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In 2008, the same year that Facebook launched its big redesign, Researcher Nick Burcher started collating Facebook usage statistics by country. The 2011 winner for fastest growing user base is Brazil, which grew 300% over the past year. Japan is in a close second, with 254% growth over the past year. But a recent Forrester report notes that the Japanese prefer to stay anonymous online, prefer not to use Facebook because it requires users to sign up with their real names. This high rate of growth in Japan goes in direct opposition from a January 2011 NYTimes story about the country's complete lack of interest in Facebook.

Suspects arrested in blogger assassination. Five suspects were arrested in the politically-motivated killing of Brazilian blogger Ednaldo Figueira. Federal and civil police from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte made the arrests in a joint operation on July 2 and 3.

In June, Figuiera became the first blogger to be assassinated. Figueira, who was also a newspaper editor and the president of the local branch of the Workers Party, used his blog to discuss drug-related corruption in his home state of Rio Grande do Norte.

While cloud computing gains steadily in the U.S., U.K. and Germany (and rather slowly in Canada), it's taking off in emerging markets like Brazil, China and India. According to a study by GfK Custom Research, and covered by FineChannel,
cloud computing enjoys relatively high penetration rate in emerging markets, regardless of company size.

According to GfK, decision makers in Brazil, China and India have a much more positive view of cloud computing and cite cost-effectiveness, flexibility and security as the main benefits. In contrast, decision makers in the U.S. and the U.K. see security as a barrier rather than a strength, and view flexibility as the main advantage.

Five suspects have been arrested in the politically-motivated killing of Brazilian blogger, Ednaldo Figuiera.

In June, Figuiera became the first blogger to be assassinated. Figuiera, who was also a newspaper editor and the president of the local branch of the Workers Party, used his blog to discuss drug-related corruption in his home state of Rio Grande do Norte.

Brazilian blogger murdered. 36-year-old Brazilian blogger Ednaldo Figueira was shot down in the streets of his home town, Serra do Mel.

After receiving death threats, Figueira was shot six times on June 15 by gunmen on motorcycles outside his workplace. In addition to being a blogger, he was a newspaper editor and an official in a trade union. This is the second time a blogger has been murdered by his government or, in Figueira's case most likely organized crime figures attached to the government.

You're probably familiar with the practice of developing countries seeking to leapfrog over the world's leading economies in their own development. They aim to capture (or surpass) the growth and comforts of the previously-developed world while avoiding mistakes and externalities like polution and inefficiency. What if the future of the web unfolded that way, too?

That's where Brazilian mobile services company Movile finds itself: with a thriving business of mobile users throughout Latin America, who are heavily engaged in purchasing SMS services and virtual goods, but with the knowledge that there's far more to be done than sell those existing products. Movile has a corporate vision of leapfrogging over the App Store 1.0 experience so dominated by Apple among smart phone owners in the United States. How does the company aim to build the app store of the future? By combining cross-platform mobile HTML5 with ecommerce and now social APIs.

Google's social network Orkut never quite caught on in most countries, but it remains the most popular social network in Brazil. According to new data from comScore, Orkut remains safely ahead of Facebook there, with 36 million unique visitors last month. Facebook is only the third most popular social networking site in Brazil, but it is growing rapidly, and the site now attracts about 9 million visitors per month - up from just about 1.5 million a year ago. The second largest social networking site in Brazil is Windows Live, which reaches about 12.5 million visitors.

I said last week that "When the level of evil plummets...I wonder, for instance, if Tinhorns the world over aren't taking the week off to apply neat's foot oil to their collection of rubber hoses." I had no idea how right I'd be.

Cuba arrests blogger Diana Virgen García. Garcia, who covers issues of free speech in Cuba, and supports the Ladies in White movement, was arrested on April 22. The next day she was "sentenced" to a year and eight months in prison for unannounced "charges."

Brazil is objecting to the picture drawn of it from the data on Google's Government Request tool, which shows requests filed with Google by each country. Brazil made the most data requests of any country, 3,663, and the requested the most removals, 291.

The Associated Press reported that Priscila Schreiner, a federal prosecutor focusing on child pornography and racist crimes claimed the requests were all devoted to those subjects. But that does not seem to be so.

While Twitter's growth has slowed down in recent months, new data shows that the popular microblogging service has found a lot of new users outside of the United States. According to new data from social media analytics and monitoring firm Sysomos, the U.S. now accounts for about 50% of all active Twitter users. This is down sharply from 62% in June 2009. The share of Twitter users from Brazil, Indonesia and Germany, however, has grown significantly over the last six months.