Today, many months later, Spotify has finally made it official.

“Exciting times! Today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re bringing a new world of music to eight new markets across the globe,” says Spotify.

Four of the eight new countries come from these regions: Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. The other four are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland.

With the addition of these eight countries, Spotify is now available in 28 markets.

In March, we learned that Spotify had tacked on a million paid users in just three months. That brings the total to 6 million paid subscribers worldwide, out of 24 million total users. It took Spotify nearly a year to go from 3 million to 5 million piad subscribers, but just three months to go from 5 to 6. That’s the goal with these big expansions – to bring those paid subscribers even higher, even faster.

Spotify just launched its first ever ad campaign and updated their logo, too.

The Asia Pacific Gateway project, which was finalized in December fo 2011, is working to build a massive underwater cable network stretching from Malaysia to South Korea and Japan. Along the way, the network will also flow to other “landing stations” in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Singapore.

“The APG cable system is designed with the latest 40 Gbps wavelength technology and is designed to accommodate 100 Gbps wavelength technology for increasing efficiency and high-capacity. The total design capacity is up to 54.8Tbps,” according to a release from the APG Cable Consortium.

According to the BBC, Facebook won’t say exactly how much money they’re pumping into the initiative, but we do know that all of the investments from multiple sources total around $450 million.

“Our investment in this cable will help support our growth in South Asia, making it possible for us to provide a better user experience for a greater number of Facebook users in countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore,” said a Facebook spokesman.

The project, which was initiated back in 2009, took a couple of years to get off the ground. When it was finally signed and begun in 2011, 14 total members had given the backing.

The project is supposedly set to complete by summer, 2014.

What’s Facebook’s interest here? Well, apart from spreading internet across the region for the good of mankind, Facebook is most likely looking to penetrate the Asian market much more successfully in the upcoming years. After engagement notoriously lagged in regions like Japan for years, recent data has suggested that Facebook could be taking off (albeit slowly) in the region.

Google has been providing the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship since 2004. It helps to provide academic funding to young women who want to get into computer science or related technology fields. If you don’t know who Anita Borg is, she was an instrumental figure in destroying the stereotype that only men work in technology fields and started Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

Needless to say, this is an important scholarship that helps many girls realize their dreams of working in technology. It’s a tough field to break into and everybody, regardless of gender, needs all the help they can get. That’s why Google is bringing the scholarship to Asia, to help the many girls in those countries get the kind of education they need to proceed in their professional lives.

The scholarship is available to current female students who are enrolled full-time in an undergraduate or postgraduate study at universities in the following countries: Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. Recipients will receive an amount equal to $3,500 that will go towards their continued education. You can apply right now, but just know that the deadline is June 3.

It’s also worth mentioning that the scholarship is currently available in a number of other countries and continents as well. These locations include Africa, Australia, Canada, China Mainland, Taiwan, India, Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand and the United States. The application deadline for each of these locations varies by the region.

This won’t be entirely eBay’s show; the effort will come in the form of a fresh joint venture in which eBay will have a 49 percent stake.  Young Bae Ku, the founder of Gmarket, will then control the other 51 percent.

Still, eBay feels the arrangement is more than satisfactory.  Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces, said in a statement that it should "enhance our long-term position and growth in the region."

Norrington also argued, "This joint venture is a sign of our continued commitment to help grow and lead ecommerce across Asia by offering more opportunities for sellers and extraordinary buying experiences for consumers."

(Another big sign came two months ago when PayPal decided to add 1,000 jobs in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, if anyone’s interested in keeping score.)

Anyway, it remains unknown when eBay will start benefiting from the new joint venture, as no target dates related to its launch have been shared.

Asia will account for 43 percent of the world’s online population by 2013, with 17 percent residing in China.

Growth rates in the U.S., Western Europe, and nations in Asia Pacific such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea will slow to between 1 percent and 3 percent.

Zia Daniell Wigder

Online reach in the U.S. is set to increase from 73 percent to 82 percent over the next five years, representing a 3 percent annual growth rate. By 2013, U.S. online penetration will be par with the most highly penetrated markets of Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, the U.K., Japan, and South Korea.

Europe’s Internet growth will be driven by the continent’s emerging markets. Internet usage in Russia and Turkey will grow by almost 8 percent annually, while growth in Spain’s online population will increase by an average of more than 5 percent each year.

China’s online population, currently the largest in the world, will increase by nearly 11 percent each year until 2013. Asian countries with significant online growth rates include India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

Brazil currently has the fourth largest numbers of Internet users in the world, but despite a 7 percent annual growth rate over the next five years, it will drop to fifth in 2010 when it is surpassed by India.

Countries in the Middle East and Africa account for 8 percent of the global online population and over the next five years will see some of the highest growth rates of around 13 percent. Egypt, Iran, and Nigeria are among the countries with the highest growth rates in the region.

"While per capita online spending is likely to remain highest in North America, Western Europe, and the developed markets of Asia throughout the next five years, the shifting online population and growing spending power among Asian consumers means that Asian markets will represent a far greater percentage of the total in 2013 than they do today," said Forrester Research Senior Analyst Zia Daniell Wigder.

