January 25th | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, our second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is happening January 25th in San Francisco.

Often, the best way to understand an industry and its influencers is in an informal setting. We invite you to kick back and get to know the industry’s most influential developers at the Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 afterparty. The Inside Social Apps afterparty will feature a limited-time open bar, appetizers, and great networking! It will take place in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, and is only open to registered attendees.

Inside Social Apps is just weeks away — last year’s event was sold out, so we encourage you to register now.

Who’s Speaking?

At Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, executives and experts from Facebook, Google, leading social networks, mobile platforms, social game and app developers, media companies, virtual goods and payment services, and investors will be discussing the future of social platforms and virtual goods monetization in social games and apps.

We’re honored to present the following confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011:

	Bret Taylor CTO, Facebook		Eric Chu Group Manager, Android Platform, Google
	Kristian Segarstrale Co-founder and CEO, Playfish (now part of EA)		Vish Makhijani SVP Business Operations, Zynga
	Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam		Peter Relan Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom (now part of Disney), and Investor		Jason Oberfest VP Social Apps, ngmoco:) (now part of DeNA)
	Rex Ng Co-Founder and CEO, 6waves		Deborah Liu Commerce Product Marketing, Facebook
	Sean Ryan EVP and GM Games, News Corp		Bill Gossman CEO, hi5
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Paul Bettner GM, Zynga with Friends
	Jens Begemann Co-founder and CEO, Wooga		Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies
	Carey Kolaja Senior Director, Digital Goods Operations, PayPal		Raph Koster VP Creative Design, Playdom (now part of Disney)
	Atul Bagga VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity		Manu Rekhi GM Games and Platform, MySpace
	Matthaeus Krzykowski Founder, Xyologic		Asokan Thiyagarajan Dir. Platforms & Tech. Strategy, Samsung
	Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network		Eric Eldon Editor, Inside Network

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Social applications first emerged in 2007, and are today maturing into a global media ecosystem. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, followed by platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible.

Now, three and a half years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry, punctuated by numerous major acquisitions by the world’s leading media companies and developers. But now, new challenges are emerging, affecting big players and new entrants alike.

Inside Social Apps will investigate the latest trends and challenges for social applications, and look at what’s to come for developers throughout the space – including the growth of virtual goods and social applications on mobile devices.

What are the biggest uncertainties and opportunities facing the future of social games and applications in 2011, and who is leading the way?

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 takes place January 25th, 2011 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and brings together the world’s leading entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social app and game monetization.

Inside Social Apps will be a one-day summit led by Inside Network’s Eric Eldon and Justin Smith, and will take in-depth investigative approach to the day’s discussions. At Inside Social Apps, Inside Network will work alongside founders and executives of the top social networking, social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies to analyze the most important issues affecting the industry. Inside Social Apps is geared towards developers on Facebook, iPhone, Android, and emerging online social platforms.

Inside Social Apps will be a content-rich day of critical discussion, followed by an evening and nighttime of casual networking.

Register Now

A limited set of “Early Admission” tickets is available through Friday at a special price of $299. This price will change after Friday, and space will be very limited, so we encourage you to register early.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco at Inside Social Apps!

Although CityVille is once again the leader of our weekly AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by daily active users, there are two other apps with gains of over a million DAU: Yahoo, which tracks how many people log into Yahoo with their Facebook credentials, and Merry Christmas to All My Friends, a season’s greetings app.

Here’s the full list:

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	CityVille	15,667,523	+4,111,826	+36%
2.	Yahoo!	4,706,844	+2,404,126	+104%
3.	Merry Christmas To All My Friends :)	1,535,619	+1,474,844	+2,427%
4.	Zuma Blitz	1,244,959	+475,276	+62%
5.	Badoo	1,392,973	+457,339	+49%
6.	Frases Diarias	1,807,964	+406,796	+29%
7.	Windows Live Messenger	11,187,706	+377,915	+3%
8.	Monster Galaxy	477,666	+289,754	+154%
9.	Treasure Isle	3,158,593	+203,639	+7%
10.	Zoo World	875,255	+194,552	+29%
11.	Pet Society	2,316,823	+173,711	+8%
12.	Tarjetitas	352,259	+170,033	+93%
13.	Ninja Saga	1,134,280	+163,586	+17%
14.	♥ MerRy ChristmaS ♥ LoVe To YoU ♥	214,524	+154,934	+260%
15.	Causes	1,501,693	+152,319	+11%
16.	Traveler IQ Challenge	153,909	+148,593	+2,795%
17.	HTC Sense	3,509,666	+145,906	+4%
18.	開心農場	1,329,727	+136,915	+11%
19.	Horoscopes	3,160,603	+136,354	+5%
20.	xo Hearts xo	184,405	+133,003	+259%

We wrote about CityVille’s meteoric rise on Monday, and since then the new Zynga game has showed no signs of slowing down. On average, it’s adding around half a million DAU per day.

