Pakistani judges ruled to ban Facebook in the country Wednesday in anticipation of May 20, which a Facebook Page had claimed would be “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The ban began Wednesday evening and is to be in effect at least until the end of the month. Tuesday the Page had about 42,000 fans and it’s since almost doubled to about 82,000; there are also countless imitation Pages and dozen upon dozens of opposition Pages (some opposition is voice right on the Wall of the original Page).

Some Muslims consider depicting the Prophet Mohammed offensive, which likely prompted the ban. In a previous instance of this sort of controversy, there were angry protests around the Muslim world in 2005 after a Danish newspapers published cartoons of Mohammed dressed as a terrorist.

Facebook responded to the ban with a lengthy statement late Wednesday evening, noting the company was “very disappointed” with the Pakistani courts’ decision to block the site “without warning” because just because something is offensive doesn’t mean it needs to be removed completely from the discussion. The company said it is, “analyzing the situation and the legal considerations” to take the appropriate action, which could include making the content in question inaccessible in Pakistan.

The company also said it wants to maintain an open platform for its 400 million-plus users, which may mean some will be offended by other users’ content. Facebook used Nazi content as an example of the difficulties in maintaining a global network. In some countries Nazi content is illegal, while in others it’s not saying, “but that does not mean it should be removed entirely from Facebook.”

Facebook has business to lose if this ban remains long-term or spreads to other Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian countries, given the recent deal the company signed with Cairo-based Connect Ads. The three-year deal would create culturally appropriate ads for 15 countries in the Middle East, from Morocco to Pakistan, and reach more than 15 million users in a region that has been growing steadily during recent months.

Pakistani judges on the Lahore High Court issued an order to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block the Facebook web site in the country until at least May 31 in response to a petition filed by a group of lawyers called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement; the group called the page “blasphemous.”

Otherwise, Pakistan is seeing a lot of new Facebook users. It doubled its gains in January and most recently we reported in Inside Facebook Gold that the current user count there was at 2.2 million. The Internet is not censored in Pakistan, but the government routes all traffic through a central exchange; previously the government blocked pornographic and anti-Islamic sites, as well as a ban of YouTube in 2007.

Khoram Ali Mehran of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told CNN:

“Obviously it (the blocking of Facebook) is related to the objectionable material that was placed on Facebook. That is why it is blocked. We have blocked it for an indefinite amount of time. We are just following the government’s instructions and the ruling of the Lahore High Court. If the government decides to unblock it then that’s what we will do.”

The idea for the Facebook Page sprung out of a recent episode of the cartoon show “South Park” in which the Muhammad was depicted, although the network censored part of the show when it aired. Consequently several artists and others took to Facebook and the Internet to depict Muhammad ostensibly to support freedom of speech; the Facebook Page notes:

“Hopefully this page will spark seroius [sic] debates in international forums. This page will continue to exist and the date will remain the same. PS: We are not trying to slander the average muslim , its not a muslim/islam hatepage [sic]. We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammed depictions, that we’re not afraid of them. That they can’t take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us to silence.”

The Page advertises that “May 20th 2010 is draw Mohammed day! Help spread knowledge about this important day – invite your friends!” The administrator has a blog and there’s also a web site corresponding to the Page. In an upcoming series of stories Inside Facebook, we’ll be examining the relationship between some religions and their Facebook presence.

Growth rose for a second month straight in Africa during April of 2010, reflecting a trend that we also saw for the month elsewhere around the world. Although we track data for only seven of the continent’s countries, five of those were up, according to our latest Global Monitor.

Morocco rose to the top, with 168,640 new monthly active users in April, about half again as many as it gained in March. But in the same north African region, Tunisia’s growth fell by about a quarter, to 101,220. Still, Tunisia is reporting about half as many total Facebook users, 1.4 million, as the total 2.8 million internet users the World Bank reports the country having, putting its 14 percent overall penetration in a new light.

South Africa was the real surprise in April, quadrupling its growth from March — although in retrospect the rise shouldn’t come as any real surprise. Note that South Africa’s growth rate is still only 4.9 percent, the second-slowest in the below group of seven following Nigeria. Chances are good that we’ll see it speed up even more in coming months.

Ghana more than doubled its growth, coming in with 58,160 new users, in turn the highest growth rate at 14.9 percent. But like Morocco, Ghana also has an eastern neighbor whose growth on Facebook slowed in April: Nigeria, which dropped to a crawl with 42,580 new users but over six times Ghana’s population. For the moment, a high penetration in either country is not a sure bet, with Nigeria struggling even to reach one percent.

