[Editor's Note: The following stats are excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Click here to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Growth rates for the Middle East region fell back toward their normal rates in May, following a particularly strong April, according to our latest Global Monitor report.

Egypt once again held a significant lead over its peers, taking in 216,180 new monthly active users for May. That’s equivalent to a 6.7 percent growth rate for the country, which now has about 3.4 million users on Facebook. In April, Egypt was by far the strongest grower with 13.9 percent growth; however, that rate was probably not sustainable.

Coming in after Egypt is Israel, which remained about even from month to month. But May was a particularly notable month for Israel, since it managed to cross 40 percent overall penetration, a significant milestone. If Israel continues growing strongly through this year, it could pass Qatar, which leads the region with 45.1 percent penetration.

Saudi Arabia has not been known for its large Facebook population, but we’ve already seen it grow quite a bit this year, with 137,980 new MAU in May, bringing it close to 10 percent penetration. Young Saudis are most likely to sign up for the social network, a point noted by the United Kingdom when its embassy recently launched a Facebook page to provide information to Saudi students and tourists.

Foreign embassies aren’t the limit on Facebook, of course — in the United Arab Emirates, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has been using his personal Facebook page to communicate with the public. The UAE shows its own high penetration rate of 37 percent, reliably growing month to month.

Iraq, unfortunately, is extremely volatile; in April it showed a huge loss, only to apparently recover in May. Given the country’s continuing internal difficulties, it may be some time before Facebook can find a reliable foothold. Lebanon and Jordan, the last two countries listed, are quite small, but both are now close to a million MAU.

Overall, the countries shown above had a composite growth rate or 13.5 percent in May, adding 796,000 new MAU to Facebook. As always, this data is sourced from Facebook’s advertising tool, which may run at least several weeks behind.

The full Global Monitor report is only available through Inside Facebook Gold, our data membership service that also includes access to exclusive analysis. To sign up or get more information, please see Inside Facebook Gold at gold.insidenetwork.com/facebook.

Among the 20 Pages that gained the most fans in the last seven days, the World Cup — as you might have guessed, considering Facebook’s massive international audience –made a big appearance.

Not all of this seemed attributable to the World Cup, which started on Friday).

Musicians and television shows still reigned strong on the list, as measured by our PageData tool, and leading game developer Zynga stayed strong, too. The list seemed to be somewhat inspired by some big movement on Saturday, when many Pages experienced jumps in traffic — possibly due to Page consolidations. There may also be some positive effect continuing to occur from the influx of personal profiles linking to Pages.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Avril Lavigne	3,677,553	+651,053	+21.51
2.	redbox	774,408	+393,024	+103.05
3.	Family Guy	8,678,877	+350,296	+4.21
4.	Sports on Facebook	1,492,135	+297,313	+24.88
5.	Texas Hold’em Poker	19,486,524	+296,548	+1.55
6.	Lil Wayne	5,269,009	+289,062	+5.80
7.	Lady Gaga	8,419,308	+254,007	+3.11
8.	Justin Bieber	4,965,447	+213,097	+4.48
9.	House	6,867,942	+211,760	+3.18
10.	Toy Story	982,857	+184,514	+23.11
11.	Michael Jackson	12,698,450	+171,138	+1.37
12.	adidas Football	853,763	+158,957	+22.88
13.	Cristiano Ronaldo	4,435,638	+157,281	+3.68
14.	South Park	5,827,140	+155,893	+2.75
15.	Linkin Park	5,811,001	+155,635	+2.75
16.	Eminem	4,184,545	+146,767	+3.63
17.	Dr. House	6,098,271	+145,409	+2.44
18.	Metallica	4,477,752	+145,185	+3.35
19.	Two and a Half Men	3,560,297	+143,942	+4.21
20.	Mafia Wars	12,559,651	+138,197	+1.11

Singer Avril Lavigne took first place this week, adding most of her 651,000 fans to her 3.6 million total in a single day — Saturday, June 12 — despite the fact that there didn’t appear to be much activity on her Page other than the promotion of her new fragrance.

Redbox, the automated DVD rental kiosks, came in at number 2 this week, adding 393,000 fans, more than doubling its numbers, with 226,700 of those added on June 12 (probably meaning a consolidation). There hasn’t been much activity on the Page, although there is a promotion to receive a free rental on June 21.

There were a handful of TV show-related Pages on the list, too. “Family Guy” came in third, adding 350,00 fans to grow to 8.6 million with consistent growth; the show was nominated for a Teen Choice award recently.

