惊人的7500%。2010年美国本土之外最大的Facebook用户人群并不在英国，而是印度尼西亚，要知道这个国家还有80%的人口无法上网。

facebook gains more users

社交媒体分析师Thomas Crampton认为，Facebook正以其他互联网公司所不及的力量，横扫亚洲地区。除了该社交网站本身的快速发展，亚洲国家人口结构的变化，中产阶级的崛起，网络费用的下降，也是Facebook东征大获成功的重要原因。另外，在线游戏的流行，尤其是Facebook在手机平台的简便操作性，移动互联网的费用更低廉，这些也是Facebook在该地区覆盖率迅速扩大的刺激因素。

在亚洲大部分国家中，中国制造的可上网手机仅售150美元左右，无限制的网络费用也仅仅20美元，登陆Facebook平台也因此成了曼谷、雅加达、马尼拉等地的用户在交通堵塞时打发时间的首选。

Paramadina大学的一名学生Sahid Priambodo表示他已经中了Facebook的毒瘾，他每天一睁开眼睛就得登陆Facebook，上课时也不忘用智能手机浏览Facebook页面，甚至还因此影响了学业。

投资者们认为像Sahid Priambodo这类“Facebook综合症患者”一定还有不少，而高盛最近在Facebook砸下的重金，则让行业分析师们相信，Facebook的市值已经达到500亿美元，甚至还可能再度增值。

目前为止，Facebook已经以低本地投入的优势，成功打败了Friendster、Hi5、MySpace等竞争对手。雅虎在越南、菲律宾、泰国等多个亚洲国家建立了分支机构，而Facebook在本土之外的根据地却只有日本、印度和新加坡。

分析师Crampton表示，“在此之前，如果我想和Facebook工作人员打交道，就只能打电话给澳洲的工作人员，对方是Facebook在亚太地区的唯一代表。”（游戏邦注：Facebook之前并不理会《环球邮报》所提出的增设新办事处、开拓亚洲市场的建议。）

Facebook对本土语言的宽容性，也同样助推了它在亚洲的势力扩张。如果Facebook发现了一种非英语的字体，它就会鼓励热心用户将它翻译出来——这是一个非常聪明的策略，因为在这个过程中，Facebook几乎是一文不花就雇到了许多翻译志愿者。

Farmville

值得一提的是，火爆农场游戏《FarmVille》也是Facebook风靡亚洲的重要功臣。据称在Facebook用户中，这款游戏的玩家比例高达10%。这款游戏帮助Facebook顺利打入台湾市场，有不少当地用户注册Facebook帐号就是直奔这款游戏而来的，因为要玩《FarmVille》，就必须先成为Facebook用户。

目前Facebook用户增长最快的泰国，最近也中了《FarmVille》的魔咒，许多Facebook用户对这款游戏欲罢不能。一位名为Wattana Pattanagul的生物学教授甚至专门为该游戏的泰国粉丝创建了一个网站“FarmVille在泰国”，为这些玩家翻译、解释《FarmVille》的英文游戏指南。他表示，不少玩家总因这款游戏而影响睡眠，他们经常设定闹钟，让自己大清早起床收菜。

虽然Facebook在亚洲人气极旺，但也并非战无不胜，它一直迟迟无法攻破这一地区最重要的市场——中国。

亚洲用户规模最大的社交网站并非Facebook，而是人人网，虽然后者的中国用户已达1.5亿，但美国人对它却是一无所知（据称Facebook的美国本土用户是1.457亿）。与Facebook的自由化运营不同，人人网等其他中文网站都要接受中国政府的监管。

Crampton认为，Facebook要进入中国没有那么容易，除非它愿意接受中国政府的审查。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

In Asia, more users signing on to Facebook

Many Americans have already watched with fascination (and sometimes horror) as Facebook absorbed their aunt, supervisor and ill-advised summer fling into one interconnected matrix.

With nearly half the U.S. population on Facebook, the social network’s omnipresence is almost passe. In Asia, however, the social network is still exploding, and with no end in sight.

Have a Facebook account? You are a few clicks away from Nay Si Thu, the Burmese leader of the “Yangon Drift” street racing crew. And model Hwang Mi Hee, peeking from behind auburn bangs in photos posted from Pyongyang, North Korea. And more than half of Singapore.

