The study also found that Facebook’s visitor growth far outpaced that of MySpace, with Facebook visits up 153 per cent on an annual basis, compared to just three per cent growth for MySpace.

Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 per cent) Friendster (50 per cent), Orkut (41 per cent) and Bebo (32 per cent).

Comscore said Facebook grew 38 per cent in the US, where it had 49 million visitors in June.

The strongest growth was in Latin America, where Facebook’s visitors grew by 1055 per cent. The number of European visitors tripled to 35 million a month, while growth in the Middle East and Africa was 400 per cent. In the Asia Pacific region visitors increased 458 per cent.

“Facebook has done an exceptional job of leveraging its brand internationally during the past year,” ComScore executive Jack Flanagan said in a statement from the company.

“By increasing the site’s relevance to local markets through local language interface translation, the site is now competing strongly or even capturing the lead in several markets where it had a relatively minor presence just a year ago.”

Comscore said the dizzying increases were helped by Facebook’s tiny global presence prior to its recent initiative to translate the site into other languages.

A year ago, it had only one million unique visits a month in all of Latin America, three million in the Middle East and Africa, and four million in all of Asia Pacific.

Flanagan said international expansion was now the main target for the major social networking sites.

“While the social networking trend first took off in North America, it is beginning to reach a point of maturity in the region,” Flanagan said. “However, the phenomenon is still growing rapidly in other regions around the world – especially as the established American brands turn their focus to developing markets.”

The suit asserts that the sites are so similar that StudiVZ simply replaced Facebook’s “blue color scheme with a red one.” According to StudiVZ’s site, the Berlin-based company has 10 million users. The site was purchased last year by German publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

Facebook launched its own German language version in March. It claimed that any differences between the two sites were “nominal” and accused StudiVZ of merely “replacing Facebook’s blue colour scheme with a red one”. Facebook said it was “seeking to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity to ensure that users are not confused and that Facebook’s reputation remains unharmed”.

StudiVZ could not be reached for comment. The site, which is based in Berlin, was bought last year by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German publishing company, which also could not be reached. Facebook, which was founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, recently settled its own intellectual property dispute. It resolved a legal battle with ConnectU, a rival website launched at Harvard around the same time, whose owners claimed Mr Zuckerberg stole its idea for a site that allowed Harvard students to connect to each other online.

Data center futures architect and distinguished database developer James Hamilton, has complemented the pimply faced social network for releasing what he said “looks like a well-engineered system.”

Hamilton spent ten years at IBM working on DB2 before joining Microsoft in 1997 to work on SQL Server, and recently collaborated with fellow database guru Michael Stonebraker on an examination of future database architectures.

Stonebraker put the cat among the pigeons by slagging off Google’s MapReduce database tool earlier this year – he called it a step backwards. Stonebraker also noted there are limitations in BigTable and its open-source equivalent Hbase.

Conspiracy theorists might find it interesting that Stonebraker’s co-author David de Witt joined Microsoft in April to head up a new research effort into large databases. They should also remember Microsoft is an investor in Facebook.

Adding insult to injury, Facebook has put its project – called Cassandra – up on Google Code. Cassandra is not alone on Google code. Another BigTable clone called Hypertable was set up on Google Code earlier this year.

Like BigTable, Cassandra is designed to get round the limitations of traditional relational databases in large-scale, online applications.

Cassandra is the work of a Facebook team led by Jeff Hammerbacher, an ex-Harvard student who was recruited by Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg from troubled Wall Street bank Bear Stearns.

Hammerbacher is now reported to have become the latest Faceboook employee to have served his notice. Can we expect this Facebook youf to show up in well-remunerated style at Redmond this Fall?

And, will all this prompt Google to put BigTable – or even MapReduce – into open source? Given it decided to release its Protocol Buffers technology to open source this week – its not beyond the bounds of possibility.

There is a precedent: Facebook released Thrift, its clone of Protocol Buffers, to open source last year.