“House,” coming in at number 9, was also nominated for said award, adding 211,700 to grow to 6.8 million with a June 12 spike. “South Park” took the number 14 spot, added 156,000 fans with a 72,000 spike on June 12 and no recent updates on the Wall. “Dr. House” came in at 17, adding 145,400 to pass 6 million fans with a spike on June 12, but no real updates for some time (consolidation?). Finally, “Two and a Half Men” came in nineteenth place, added 144,000 fans to reach 3.5 million with steady growth and no updates since the series finale in May.

The World Cup, which began on Friday, June 11, in South Africa, has unsurprisingly  attracted the attention of Facebook users around the world. The official Sports on Facebook Page came in fourth this week, adding 297,300 fans to come in just under 1.5 million total. If you recall, this Page launched a leaderboard with Involver last month, and cumulative growth on the Page since June 11 totaled 296,600 fans, so that may be one reason the Page is seeing growth.

Adidas Football came in twelfth, added 159,000 fans to grow to 854,000 — including a huge 124,000 jump on June 12 — and has been heavily promoting the World Cup with a landing tab and other Wall activity. Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer player widely considered to be one of the best players in the world, has also seen a lot of growth on his Page. Ronaldo came in at number 13, adding 157,300 fans to grow to 4.4 million with a big jump of 108,000 on June 12. His Page is also running a fan photo contest and it has been updating from the World Cup.

The “Toy Story” Page came in at number 10 this week, probably because the movie premieres this week and the Page became popular recently as Disney became the first company to sell movie tickets to the premiere right on Facebook. The Page added 184,500 fans to come in just under 983,000.

Musicians, as per usual, ruled most of the list.

Lil Wayne came in at number 6, adding 289,000 to grow the Page to 5.2 million with a few big spikes, including June 12, but without any Facebook activity (he’s still in jail). Again, consolidation? Next was Lady Gaga, who added 254,000 fans to her current 8.4 million fans, also partaking of the June 12 spike. Her newest video, “Alejandro,” debuted last week and her U.S. summer tour is set to begin shortly. Teen idol Justin Bieber came in at number 8, adding 213,000 fans to reach 4.9 million; he’s been busy promoting the theme song to the “Karate Kid” remake, a single about to hit iTunes and a new music video.

Michael Jackson came in at 11, adding 171,100 fans to grow to 12.6 million with little else but related news updates on the wall. At 15 was Linkin Park, adding 155,600 to pass 5.8 million with news of tour dates. Eminem followed at number 16, adding about 147,000 to grow to 4.1 million as he promotes his new video, single and album. Metallica took the number 18 spot, adding 145,200 fans or so and growing to 4.4 million partly by announcing tour dates in the fall.

Zynga maintained a presence on the list this week, despite competition, with Texas Hold’em Poker coming in at number 5, adding 296,600 fans to now count 19.4 million; the Page has been promoting all sorts of World Cup virtual goods — the landing tab is even promoting them. Mafia Wars, closing out the list at number 20, has been promoting virtual goods related to the game as well, in addition to actual cards at 7-11 convenience stores. The Page added 138,200 fans to grow to 12.5 million.

Facebook introduced a new promotion of its Credits virtual currency last week: users could get five free credits in exchange for installing CrowdStar’s new Hello City simulation game.

Those who have earned those points may have seen a followup email from CrowdStar since then. The email contains a link that users can share with their friends, who can then earn 5 Credits themselves from adding the app.

Users who were already playing the game, meanwhile, are getting the option to click on a button to get their 5 Credits; these users can also give 5 free Credits to their friends (along with an install of Hello City), by posting a notice and a link to the promotion on their walls and in friends’ News Feeds.

CrowdStar is already Facebook’s official testing partner for Credits; last winter, it launched the first app from a major developer to use Credits exclusively; in later promotions, such as a prominent box featuring Credits-powered games within the Games Dashboard, CrowdStar’s apps have also been front and center.

We assume that Facebook is reimbursing CrowdStar, just the same as it otherwise would — and also reimbursing any other developer who has an app where these free Credits are used.

These latest promotions show that Facebook is willing to seed users with free Credits (i.e. spend its own money) as a part of its efforts to boost the Credits economy.

Apple did not mention the word “Facebook” once when it announced its new iPhone 4 device and iOS 4 operating system last week — but it did say that there would be 1,500 new features coming with the latest version of its operating system. And one of those features appears to be the ability for iPhone users to upload videos directly to Facebook.