Kenya also accelerated, if only slightly; its penetration, at 1.7 percent, is about even with Ghana’s 1.9 percent. Finally, tiny Mauritius is the stand-out of the group, adding 13,760 new users and nearly hitting 15 percent penetration. Here’s the full chart:

Counting all of the above countries, Africa’s total penetration rose to an even 3 percent in April, with 11,412,240 monthly active users visiting Facebook. Although that seems low, keep in mind that Africa’s overall penetration — for the countries that actually allow Facebook — is rising at a faster rate than Asia’s, although the latter’s contribution in MAU is far higher.

Our full Global Monitor report is part of our Inside Facebook Gold subscription service. It covers nearly 100 countries and includes growth rates and forward projections for both individual countries and world regions.

[Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Inside Facebook Gold, our new data and analysis membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth. Inside Facebook Gold presents weekly in-depth analysis articles exploring the most critical developments impacting the future of the Facebook ecosystem. Click here to learn more.]

While Facebook has been changing its product – and dealing with partially negative reactions from users and privacy watchdogs – for years, the latest round of media attention paid to Facebook’s recently announced products was different than it’s been in years past. In previous (and arguably much bigger) product announcements, like the launch of the News Feed in 2006, and the initial move to more public user profiles in early 2009, the changes were protested by users forming Facebook Groups into the millions of members (yes, ironically, people using the product to protest the product).

Now, this year’s changes were met with Chuck Schumer holding a press conference to call Facebook “The Wild West of the Internet” and an open letter from Schumer and three other US Senators to Mark Zuckerberg requesting that Facebook make Instant Personalization – a just-announced feature currently live on three partner sites – opt-in.

As someone who has been following the company closely over the years, the fact that Facebook product announcements are prompting immediate multi-Senator responses is definitely a sign of how the stakes have changed for Facebook since the days of “1 Million Users Against the News Feed.” Now, Facebook not only has to improve the way it communicates with users – it has to fight for its life inside the Beltway, or it could become a poster-child for politicians looking to capitalize on Facebook’s problems while the FUD iron is still hot.

Fundamentally, there are 3 different (almost religious) views on the way Facebook makes product changes:

1. It is greedy and looking to capitalize on user data through advertising, to what will eventually become its own demise.
2. On the contrary, the company is rapidly innovating given changing privacy and cultural norms on the Internet.
3. A middle ground, that Facebook is gradually changing the way privacy works in its product as a result of what users demonstrate they want.

>> Read more of this article at Inside Facebook Gold

90 days ago today, Facebook confirmed the acquisition of Malaysia-based Octazen, a small team that had created one of the most sophisticated contact importer systems used by many consumer Internet companies these days. At the time, many considered the acquisition odd, but it was actually a very strategic move for Facebook. Its contact importer has played an extremely large role in both increasing growth and engagement over the years, so much so that when importing to a particular data source (like Hotmail or Gmail for example) goes down, it has significantly impacted Facebook’s daily growth.

Now, Facebook has just expanded the use of its contact importers inside apps and games, as we covered this morning. Whereas before users could enter email addresses of friends not already on Facebook to invite them to apps, now users can send FarmVille or Happy Aquarium invites to hundreds of friends with just a couple clicks. Although this will lead to some spam – which will produce some problems – it should also produce measurable growth acceleration for Facebook and for apps overall.

Facebook’s new in-game contact importers look like they could be one of the first recommendations/contributions from the newly acquired Octazen team. In-app contact importers are a tactic used with much success by the largest Asian social networks to ride the growth of games. Adding them inside the multi-friend selector should increase the number of imports significantly, especially from a greater variety of sources amongst international users.

So perhaps this feature should be code-named “Renren.”

For more data and research on Facebook, check out Inside Facebook Gold – Exclusive data and analysis on the Facebook business ecosystem.

Following public criticism over a number of recent privacy changes, Facebook executives and employees have been “hunkered down” at its Palo Alto headquarters lately, according to the Wall Street Journal.

And yesterday, some results of those discussions appear to be coming out. “Now we’ve heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex,” Facebook’s director of public policy, Tim Sparapani, during a radio show interview, below. “I think we are going to work on that. We are going to be providing options for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from and I think we will see that in the next couple of weeks.”