The games continue…

According to the Wall Street Journal, the shy and retiring, softly spoken Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been running around with money burning a hole in his ample pockets after his failed takeover of Yahoo.

Volish bankers have been having a chat with Facebook to see if it would open to a full buy-out.

Vole already has a $US240 million stake in Facebook, which is valued at $US15 billion.

Neither Microsoft nor Facebook have stood up the rumour and founder Mark Zuckerberg, has always resisted flogging it completely

And what’s the Facebook equivalent for businessmen? LinkedIn. Significantly less popular than Facebook (according to Alexa, it ranks 215 on the web as opposed to a rank of 7), it is oriented around expanding business contacts and building an electronic résumé. News.com first broke the story that Gates had moved to LinkedIn, saying that he would use the service to ask the site’s 19 million members “how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes.”

The social networking site was down on Thursday because of “upgrades to improve our service.” Supposedly, a “notable advertising announcement” is also on its way. Could Gates’ move have been part of an advertising deal with LinkedIn? Considering Gates is the number one searched person on the site, and since Google already has MySpace under its thumb, I would say such a move is only a matter of time.

Chairman and cofounder of the largest software company in the world, Gates is always being watched very closely by the tech industry, even more so I would say since he decided to give up his day-to-day duties at Microsoft, by July 2008. After his last CES keynote and his last day, his plans and decisions seem to be less out in the open, but this only makes them more of a big deal. As demonstrated just over a week ago, it will be a long while before we see the last of Gates, especially when it comes to Microsoft.

The “clutter” comes into the picture as more and more applications are added to profiles; this brings along more content showing up on a user’s profile page. This not only makes it difficult for users to access specific data through tedious scrolling, but also makes for slower load times.

In order to make the profiles clutter-free, the developers have decided to adopt tabs for the profile page. This means that instead of an entire profile being displayed on a single page, the profile will be seggregated into sections through tabs, allowing users to view exactly what they want. For example, Photos will be accessible through one tab, History though another, while The Wall, which is where users post open-messages to their friends on Facebook, will be accessible through a different tab.

Although this new design will enable pages to load faster, clicking on several tabs might not appeal to everyone. On another (important) note, the tabs will generate more clicks on Facebook, which, obviously, is a good thing for the owners of Facebook.

This profile redesign was announced last year, and users were invited to join Facebook’s “preview group”. The developers of the Web site say the changes that will be adopted, and that are being worked upon are based on the feedback received from this group.

Like Beacon, the new “OneConnect” program follows Web 2.0′s logic to its natural conclusion – you see what everyone else is doing, even when you don’t want to.

OneConnect is essentially a single sign-on to social networks such as Facebook and Bebo, web services like Twitter and IM services including MSN, and Yahoo!’s own chat. It then binds them to proximity information so you can see what everyone is “twittering”, and how near to you they are. It then places your twittering pals on a map, so you can see their inane gibberings on your mobile phone.

“I want to view the activity of people around me,” explained Marco Boerries, Yahoo!’s mobile chief.

That’s easy enough to do, you’re thinking – just look out of the window, Marco.

OneConnect isn’t just a “mash up” – it’s the best thing to happen to stalkers since the invention of the dirty raincoat.

The man in the 2.0 raincoat: Yahoo!’s Marco Boerries

Boerries defended the service by saying that it was “opt-in”, and that when users signed on, they were invisible by default. But that misses the point: once you open your kimono, nothing is hidden.

In doing so, Boerries admitted that there is no granularity between the “all” or “nothing” settings. Thus, OneConnect appeals to that peculiar mixture of cowardly lurker and neurotic exhibitionist who form the staple of Web 2.0′s evangelicals, the people who’ve been crying out for this kind of service, and whose prayers were answered today. For these people, there is no such thing as privacy, for everything is an opportunity to commune with the “Hive Mind”.

The rest of us might find it a step too far, however.

For example, my Yahoo! address book contains many people I’ve never met – and more with whom I’ve spoken fluent Ugandan. I don’t want either group to know where I am today, thank you.