The iOS 4 firmware code is currently available for approved developers. Facebook uploading, as 9 to 5 Mac discovered, appears to be an additional option beyond the current ones (which are email, MMS, MobileMe and YouTube). The maximum size of the video is 480 pixels in height by 480 pixels wide, with 30 frames per second.

Adding the ability to easily upload videos to the iPhone would be a boost for Facebook, judging by recent trends. Photo-sharing from the iPhone to Facebook is already a popular feature in the Facebook-built iPhone app. Meanwhile, video-uploading from mobile devices has continued to surge on Facebook, because phones are both becoming cheaper and better able to handle video shooting. Finally, the new iPhone device and OS are going to include a range of new video features (NewTeeVee took a good look, last week).

Apple, of course, gets the benefit of tying its hot new content-creating device with one of the most popular ways of sharing videos with friends. The half a billion Facebook users in the world now have another reason to want the iPhone versus another smartphone.

There is a long line of evidence showing Apple has been working on tighter Facebook integrations recently, like the ability to sync your phone’s address book with your Facebook contacts. We and many others expected to see some mention of Facebook during the announcement last week. But so far, nothing has shown up.

With the video code, Apple has clearly not ditched all Facebook integration in its latest device and software launches. Given how complementary the two companies are, the question is still: Where is everything else?

Two months ago, Facebook announced that it was integrating offers as a payment option for its universal virtual currency, Credits, for the first time.

At the time of the announcement, the company said it was integrating offers from two partners: TrialPay and Peanut Labs/RockYou. However, since then, we’ve only ever seen TrialPay offers available to users as a Credits payment option. Where are the offers from Peanut Labs/RockYou?

We asked Facebook, and a spokesperson told us that early tests were run with Peanut Labs/RockYou offers, and that more tests were planned over the “next few weeks,” but that for now users are only seeing offers from TrialPay. Facebook would not give any more specific reason why it is taking a lot longer to get Peanut Labs/RockYou offers going.

The big question for other vendors in the space is whether the company is going to open up its offers system to more providers. Facebook is said to be only integrating a small number of offer partners for now so as to be more conservative and avoid misincentivizing competition amongst offer providers, at the possible expense of offer quality for users.

Of course, at the end of the day, if offers end up generating a significant portion of Credits revenue for Facebook, the company might want to bring it in house. We’ve heard some rumors of Facebook looking at offer companies, but we don’t believe those to be serious at present.

In a small tweak to the ownership rules of Facebook Pages that is likely to come as welcome news to many Page administrators, Facebook is now allowing any Page administrator to be removed.

Previously, the Page’s original administrator was unable to be removed – creating a headache for agencies and companies who had an employee create a Page, only to discover that they were then apparently permanent administrators.

That could be a problem if, say, that person were fired or moved on to a different role. As a result, many agencies had resorted to creating fake “dummy” Facebook accounts to serve as the creator and original administrator of the Page. Now, that’s no longer necessary.

Thanks to Hazel Grace at SocialBees and Jeff Widman at BrandGlue for the tip.

Quiz Monster has proved, over the past week, that it really is a monster. The quiz-creation app wolfed down a whopping four million new users to lead off our weekly list of Facebook’s fastest gainers by monthly active users.

The question is why Quiz Monster is growing so quickly. What has likely changed is that, instead of spinning out user-generated quizzes as standalone apps, it’s now keeping new quizzes within the main application. Whatever the case, the changes were only made a few days ago.

Here’s the AppData top 20 list:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Quiz Monster	5,423,460	+4,000,762	+281.21
2.	Hello City	2,778,038	+2,343,605	+539.46
3.	My Empire	4,080,966	+1,521,177	+59.43
4.	phrases 4 fun	2,310,904	+1,290,669	+126.51
5.	MindJolt Games	18,728,071	+1,255,048	+7.18
6.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars	1,166,373	+949,117	+436.87
7.	LivingSocial	3,836,295	+850,609	+28.49
8.	Facebook	36,845,623	+604,409	+1.67
9.	Nightclub City	3,754,076	+578,726	+18.23
10.	Texas HoldEm Poker	28,735,501	+474,279	+1.68
11.	Entrevista tus Amigos	4,991,334	+441,818	+9.71
12.	Friend Interview	5,523,240	+391,110	+7.62
13.	Fashion World	431,758	+377,110	+690.07
14.	Baking Life	1,025,002	+347,812	+51.36
15.	The Hardest Game of the World	362,342	+333,500	+1,156.30
16.	Profile picture analyzer	1,116,688	+310,877	+38.58
17.	My Top Fans	3,794,787	+305,201	+8.75
18.	Games	3,234,368	+302,852	+10.33
19.	Family Feud	6,729,815	+283,422	+4.40
20.	Crazy Cow Music Quiz	732,185	+271,634	+58.98

Several games are making big strides, but the biggest growers are Hello City and My Empire, two very different takes on the city building genre. Each has been out for over two weeks at this point, but the past week was their best so far, especially in the case of Hello City. Expect to see both coming up repeatedly over the next few weeks.