Facebook’s internal debates have included the idea of offering ways for users to conceal their profiles “more universally,” according to the report. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has “resisted” changing from the granular, and recently-modified controls it has now. Another reportedly discussed possibility was changing the default settings of the site to be more private like they were previously.

“We have built a privacy setting for every new type of sharing [users] are allowed to have,” Sparapani said yesterday. “What that means is that in fact we have come up with an extraordinary number of privacy settings.”

The company is in the difficult position of trying to make the product more open so it can provide more value to users, third parties and its own business, while also  meeting some users’ wishes for a more private system. Recently it has erred on the side of becoming more open, but the discussions suggest it is so concerned about the reactions that it is considering a deeper shift to be more conservative about privacy. We’ll see if the “simplifed” settings include more private options.

Facebook has updated its multi-friend selector invite tool for applications and games, now allowing users to import and choose from their email contacts when asking those not on Facebook to join them on an app or game.

This contact importer replaces the previous option to manually input email addresses when inviting non-members, which was located beneath the friend selector. The importer displays in a pop-up screen after a user skips or selects to invite existing Facebook friends, creating a 2-step flow out of what was previously a single screen. On the Platform Live Status site for developers, Facebook explains that the change, “removes friction from the [invite] process”.

The applications and games invite flow now utilizes the more advanced importer offered to those signing up for new Facebook accounts or to those who click “Who’s not on Facebook? Invite them now” on the home page’s right sidebar.

Facebook apps and games employing the default inviter settings will see this new invite flow in action. Once users confirm that they want their email’s contacts searched for people not on Facebook and hit “Find Friends”, an importer loading screen shows for a few seconds. All the email contacts without Facebook accounts associated with them are displayed with their “Send Invitation” check boxes checked by default. If a user chooses to send invitations, those they’ve selected receive an email with the prompt, “Hi, I have started using [name of game or app], an application on Facebook, and I think you would like it too.”

The link provided brings the recipient through the express registration which bookmarks the game or app from which the invite was sent in the bottom of the home page’s left navigation sidebar once they’ve created their account.

This change to the app and game invite flow makes it much easier for users to mass invite contacts who aren’t on Facebook, especially since all found contacts are selected for invites by default. Developers should note that the change is causing some of them to receive duplicate notifications of which users were selected via the multi-friend selector in the first step of the flow.

However, developers can distinguish between the duplicates based on the parameter the requests contain.  We’ll be here to keep you informed on how this new invite flow influences app traffic and new account sign-ups.

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup happening in South Africa this summer, we’re starting to see more promotions come to Facebook. Now, an official sponsor of the event, Visa is teaming with developer AKQA to help fans of the beautiful game follow their favorite teams through Facebook and plan viewing parties to partake in the competition with their friends through the Visa Match Planner application.

The Match Planner app is a part of the larger Go Fans campaign and allows fans to choose their favorite country in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as well as a few secondary teams they want to follow. It sets up reminders on an calendar for each of the games that feature those teams. Clicking on each date shows all games for the day with venues and times, and which friends are also following that particular game. Game details will be posted once each match is completed.

An Events tab allows users to schedule viewing parties or other events and keep them organized on the calendar. Setting up events also allows users to send out invitations and alert friends directly from the app, including selecting venues from a map, adding your own venue, and setting up a shopping list for the party. You’ll be able to track attendees by who’s accepted, opted out or is hasn’t responded.

All results are tracked in a separate tab, with the field broken down in their respective groups. The Group Stages and Knockout Stages are each represented, and you can even view the Knockout Stage as a list or bracket.

Also included in the app is a tab to upload your best Goal cheer, with a winner ultimately receiving a trip for 2 to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The contest kicks off June 1.

You can change the teams you’re following, your location and set up email reminders about matches and invitation requests from the Preferences tab to make adjustments during the competition to follow the hot teams.

The Match Planner app includes special offers from partners, such as Adidas and the FIFA Official Store, for savings on merchandise and more. The app is available in a number of languages, including English, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese, so it has even more of a global appeal. So far, it’s the most comprehensive among the many apps that have been popping up centered around this year’s competition, and as the beginning of the 2010 World Cup approaches, we expect to see a significant jump in users. Visa is also a veteran of successful Facebook campaigns, with a page based around its sponsorship of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games that still has more than 100,000 fans.

This week’s list of fastest-gaining Facebook apps by daily active users is led off by the iPhone app now simply known as Facebook.