Asia is Facebook’s fastest-growing region, home to roughly 112 million of its 580 million users worldwide, according to Facebook statistics.

In the last 24 months, the network has seen quadruple-digit growth in Malaysia (1,000 percent), Thailand (4,000 percent) and Taiwan (7,500 percent). As of 2010, the largest Facebook population outside America is no longer the United Kingdom. It’s Indonesia, an archipelago where 80 percent still lack Internet access.

“Facebook has swept across the Asian region in a way no other web property has done. Ever,” said Thomas Crampton, social media analyst and Asia Pacific director of the 360 Digital Influence marketing agency.

Facebook’s eastern sweep is driven in part by development and demographics. As the Asian middle class rises, the price of internet access continues to fall. But the boom is also fueled by an Asian obsession with online games, as well as Facebook’s ease of use on mobile devices, far cheaper in Asia than at-home web connections.

Across the region, Chinese-made web-ready mobile devices sell for $150 with unlimited internet access plans as low as $20. Facebook has become an essential diversion during epic traffic jams in Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila.

“I use Facebook when I first wake up,” said Sahid Priambodo, a student at Paramadina University in Jakarta. “Then I go to school, but I’m still Facebooking in class.”

Priambodo’s Facebook addiction even follows him into bed at night via his smartphone. “Sometimes I can’t sleep because of Facebook,” he said. “It affects my GPA at school.”

Investors are convinced there are plenty more Sahids for Facebook to enlist. A Goldman Sachs investment this month led analysts to peg Facebook’s value at $50 billion and forecast continued heavy growth.

So far, Facebook has chewed through competitors Friendster, Hi5 and MySpace with very little local investment. Unlike Yahoo — which built offices in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere in a bid for Asian dominance — Facebook only maintains offices in Japan and, as of last year, India and Singapore.

“Until mid-last year, if I wanted to talk to someone at Facebook, I had to call one poor guy in Australia,” Crampton said. “He was the only representative on this side of the Pacific Ocean.” (Facebook did not respond to GlobalPost’s repeated inquiries into plans for opening new offices or its overall Asia strategy.)

Facebook’s adaptability to local tongues has aided its Asian spread. When Facebook detects a non-English script, it asks the user to translate portions of the site for free — a clever means of recruiting an army of free interpreters.

Facebook also partially owes its growth to the Asian obsession with Farmville, a game that invites players to tend digital farms while sharing seeds and tools with fellow users.

The online phenomenon, played by an estimated 10 percent of Facebook users, is exclusively accessed through Facebook. Despite its simple 1980s arcade-era graphics, the game’s rules are complex and it begs near-constant attention from cyber-ranchers.

Farmville led Facebook’s charge into Taiwan, where people scrambled to sign up simply to access the game. “They wanted to play Farmville,” Crampton said, “but had to sign up for this thing called ‘Facebook’ first.”

Thailand, now the fastest-growing Asian Facebook population, is among the latest to fall under Farmville’s spell.

“Games are one of the main reasons Thai people join Facebook,” said Wattana Pattanagul, a 35-year-old biology professor. His hobby site, “Farmville in Thailand,” was created to decipher the game’s English-language instructions for Thai fans.

“I got tired of always translating for everyone,” he said. “Some people barely sleep because of Farmville. They set their alarm clocks early to wake up and harvest their crops.”

This month, Wattana officiated at a “Farmville Competition,” which drew spectators to a Bangkok exhibition hall where judges awarded points to contestants’ farms for beauty and skill. (Sample commentary: “All this empty space? The farm leaves me feeling cold” and “This garden is arranged strangely … are the crops meant to spell out something in Chinese?”)

Still, despite its rapid ascent in much of Asia, Facebook remains banned in the region’s most crucial market: China.

Asia’s largest social network isn’t Facebook. It’s RenRen, virtually unknown in America despite its 150 million Chinese users. (Facebook claims roughly 145.7 million U.S. users.) Unlike Facebook, RenRen and other Chinese-language networks are Chinese owned and subjected to communist party oversight.

“Facebook isn’t going to break into China anytime soon,” Crampton said. “Historically, the Chinese government is uncomfortable with any social media used in China but owned by foreigners.” Unblocking Facebook, he said, would require conceding to communist party controls under “some model no one has ever used.”（source:globalpost）