For the rest of our game coverage, take at our sister blog, Inside Social Games. The next big non-game grower is Phrases 4 fun, a quote-of-the-day app that has been doing rather well. Until recently, Phrases was following in the footsteps of Frases Diarias, a much larger quote app, but the latter appears to have mostly leveled off, coming in at number 24 (unseen here).

Starting in April, LivingSocial began growing rapidly, hitting a high point of over five million MAU in early May, but quickly losing almost half of that total; the daily deal and sharing app is slowly moving back to its previous position with a revamped user interface. It’s followed by Facebook (for iPhone), a company-made mobile app.

Finally, skipping down to number 16, Profile picture analyzer is probably worth a look. This app assigns (apparently) random numbers for criteria like beauty, sexy, cool and smart to your picture. That’s not notable in itself, but Profile seems to be part of a larger trend of apps that amuse Facebook users with random numbers; lately, we’ve seen several gaining millions of MAU lately.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, June 7th, 2010

• City Builders Appear Again on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• RockYou Gets Another $10 Million from SoftBank, Buys Majority of Asia Joint Venture
• Zynga Brings FarmVille to the iPhone, iPad
• Apple Brings New High-Powered Features to Mobile Gaming
• Facebook Tests New Bookmarks Feature, Looking to Help Developers Grow
• Gamevil Launches Soccer Superstars on iPhone

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

• Fantasy Moguls, CBS, Have a Soccer Management Title Ready for the World Cup
• Anticipating the World Cup, Soccer Games Flood Facebook and the iPhone
• Announcing Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience
• Friendster Joins in the Rush to Social Gaming
• BigDoor Gets $5M Funding to Bring Social Gaming Mechanics to Websites
• Surprise: Android Likely Has More than 7 Million Facebook Users

Wedenesday, June 9th, 2010

• Hello City and My Empire Reach Hit the Top Spots on This Week’s List of Fastest Facebook Growers by DAU
• Zynga Heads Out West for Its Latest Release, FrontierVille
• Turning Exercise Into Games with iPhone Title Skimble
• Who’s Using Facebook Around the World? The Demographics of Facebook’s Top 15 Country Markets
• Viximo Makes Bid to Bring Social Games to More Web Sites

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

• RollOut Brings New Spin to iPhone Platform Gaming
• Digital Chocolate Gets Credit Line for “General Corporate Purposes”
• Super Whales: Top Social Game Spenders Pay More than $10,000 Apiece for Virtual Goods
• Investment Opportunities in Social Apps – Not Just Publishers and Not Just in the US
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Crowdstar, Playdom, Zynga, & More

Friday, June 11th, 2010

• FIFA Superstars Leads Off This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Taking Out the Enemy in Facebook App Mercenaries of War
• No Whales Yet in Mobile – But They’re Coming
• Social Gaming Roundup: AdParlor, Payments, Ubisoft and More

Inside Facebook extends a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Facebook. Check them out below!

Offerpal Media is a managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

Zong is a provider of mobile payments serving the digital content, social media, and gaming industries.

Frima Studio develops social games for big brands.

LifeStreet Media is a performance advertising platform focused on social applications.

AdParlor helps facebook application developers grow and monetize their applications.

SoftLayer provides cloud and dedicated hosting services for social application and game developers.

mopay is a global provider of mobile payments for web content.

Super Rewards is a monetization solution for applications and games running on social networks like Facebook.

Flickr Turns On Facebook Sync - Flickr users may now sync their Facebook and Flickr accounts so every time they upload a public photo to Flickr it appears in their Facebook news stream. The integration is powered by the Yahoo! Updates platform, coming on the heels of other recent Yahoo! Facebook integrations.

Widgets, Including Facebook’s, Slow Down Web Sites – Google employee Steve Souders ran a test on his web site to compare nine common widgets, finding that Facebook came in second only to Digg in how much widgets slowed page load times. Souders wanted to see how much widgets slowed down a web site and tested: Digg, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google AdSEnse, BuySellAds, ValueClick, Quantcast, Collective Media and Glam Media. Facebook came in second to Digg, which added two-thirds a second to page load times, while Facebook Sharer added one-sixth of a second.