Facebook (for iPhone) has left behind its usual partners in crime, the general purpose and Blackberry mobile apps. But you’ll notice another one in the category creeping up toward its position: HTC Sense, an Android mobile app for phones using the Sense interface. HTC Sense is a long way behind the other mobile apps, but it’s growing quickly and has DAU as a percentage of monthly active users approaching 75 percent.

Here’s the rest of the AppData list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Facebook	18,117,910	+336,792	+1.89
2.	Frases Diarias	851,653	+150,545	+21.47
3.	Nightclub City	491,476	+149,637	+43.77
4.	MindJolt Games	2,155,916	+120,043	+5.90
5.	Zoo Paradise	1,088,126	+97,340	+9.82
6.	Family Feud	1,241,987	+68,824	+5.87
7.	Bejeweled Blitz	2,601,031	+64,306	+2.54
8.	Games	400,581	+54,590	+15.78
9.	HTC Sense	938,878	+48,377	+5.43
10.	Social Interview	451,794	+45,084	+11.09
11.	Friends Emotions [Emociones de Amigos]	192,150	+44,627	+30.25
12.	My Top Fans	244,296	+41,258	+20.32
13.	Bola	477,926	+37,376	+8.48
14.	Garden Life	322,181	+34,621	+12.04
15.	Jewel Puzzle	75,522	+32,904	+77.21
16.	Belote	35,744	+32,269	+928.60
17.	Lovely Farm	31,812	+29,795	+1,477.19
18.	瘋狂診 所	27,745	+27,616	+21,407.75
19.	Jungle Life	92,747	+26,879	+40.81
20.	Мисуиш ли?	67,163	+24,065	+55.84

Frases Diarias has appeared on both our MAU and DAU lists regularly of late, on its way to becoming one of the larger foreign-language apps on Facebook. Although it’s just a quote-of-the-day app, it seems to be doing a good job at interacting regularly with users, or at least getting its pithy advice posted on their walls.

Over at the Inside Social Games version of this list, we take a moment to discuss MindJolt Games and Games, which can be seen here at numbers four and eight. The two game portal apps are showing a matching rise in the number of visitors who return on a daily basis, suggesting that ongoing efforts to make them more engaging are paying dividends — if the growth sticks, at any rate.

Social Interview, at number ten, is one of the last remnants of the friend quiz category, most of which was banned by Facebook for various platform policy violations. The app has hung onto its users by adding a number of features and categories to its basic quiz format, but it’s probably not actually growing. Right below it, Friends Emotions is in the same category and a similar boat.

Finally, there’s My Top Fans, a social graph analyzer that picks out your top friends. Despite a decline in MAU, this app, like the two game portals above, is showing a rise in its DAU.

More than a quarter of Facebook’s users are accessing it through mobile devices every month, and the number of mobile useres is growing fast. But not every Facebook user has a good mobile data connection, or a mobile data plan.

So the company has been working on a simplified mobile site that loads faster, in part by minimizing some features. In partnership with 50 carriers in 45 countries, access to the site is free, even if users don’t have an existing data plan with their carrier.

The site, at 0.facebook.com, is launching today. See the current list of carriers and countries, below.

It lets people do basic things like read their news feeds, publish status updates and wall posts, and like and comment content. But, if users want to access some parts of Facebook, like Photos, they’ll have the option to click through, pay for the data service, and view the content. While Facebook can provide its service for free to mobile users, carriers can make money by the site’s features enticing people to pay.

The “0″ site follows on other efforts to make Facebook more accessible to users, including a now-defunct “Lite” web site and other mobile integrations with carriers. Check out our recent article on the topic, available in our Inside Facebook Gold membership service.

It’s been many months since Facebook announced a series of changes to its user communication channels for app developers. Since then, many of them have happened: the redesigned home page, app and game dashboards, and removal of application notifications. But one set of changes that have not been rolled out yet are significant modifications to invitations and requests.

In an update to its developer roadmap, Facebook now says that access to invites will be moving to a “new notifications area” in July. Previously, Facebook had indicated that invites were going to be moved to an Inbox tab in June. Other requests are still being phased out and replaced by updated Share dialogs.

While Facebook has released mockups of what the Inbox tab implementation would look like (below), it hasn’t shared images of what a “new notification area” might look like, or if it is actually much different than the Inbox tab mockup at all. Of course, these changes to invite access points could have substantial impact on application design for many developers. We’ll let you know as more information is available.