"Multinational organizations must understand the dynamics of the shifting global online population to ensure that they are positioned to take advantage of emerging international opportunities."

Countries With The Most Internet Users: 2008

1. US

2. China

3. Japan

4. Brazil

5. Germany

Countries With The Most Internet Users: 2013

1. China

2. US

3. India

4. Japan

5. Brazil

So what exactly does being a "blog specialty" company entail? "For those who are not familiar with us, think of TNC as Korea’s Automattic – a company that develops a cool blogging platform that’s favorited [sic] by the nation’s A-list bloggers, and also works closely with the open source community," writes TNC CEO Chang-Won Kim on his blog.

As I have talked about a number of times lately, blogging platforms are getting more social, integrating social networks more than ever before. Movable Type, WordPress, and even Google’s own Blogger have all been in the news recently for subjects related to this. Kim says that TNC has been integrating social networks into its platform earlier than everyone else with its TextCube service. Perhaps Google sees some innovation potential with the company and wants them aboard.

Some think that the acquisition might hide an ulterior motive. "Google hasn’t been too keen on acquiring companies in Asia so far, and this is their first acquisition of a Korean company; it is almost certainly a strategic move, because I somehow doubt that Google – who owns Blogger – is in need of a blogging platform from a purely technological point of view," says Stan Schroeder at Mashable.

Even Kim notes the significance of the acquisition to Google from a geographical standpoint:

Speaking of Google in Asia, one piece of fact that my American friends have really hard time perceiving is that Google is an underdog in this part of the globe. Korea is the world’s sixth largest market in terms of internet users, and yet Google has a market share that can only be described as "minor" in Korea.

Sometimes it seems to us here in America that Google is dominating the world, but there is still plenty left that the company has yet to conquer. Is this just the beginning of Google’s invasion of the Far East? Will we start seeing Asian acquisitions on a more frequent basis in Google’s future?

Google has long extolled the virtues of doing business internationally. It may have taken longer than the company liked to grow in the broadband-friendly Asian market, but they seem to be on track to becoming the dominant search player.

Local search engines might disagree with that, yet the latest figures comScore made available indicate otherwise. In Asia for the month of April 2008, Google picked up 39.1 percent of the searches made there.

Yahoo fared well in Asia, running second to Google with 24 percent, while China’s Baidu grabbed 16.7 percent of search market share.

Korea’s NHN Corp, operators of Naver.com, was the only other engine to pull in over a billion searches in April, drawing 1.178 billion of them for the month. Microsoft trailed NHN and fifth-place Alibaba.com in the list.

The most activity came from China and its burgeoning Internet class. Over 82 million people in China performed 6.2 billion searches, comScore said.

Not quite that many in the Asia-Pacific region have internet connections yet, but think of the potential.  In Europe, there are 389 million people; in the US, just 300 million. When two-thirds of the world lives in a specific place with Internet growing at 240 percent of the past seven years, that’s cause for sufficient excitement amongst brands, startups, and entrepreneurs.

Special "sunrise auctions" already have some of these .asia domains going for $20,000, according to one report, which may one day turn out to be a bargain.

Like .eu, the .asia domain is restricted to locals. At least one of the administrative contacts on the account must reside in one of 73 Asia-Pacific countries.

Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google Inc
(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

Eric Schmidt, chief executive, admitted that the credit crunch in financial markets, a long with dipping stock markets was a "very serious issue." "It’s too early to say if there’s (already) been any specific impact but if there were I don’t think it would be much," Schmidt told reporters during a visit to Sydney.

"We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we’ll be well positioned. We’re not particularly dependent on any particular one market. There’s not a lot of advertising for any one market over another," he said.

His comments come after the news earlier this month that Google’s growth rate looked to be slowing as the number of users clicking through to ads dropped in January.

Direct marketing, a forerunner to online marketing, had traditionally done well in times of recession. "There tends to be a flight in a global slowdown to higher quality advertising and higher quality advertising is determined by what sells," he said.

Schmidt also said that the growth in Asian markets will benefit the company. "One of the very good sources for Google is the very rapid growth in Asia," he said.
 

The study focuses on fiber to the home (FFTH) and finds that different markets within the region are currently in very different stages of broadband growth. " While broadband adoption is increasing within APAC, growth is not homogeneous across all countries in the region," says research analyst Serene Fong.

"For instance, Hong Kong is one of the early adopters of FTTH and has the largest FTTH household penetration, currently 21%. On the other hand, countries such as China and India are still struggling to encourage greater broadband usage." For now, most FFTH is still in the more developed countries within the region including Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

Broadband penetration in the Asia-Pacific region is still relatively low compared to the rest of the world. Fong says that, "Demand is largely determined by CPE and infrastructure costs. Consumers are also looking out for sufficiently rich multimedia content to justify their subscriptions. But the irony is that carriers are also waiting to ride on economies of scale in order to offer more attractive and affordable packages."

Fiber installation is a major investment that requires a strong business case and clear objectives to be justifiable. According Fong, "Uses of the Internet are multiplying at a rapid pace, including many bandwidth-hungry services. There are compelling trends leading us to believe that IPTV and related content applications will drive demand for FTTH."