It’s actually a bit surprising that Merry Christmas to All My Friends is the only app gaining millions of users on the list, considering that Facebook’s Christmas-celebrating population is now in the hundreds of millions; a bit further down, MerRy ChristmaS is doing decently well at number 15. As always, these apps are extremely simple, and likely to only last a week or two.

The remaining apps are those that have been doing well for weeks on end: Badoo, Frases Diarias, Windows Live Messenger and Tarjetitas did best.

A somewhat eclectic list of companies made our Top 20 List of Growing Facebook Pages this week, in which we count the number of Likes added to each page using our PageData tool. Several movie and media Pages, along with musicians, sports and various tech companies made the cut. Pages needed between 398,900 and 955,200 new Likes to make our list this week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Shrek	4,541,026	+955,185	+26.64
2.	Harry Potter	12,816,185	+785,459	+6.53
3.	Rihanna	19,147,197	+653,993	+3.54
4.	Texas Hold’em Poker	30,229,024	+604,311	+2.04
5.	Facebook	30,372,142	+565,431	+1.90
6.	Toy Story	11,493,904	+540,165	+4.93
7.	Eminem	23,942,185	+531,037	+2.27
8.	Google Chrome	4,921,102	+525,696	+11.96
9.	Avatar – Le Film	559,467	+517,408	+1,230.20
10.	The Simpsons	16,839,901	+506,166	+3.10
11.	Shakira	16,688,564	+501,782	+3.10
12.	Sprite	1,862,695	+455,014	+32.32
13.	MTV	12,496,328	+440,997	+3.66
14.	Black Eyed Peas	7,847,364	+440,757	+5.95
15.	Official Blink-182	2,772,616	+440,648	+18.90
16.	Disney	15,132,431	+437,798	+2.98
17.	YouTube	24,913,379	+424,576	+1.73
18.	Manchester United	6,105,195	+414,181	+7.28
19.	Cristiano Ronaldo	16,458,381	+402,604	+2.51
20.	Linkin Park	19,113,386	+398,913	+2.13

Movies and media were a big chunk of the list this week.

The “Shrek” Page made first place after adding 955,200 Likes to its 4.5 million, mostly by promoting special merchandise packages as holiday gifts. The “Harry Potter” Page came in second by adding 785,400 new Likes, mostly by posting movie-related news and coming out with 12.8 million total. “Toy Story” was sixth with 540,200 new Likes after promoting merchandise packages, ending the week with 11.4 million Likes.

The French “Avatar” Page added 517,400 Likes to take ninth place by promoting a collector’s edition of the movie; the Page ended with just over 1.2 million Likes. In tenth place was “The Simpsons” TV shows, which added 506,200 Likes to reach about 16.8 million; the show’s been promoting its programming on Facebook. The MTV Page came in at number 13 with 441,000 new Likes to come in at just about 12.5 million by providing programming-related news in its feed.

Finally, there was Disney with 437,800 new Likes, passing 15.1 million fans, by promoting its latest movie, “Tron: Legacy.”

Musicians also did well on the list this week.

Rihanna came in third with 654,000 new Likes, 19.1 million total, and promoting her new album by making a promotional tab the landing Page. Eminem added 531,000 new Likes to come in just under 24 million by not updating his Page at all. Shakira’s 501,800 new Likes added to her 16.6 million as she continues a world tour.

The Black Eyed Peas were at number 14 with 440,800 new Likes, 7.8 million total, a Wall filled with band news and a landing Page promoting the band’s presence on MySpace. Next at number 15 was Blink 182, which added 440,600 new Likes to its 2.7 million; the band is promoting its tour with a promotional tab set as the landing page. Finally, Linkin Park was number 20 with 398,900 new Likes, pushing the group over 19 million, and an interesting promotion. The band created a temporary app on Facebook allowing fans to print a coupon and receive $5 off their latest album when purchased at Best Buy.