But the possibilities are endless. I’m sure law enforcement officials would love to know the proximity and whereabouts of techies with rucksacks (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/23/terror_profile_techies/), and Microsoft the location of unauthorised copies of Windows. The BPI really would love to know what song you’re playing, and where you acquired it.

If you think all that’s a bit far-fetched, read this (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/04/location_information/).

Which brings us to the fundamental error.

Boerries thinks the service is great – “I can stay extremely connected to my friends”.

Lurker alert! Victims nearby…

But successful technology isn’t about connection. It succeeds when it allows us to put up barriers, and pick and choose how we interact with each other. That’s something conspicuously lacking in OneConnect. Even by the anti-social logic of Web 2.0, OneConnect is fundamentally anti-social.

People with a weak or fragile sense of their own identity love these web services, however – because they have nothing of interest they want to keep “private”. Unfortunately, this is the Web 2.0 crowd, and in their twilight they try so very hard to set the agenda.

Media companies without their own sense of identity listen to them. So by heeding the bleatings of this small contingent of scaredy-cat/show-off technology evangelists, Yahoo! has made the same mistake as Zuckerberg’s Facebook, which with Beacon allowed everyone to see what we were buying: an unconstrained flow of information that the public found repellant.

It’s going to be fun watching this one crash and burn.

The computer mogul forked out 120 million pounds to get a 1.6% stake in the social networking website last year.

A colleague has revealed that Gates used to spend about 30 minutes chatting with his pals daily.

However, Gates was compelled to delete his account after he started to receive over 8,000 friend requests a day, and spotted several weird fan sites about him, said the source.

“Sadly the attention does mean Bill has had to close the account which got him so hooked in the first place,” the source said.

Bureau Report

As Facebook’s 55 million users are well aware, the site doesn’t just contain the staples of social networking. The California-based site last year opened its platform to software developers that offer applications of all kinds, which users can add to their profile pages.

The result has been a land rush for virtual space. Developers hope to entice as many Facebook users as possible to add their wares, which range from trivia quizzes to maps that show where a user has travelled.

MySpace, still the most popular social network, recently announced similar plans to let in software developers. The decision is further proof that social networks firmly believe that the best way to remain fresh is to allow the entrepreneurship of the Web to piggyback on its platforms.

A great many of the applications on Facebook are simply ways to enhance your profile page or further your self-expression – a list for your favorite books, or an icon for your favorite baseball team.

But many can be the source of hours of entertainment in their own right.

Perhaps the most famous of these is Scrabulous, a miniature online version of Scrabble. Though, it’s future is in doubt because the makers and owners of the rights of Scrabble (Hasbro and Mattel) last month served a cease and desist letter to the creators of Scrabulous, two brothers in India.

However, it must be said that most of the applications are extremely lame like the quiz, which asks ‘What kind of mom will you be?’ But in many hours spent perusing the applications of Facebook, these were the most interesting:

Scramble: While Scrabulous is a version of Scrabble, Scramble is the Facebook application answer to Boggle.

GameDesire Bridge: This is a game that enables you to play bridge on Facebook. Not surprisingly, it’s not exactly hugely popular. But simply having the ability to play a card game so strongly associated with old age on such a young, hip social networking site surely is a sign that Facebook isn’t just a playground for kids anymore.

PuzzleBee: Jigsaw puzzles typically demand a lot of tabletop space. With the application PuzzleBee, though, you can solve puzzles and create them yourself without spilling little pieces of cardboard all over your living room.

Dogbook & Catbook: It’s high time that Fido and Mrs Bigglesworth got to join the social networking fun. Dogbook and Catbook allow you to make a little profile, just like yours, for your four-legged friends. But if your pets are going to be active on Facebook, you may want to have them spayed or neutered.

Attack! This is another application clearly modelled on an already popular board game; it even advertises itself as ‘like Risk for the facebook.’ Now, you can play the game of world domination from your office cubicle.