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Yesterday we reported that the squiggly little beast Ramnit stole 45,000 logins and passwords, but Facebook has confirmed that those came from mostly "invalid" accounts.

"Last week we received from external security researchers a set of user credentials that had been harvested by a piece of malware," a Facebook spokesperson told us. "Our security experts have reviewed the data, and while the majority of the information was out-of-date, we have initiated remedial steps for all affected users to ensure the security of their accounts."

But what exactly does "invalid" mean? According to Facebook, it might include an email not associated with a Facebook account, an invalid password or an old/expired password.

The world's largest social network was pretty lucky that Ramnit didn't hit up active accounts in Brazil, where the user base grew by nearly 300% or in Japan, which experienced 254% growth over the past year.

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.

If you want something more capable than Hootsuite to handle your social media marketing, then you might want to take a closer look at what Pardot's Marketing Automation service provides. The marketing automation platform has gotten some new social media features that complement its existing tools for handling CRM integration, email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and ROI reporting.

Facebook use is growing faster in Africa than on any other continent, and the Chinese are some of the most active social media users in the world.

The first fact comes from Socialbakers, a Facebook analytics company, which found that Africa gained more than 50% of its Facebook users in the last six months. The company also looks at other growing markets. The second comes from a Memeburn article by Thomas Crampton, which points out that although many Western social media services are blocked, the Chinese equivalents are extremely popular. And, according to Crampton, "A recent study by OgilvyOne in China found that 55 percent of China's netizens had initiated or participated in online discussions about companies."

A new infographic by Intuit looks at the cost of starting a new business in the United States as compared to other countries around the world. It notes that inflation and currency exchange rates play a large role in the costs of doing businesses in various countries.

The graphic gives information about start-up costs, time to launch, and success rates in different countries. New Zealand and Singapore are ranked numbers 1 and 2 in terms of the easy of doing business.

SCVNGR is a location-based service with apps for the iPhone and Android that wants to add a "game layer on top of the world." Starting today, the company is getting closer to this goal, as it is going international and expanding to about 80 new countries. Until today, SCVNGR was only available in the U.S.

SCVNGR is also switching away from its own proprietary location database. Thanks to its close relationship with Google (SCVNGR is, in part, funded by Google Ventures), the service is the first site to leverage the new Google Places API.

The largest ever global research project into people's online activities has released its findings. The TNS Digital Life research involved 50,000 interviews with individuals in 46 countries, covering almost 90% of the world's online population.

The study aimed to uncover how the world's online behavior may be shifting, in terms of both consumption and communication. And among the findings were that online consumers in emerging, rapid growth markets are more engaged than those in mature markets, with Egypt and China, for example, having much higher levels of digital engagement than Japan, Denmark or Finland.

Last month we began a series of posts about "new logistics" with an overview of how companies can leverage Web-based tools for international marketing. These days, with the power of the Web and related technologies, logistics encompasses so much more than just moving widgets from point to A to point B. The new logistics provides sustainability and efficiency, and international marketing is just one part of this revolution.

Over the next several weeks, we will be showcasing many of the other ways the Web is untangling logistical nightmares for companies large and small. Here's a look at what to expect as we explore the rapidly evolving global choreography of goods and information.

While the logistics of moving goods and information around the globe is rapidly changing, marketing to international audiences, for the most part, is little different from marketing domestically. Abe Burmeister, co-founder of apparel company Outlier Tailored says, "We don't really make any distinction between local and international. It's all the World Wide Web and we sell all over the world. " Starting with a comprehensive marketing plan and solid tools is the first step, but globally minded business people will want to add a few extra tools to their toolboxes. Here are a few resources to get you started.

While the iPhone is clearly the media darling of mobile devices in the US, there's no denying that Nokia's handsets have saturated the global market. As part of that global strategy, the company just announced free walk and drive navigation for 74 countries in 46 languages. Today's release of the third iteration of Ovi Maps is similar to Google's maps for Android in that the service offers free turn-by-turn voice guidance. Nevertheless, there's one important catch - maps are cached offline for future use. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Nokia's VP of product and location, Christof Hellmis, for a look at how the company is saving device owners precious battery life.