Tech companies made the list this week, too, as per usual.

Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker came in fourth after adding 604,300 new Likes to surpass 30 million total fans. Facebook followed in fifth place with 565,400 new Likes to pass 30 million, also. Google Chrome’s Page was eighth and added 525,700 Likes to come in just under 5 million, partly by promoting Google Chrome apps and a charity campaign based on the number of tabs Chrome users opened during a certain time span. Finally, another Google property, YouTube, was at number 17. The Page added 424,600 Likes, falling just short of 25 million total, with a top videos landing tab.

Sprite made the Page this week after adding 455,000 Likes, passing 1.8 million and standing out in twelfth place as the only beverage on the list.

Sports also appeared briefly on the list. Manchester United’s Page was number 18 with 414,200 new Likes to pass 6.1 million by promoting the team’s recent news. Portuguese football (soccer) star Cristiano Ronaldo also made the list after adding 402,600 new Likes to his Page by promoting his team’s recent wins to finish with 16.4 million total.

Facebook is rolling out a new way to filter the news feed. Users with access to the redesigned feature see a drop-down arrow beside their Most Recent news feed tab on the home page, revealing filters for status updates, Photos, Links, Pages, Games and friend lists. Facebook has implemented different designs of news feed filters over the years to help users view updates of specific content types or from certain subsets of their friends. As users add more friends and Likes, a filtering mechanism is key to keeping the feed relevant.

Use Cases for Filters

The first listed filter is for games, replicating a similar functionality found in the Games Dashboard but in a more accessible spot. Facebook offered application filters in 2008 as a way to help gamers sort important game content out from personal updates, but later removed them. There’s no way to explicitly filter games out of the news feed for gamers, though Facebook has made it so the only game stories non-gamers see are for when their friends discover and install new games.

The status updates filter creates an easy-to-consume, imageless stream more akin to Twitter. Without variations in formatting, the filter offers a less eye-straining read. Conversely, the Photos filter is visually stimulating, and is enjoyable to browse while otherwise occupied, such as during lunch.

The Links filter gives users previews of articles they can read off-site, as well as videos that can be viewed in-line. The filter recreates much of the value offered by custom social news site PostPost, which assembles a Huffington Post-style feed from the links posted to Facebook by a user’s friends.

The Pages filter helps user separate personal posts of friends from broadcasted posts by official entities on Facebook. As more news sites like CNN and The Daily Beast use Facebook to distribute newly published articles, the Pages feed could serve as new form of RSS reader, but which includes the opportunity of discussion and quick sharing.

The 5% of users who create friend lists should be happy to see they weren’t deprecated in this update. By creating a list of a their closest friends and filtering by it, users are free to form friendships with weak ties or professional associates without diluting their feed. Since Page updates are included in the status updates filter, the only way to create a “friends-only” feed is to add all of them to a friend list.

Previously, users could choose friend lists to filter the news feed by clicking the Friends navigation link in the left home page sidebar. Since friends lists have been removed from this panel for everyone, those awaiting the roll out currently have no way to filter by friend lists.

By placing the filters in the same place as the tabs for switching between a real-time stream and Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm-sorted Top News, users will filter their feeds more often. These more prominent options can make consuming the feed less exhausting, and lead to greater engagement, more Likes and Comments, and more time spent on Facebook.

Facebook just launched a new Instant Personalization integration with travel planning site TripAdvisor. When users who are signed into Facebook visit the site, they’ll see a map of cities their friends have visited, a list of which cities have been visited by the most friends, and recent reviews and site activity by friends. Instant Personalization will automatically provide social recommendations, make it easy for users to make informed travel decisions with TripAdvisor.

People are accustomed to asking friends for travel suggestions and advice, making TripAdvisor a wise choice for the expansion of the Instant Personalization program. Without it, TripAdvisor can overwhelm users with its enormous database of travel reviews, and doesn’t provide a good entry point to exploring the site for those without a specific destination in mind. Since a person’s accommodation and travel activity preferences are often similar to their peers, reviews and destinations of friends are likely to be much more relevant than those of strangers.

The site culls data from TripAdvisor’s popular Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app to populate the visited cities map and “Your friends’ most popular destinations” list. The app became popular in the early days of Facebook applications, with users proudly displaying their map of previous travel destinations on the now deprecated profile box. Cities I’ve Visited already had over 1.8 million MAU by September of 2008, according to AppData.

