Here’s a piece I pulled together with the help of Reuters reporters Andjarsari Paramaditha, Camilo Mejia and Estelle Griepink in JAKARTA, Harichandan Arakali in BANGALORE, Lee Chyen Yee in HONG KONG, Kazunori Takada in SHANGHAI and Harry Suhartono in SINGAPORE.
Facebook aims to connect all two billion Internet users. So far it has captured 845 million of them. Of the rest, nearly 60 percent live in Asia and hooking them is going to be a daunting challenge.
A block on access in China, court cases in India and rivalry from other services elsewhere in the region stand between Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and more than 700 million users.
"The size of our user base and our users’ level of engagement are critical to our success," Facebook said in its SEC filing for an initial public offering. Quoting industry data that there were two billion Internet users globally, it said: "We aim to connect all of them."
Growth is held back in the rest of the world, either because of limited Internet penetration, or because those who want a Facebook account already have one.
Full text here.