Facebook May be Looking at China Office - The company could be opening up a China office, despite being banned in the country, according to TechCrunch.

Foursquare Sale Rumors - Facebook, among others, is in talks with location-based gaming company Foursquare about a potential investment or partnership, Kara Swisher reported this week. TechCrunch previously reported recently that Yahoo!, Facebook and Microsoft have all been talking to FourSquare about some sort of acquisition or other possibilities.

Facebook More Popular Than Google in UK - Hitwise reported this week that social networks are more often visited in the United Kingdom than search engines, most of this is attributable to Facebook. About 55% of social network traffic goes to Facebook and 90% of search traffic goes to Google, Hitwise reported.

Bangladesh Restores Facebook - The government of Bangladesh has restored Facebook after about a week in which the social network was banned. Bangladesh followed Pakistan after Facebook was banned over the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” Page that many Muslims considered to be blasphemous. Pakistan restored Facebook on May 31 after officials said Facebook apologized and blocked the offensive content; Bangladesh restored Facebook after the offensive Page was no longer available there.

Facebook, PTA Partner for Internet Safety - This week Facebook and the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) announced a partnership to help educate children, parents and teachers about safe Internet use. Specifically the initiative is meant to address cyberbylling, but will also focus on shrinking the digital divide for children; Facebook will devote the equivalent to $1 million in resources to the effort. Previously Facebook launched the Safety Center Page to address similar issues.

Kelly Loses Attorney General Bid – Former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly lost his bid for the Democratic nomination for attorney general in California this week. Kelly announced his intention to seek the office last year; the race against San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris prompted one of the first political attack ads centered around Facebook privacy. Kelly spent more than $12 million on the campaign and distanced himself from Facebook’s recent privacy woes.

More Research: Facebook Fans are Valuable – A few different reports this week found that Facebook fans are valuable to brands, monetarily speaking. eMarketer used comScore numbers to report that Facebook users spent more money than other Internet users. Syncapse Corp., which works with other companies on their social media strategies, also released a study this week that found Facebook fans spend an average of $71.84 more than non-fans over a period of two years. Additionally: Fans are 28% likelier to keep using a brand than non-fans; 68% of fans are “very likely” to recommend a product in contrast to 28% of non-fans; 81% of fans versus 39% of non-fans feel connected to a brand; and the average value of a fan is $136.38.

Americans Aged 50-Plus Prefer Facebook – The AARP, a non-profit organization concerned with quality of life issues for people aged 50 and over, reported that its members prefer Facebook over other social networks. A survey found that about 27% of U.S. residents aged 50 and above use social networks. About 23% of these reported a preference for Facebook, while MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter came in with about 4% each.

Most U.S. Teens Give Parents Profile Access - Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions recently published results from a survey of U.S. high school students that found most allow their parents full access to their Facebook profiles. The report noted that teens seem to have an all-or-nothing approach whereby 56% gave parents full access and 34% gave none at all; only 9% provided limited access for their parents.

LiveWorld Launches Facebook Crowdsource App - Social network marketing company LiveWorld launched Facebook Idea Power 2.0 this week, a conversation application meant to allow brands to crowdsource ideas on Facebook. With the app, customers on Facebook can submit, tag and vote via text, photo, audio and video; the app is available in multiple languages.

Seven Students in Trouble Over Anti-Semitic Facebook Game - Seven high school seniors in Southern California may be barred from graduation or suspended after they played an anti-semitic Facebook game, Beat the Jew. Apparently 40 students at the school joined the Page but only the seven involved actually played it. The game involves “Jews” who are kidnapped, blindfolded and driven away from campus and have to make their way back while being pursued by “Nazis.”

‘The Facebook Effect’ in Stores - David Kirkpatrick’s insider book about Facebook, “The Facebook Effect,” hit stores this week.

Read-Only Facebook for Workplaces - Facebook has been made available in “read-only” mode by Palo Alto Networks. Changes are made within the networks of Palo Alto Networks’ customers, blocking all Facebook apps, mail, chats and posting.

Print Facebook Photos at Target, CVS - Kodak’s self-help photo kiosks at retailers like Target and DVS will soon allow you to access your Facebook photos for printing. One will be able to log into your Facebook account on the kiosks, as well as Picasa or Kodak Online Galleries, select photos, edit and make prints, photo albums or other photo products.