By default, the map shows destinations from all of a user’s friends, but the travel histories of individual friends can be viewed by clicking on the photos to the right. In addition to the home page integrations, when users click through search results for cities, hotels, and more they’ll see which of their friends have visited that city.

Facebook launched the Instant Personalization program at this year’s f8 conference, and has since been striving to educate users on how the program only uses publicly available information, albeit without a user’s prior consent. After pausing the roll out of the program for a few months, Facebook began adding more sites, with Microsoft search engine Bing and web TV recommendations site Clicker being the latest to receive the integration. Facebook maintains that it will only provide Instant Personalization on trusted, high-quality, inherently social sites.

With the program now covering travel, food, TV, movies, music, reading, search, and collaboration, additional areas it could expand to include fashion or exercise, with fbFund winners Weardrobe and FriendFit as good candidates.

French interactive music app developer MXP4 has released a new application called Pump It. Similar to Guitar Hero, users move their mouse to the beat of the music to earn points. Scores can posted to the news feed and users can invite friends to compete with. Branded versions of Pump It will appear on the Pages of several of the most popular musicians on Facebook over the coming weeks.

The game is twitchy and fun, but sustained usage will be limited by a lack feedback mechanisms and social features. However, it could become an engaging way to launch new singles, and labels could promote their entire roster through mixes which feature multiple artists.

MXP4 released several Facebook Page tab applications earlier this year to help musicians share music with their fans and grow their Pages. The apps, including Mix It, which lets users turn on and off different instrumental tracks of a song, or Sing It, a karaoke app, require users to Like the musician’s Page before they can play. Despite having no scoring or competitive elements, these apps have gained traction. MXP4′s app for DJ David Guetta, one of the top 20 musicians on Facebook according to PageData and an early adopter of Page tab app marketing campaigns, gained over 300,000 users this month.

Still, MXP4 sees potential in making full-fledged games. Users are directed to a branded Pump It standalone application from a tab on a musician’s Page. Once installed, they see a quick tutorial on how to maneuver their mouse to anticipate the music, select a difficulty level, and begin playing a song. Instead of having to click buttons or strum as with Guitar Hero, users merely hover their mouse over the quadrant of the game area which displays colored pulses representing the song’s rhythm.

Users don’t need the help of friends to succeed in the game, so it’s not inhererently social. However, they can still post their scores to Facebook and Twitter, invite friends, and see how their scores compare to those of friends or the entire user base. Users with the top scores for a song appear on a leaderboard, which will encourage some to play until they get this recognition. Most users will just play each track once, though, so the success of the apps will depend on artists adding new songs.

Pump It offers much more intimate engagement with a song than traditional streaming or downloading. Users have grown accustomed to listening to music while multi-tasking elsewhere on the internet, so other promotions which aren’t interactive don’t always make a strong enough impression for users to want to buy a song or hear it again.

For this reason, Pump It could become a high conversion rate method for musicians to debut new singles online. The app could also be a good way to foster interest across a record label’s roster or catalog. London label Ministry of Sound’s Pump It app includes multi-song mixes of 80′s artists including Duran Duran, Billy Idol, and Human League who appear on their annual compilation albums.

Paul Adams, the Google user experience researcher who critiqued Facebook in a lengthy report over the summer, is leaving the search giant to join them. His report is said to have accelerated the Groups product, which launched earlier this fall after Facebook went into “Lockdown” to finish it.

Earlier today, he tweeted, “After ~4 years in the awesome Google UX team it’s time for a change + I’m excited to be joining Facebook in the New Year.”

The move is a blow for Google as it undertakes a radical effort to counter Facebook’s growing influence across the web. In addition to a big social project led by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, the team the company acquired from Slide is also beginning to work on its own creation.

Adams published a widely read report on the social network’s weaknesses five months ago, arguing that it didn’t do enough to help people manage the distinct social groups in their lives.

He found that people typically have between four and six friend groups and only between two and six “close” friends, he said. College friends don’t necessarily mix with work friends, who don’t necessarily mix with a person’s family.

“People have multiple facets of identity,” Adams wrote.“There is not one profile that fits for all the people in their life. People appear differently to different audiences. They act one way with their family, they act another way in work, and they act another way with their best friends.”

After Adams’ work became public, Facebook later went on “Lockdown” over the summer and used that time to finish the Groups product, which had already been in the works.

