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The knee-jerk reaction to yesterday's news that the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok had used Twitter to quickly spread information about a terrorist threat appear to have been blown out of proportion.

While there is no denying that Facebook, Twitter and other social networks help spread critical information when emergencies strike, they can still be problematic and ineffective when compared to other forms of communication. Even the Bangkok terror alert was met with initial skepticism, and while the embassy has close to 40,000 Twitter followers, many of those were not in the area of the threat.

According to a new report from analytics firm Distimo, the iPhone app download volume in Asian countries, led by China, has seen significant increases over the past 6 months, even as Western markets saw decreases. And China is now the second largest market in this area, after the U.S.

However, even though the numbers of downloads are increasing in this region, the proportion of paid downloads and overall revenue is lagging behind both the U.S. and Europe. That means developers wanting to expand their businesses into Asia need to have other monetization plans in mind, such as advertising.

In the United States and Western Europe, the Internet is ubiquitous. Or, at least it seems that way. But, did you know that New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan all have higher rates of Internet penetration than the U.S.?

That is what an infographic from public relations and research company Edelman tells us about Internet usage in the Asia-Pacific region. New Zealand is the most digitally connected country in the Pacific Rim with an 85.4% Internet penetration rate. No wonder our founder, Richard MacManus, hails from there. Check out the rest of the infographic after the jump.

According to a new study by Semiocast, Asia is now the region that produces the most Twitter posts, surpassing North America, which declined 7% in the last three months. Asia rose 5.5% in the same time period, to 37%. It is also the fastest-growing region in terms of Twitter use.

The U.S. is still number one in terms of countries, with 25% of Twitter messages, down from 30% in March. But the second and third positions belong to Japan and Indonesia with 18% and 12% respectively. Indonesia knocked Brazil out of third position.

The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with The Innovators Fund, a new Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund that will launch in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Russia and Malaysia.

The Innovators Fund was announced as part of the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, an event held earlier this week in Washington D.C. The event was designed to promote entrepreneurship in Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central and Southeast Asia as a tool for economic development. It was a response in part to President Obama's June 2009 Cairo speech, where he expressed a commitment to deepen ties between the U.S. and Muslim countries.

Open Web Asia '08, the first pan-Asia web technology event bringing together executives, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from throughout Asia, will be staged on October 14, 2008 in Seoul, Korea. 

This event was organized by the OpenWeb.Asia Workgroup and prominent entrepreneurs and bloggers within Asia's web industry.