On the day Groups launched, Soleio Cuervo, a designer there, tweeted in response to Adams’ report, “Google researcher said we had a problem: http://sole.io/fbg Not anymore: http://facebook.com/groups This was how I spent Summer 2010.”

And now, they won’t be rivals anymore.

The Real Life Social Network v2

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is not shy about his interest in China, despite the site being blocked in the country. Beyond studying Mandarin, and visiting during the holidays this year, he’s said specifically that he wants to find a way for Facebook to enter the world’s largest internet market.

So when photos leaked of him visiting Baidu offices, the first thing one might think is that Facebook is readying a push into China.

Any sort of entrance would mean some form of compromise with the Chinese government, as we’ve noted in past years, likely involving giving the government access to Facebook in order to censor whatever it considers undesirable user-generated content. While that move is sure to make Facebook another target for human rights organizations, the motive would be what Google’s was before it withdrew. Despite censorship, the line of thought goes, the existence of a service that helps people share and discover information would promote freedom of thought.

“On the philosophical question of openness, my view is that every country is pretty different. We’d want to be pretty culturally sensitive,” he said in October. “I don’t want Facebook to be an American company. I don’t want it to be a company that spreads American values across the world.”

It’s also possible that Zuckerberg was just visiting Baidu to say hi to chief executive Rob Li, who he has met before. Certainly, some of the new speculation — like the idea of Baidu buying Facebook — is nothing but hilarious.

But here’s something else. Take a look at Facebook’s integration in one of the other markets that it has been trying hard to crack: Russia. This fall, it announced that leading Russian search engine Yandex would be integrating status updates from Pages in its search results, and offering a Facebook widget in its core interface.

If Facebook were to launch in China, perhaps it would try to cut a similar deal with Baidu? That move could help the site gain traction in the country, despite the numerous established local competitors.

[Image via Shanghaiist.]

The recently released version 3.3.3 of the Facebook for iPhone mobile app has been released. It includes an updated notifications interface, the restored ability to post as Page you admin, and various performance, reliability, and memory improvements. However, this release freezes more than previous updates, frustrating users by requiring them to restart their iPhone or re-download the app.

Facebook for iPhone 3.3.1 introduced significant new functionalities, including Groups, Deals, and advanced Places features, while 3.3.2 added quick links to a user’s account and privacy settings as well as the ability to add photos to a specific album. The Facebook for iPhone app has always been the most advanced to way interact with Facebook from a mobile device, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was looking to make the Android app just as powerful. Two December updates to the Facebook for Android app, which introduced Places, Groups, Chat, and push notifications have left the app for Google’s mobile OS only a small step behind the iPhone.

Users who download the update will notice a new look to notifications. Each notification includes a photo of the friend who generated the notification, and users can click anywhere on a notification’s pane to be brought to that activity. Facebook has removed the separate links which allowed users to navigate directly to the profile of a friend who generated the notification.

The ability to publish as a Page a user is an admin of has been restored after being eliminated in a previous update. This functionality is important because it let admins make timely updates from their iPhone to the feeds of those who Like their Page, such as about the team a Page represents winning a sporting match, or about the weather at an outdoor venue. Oddly different than on the web version of Facebook, though, admins must have Liked their own Page in order to publish to it.

The iPhone app has been updated to hide the wall post composer from walls a user isn’t allowed to post to, such as that of a friend who’s privacy settings prevent anyone from posting to their wall. Photo uploading to Groups has also been fixed. Places has received various back-end improvements which should speed up the location service for some users. Other performance improvements include enhanced reliability in Messages and Chat, better memory usage, and the fix of numerous crashes.

There are still some issues with the latest version of Facebook for iPhone even while using the latest software and hardware, evident from more negative reviews in the App Store than usual. If users click the “Account” button then immediately click another icon, the screen will dim and freeze, forcing them to turn their phone off and on or re-download the app from the App Store in order to resume normal usage.

When users click through notifications for Likes or comments on one of their photos, they won’t see that feedback until they drag the post down to refresh. This leads users to think the notifications were a mistake. Photos should automatically reload when accessed via notifications to alleviate this problem.

Facebook’s policy of pushing updates often can occasionally lead to problems in its mobile apps, especially for users who haven’t installed the latest software updates for their device. By adding a prompt to install these OS updates on the app’s download page, some issues which hurt confuse users and degrade their perception of Facebook could be prevented.

One of Facebook’s most surprising victories to date, offering proof of its viability worldwide, has been its spread eastward through Europe.

The expansion began in the west, spreading through the United Kingdom to France, Italy, even the Czech Republic. Many of these markets had their own social networks which, like MySpace in the United States, seemed viable up until months before being passed by Facebook.

After becoming the largest network by market share in any given country, Facebook tends to marginalize its competitors — intentionally or not, its model favors dominance over coexistence. As Facebook became the top network in country after country in Europe, it began to look as if it might do the same worldwide.

However, that has not yet happened. A small but extremely significant group of countries could present challenges that Facebook won’t be able to overcome.

Defining those challenges presents a moving target for forecasters. Germany appeared to be a holdout for over a year, but is today becoming a strong market for Facebook, and the resistance against Facebook has moved further eastward.

In October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg named Russia one of four tough countries to penetrate in the coming year (the others were China, Japan and South Korea). But although partially located in Europe, Russia may present unique cultural and geographic barriers, even as central European countries like Poland appear to be joining the exodus to Facebook.

Russia

Unlike either Germany or Poland, Russia is still holding out against Facebook. Despite high growth in percentage terms, Russia is still a tiny market for Facebook, with only 1.5 percent penetration by the social network.

Facebook’s two million users look insignificant against Alexa estimates of the size of Russia’s two biggest social networks, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. While Alexa can sometimes be very wrong, its numbers offer the best guideline, in this case, as both networks significantly exaggerate their respective sizes.

Russia is a mix of the German and Polish pros and cons for Facebook: it has its set of competitive social networks, that may help Facebook break in, but a less metropolitan populace than Germany. But it also has its own unique characteristics. Here are a few that could affect Facebook’s Russian growth:

• National pride and desire to use local services
• Higher levels of geographic and cultural isolation than the rest of Europe
• Availability of pirated and/or illegal media on Russian social networks
• Forewarning — especially given the involvement of investment firm DST

Taking these concerns in order, national pride and geographic isolation alone are not enough to block Facebook’s growth. Like privacy concerns in the United States or, for that matter, Germany, cultural factors are enough to slow, but not stop, the intrusion of an outside social network.

Pirated material is a more serious competitive advantage for Russia’s social networks. As Americans should well remember — the days of easily-accessible pirated material being in the very recent past — free access to media and entertainment will draw legions of users. Vkontakte, at least, is well known as a haven for such material.

There is some hope for Facebook here. Russian networks including both Vkontakte and Mail.ru have come under increased international scrutiny and pressure from copyright holders recently, a fact that could threaten their plans to list on public stock exchanges.

Alexey Kostarev, a general producer at Russian game social game publisher i-Jet Media, told us in an interview that he expects rampant copyright violations on Russian social networks to mostly disappear in 2011.

That may leave forewarning and the innovation of Russian entrepreneurs as the only permanent barrier to Facebook. We can’t predict whether these companies will make the right moves in 2011 to hold their market, but both Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru have a significant ally: DST, the savvy international investment firm that owns both.

DST is also one of the biggest shareholders in Facebook, which would seem to justify the firm letting events run their natural course. However, DST will only gain slightly if Facebook wins in Russia.

As majority owner of Odnoklassniki, DST would benefit far more if that company were to take the Russian market. Thus, we find it likely that DST will bring its expertise — and, as a shareholder, insight into Facebook’s operating principles — to bear in helping Odnoklassniki do what western European social networks could not.

DST’s own view is unclear. CEO Yuri Milner has opined that US internet companies may soon dominate globally “to an extent never seen before”, a statement that acknowledges Facebook’s successes elsewhere. However, DST only took full ownership of Odnoklassniki in August of 2010 — the same month that it exited Poland’s Nasza Klasa.

With its experience across a range of social networks, DST is worth watching as both a friend and potentially foe of Facebook.

In the end analysis, no one of these factors is enough to draw a clear picture of whether Facebook can succeed in Russia, so we’ll have to wait until 2011 to see whether Facebook’s growth in the country continues at its current pace.

This article is an excerpt from the full December 2010 Monthly Growth Report, available only through Inside Facebook Gold. Inside Facebook Gold also includes analyst-focused data downloads covering Facebook’s traffic and demographic growth around the world. Learn more at Inside Facebook Gold.