The overall market appears to have shrugged off the social network’s misfortunes as both the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq have posted modest gains.

Facebook’s latest swoon does, however, appear to be pulling down its ill-starred step-brother, Zynga. The social game maker has fared even worse than Facebook, falling nearly 15 percent today alone.

FB data by YCharts

Facebook’s underwhelming performance since going public have set off recriminations and lawsuits between the company’s bankers and investors who accuse Facebook of failing to disclose that its growth prospects were slowing.

Facebook’s flop has set off hand-wringing about the prospect of a new tech bubble or a gloomy market for future IPO’s.

As ReadWriteWeb reports, however, not everyone can come bolting out of the gate. Its three year post-IPO chart, which shows a slumping Apple and a soaring Yahoo, underscores how share price may not be the best metric of determining a company’s long term value.

Facebook closed down nearly 10 percent at $28.84 while the overall market finished up around one percent.

Now, Reuters reports that shareholders have filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court. The suit claims that Facebook and the banks wrongfully concealed weak growth forecasts, leading to shareholders over-paying for the stock when it debuted last Friday.

The Wall Street Journal described how Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer, David Ebersman, decided to increase the number of shares offered in the IPO by 25 percent. At the same time, Ebersman also chose to increase the opening price of the shares to $38.

As a result, the market was flooded with too many shares and the IPO quickly fizzled. Facebook shares have dipped on three consecutive days, hitting a low of $31 yesterday. The shares are up so far this morning.

More to come.

The company has made no secret of its ambition to make sure every person on the planet is connected to its service. What might seem like hubris, however, is actually necessity: with Wall Street now breathing down its neck, overseas growth is important — investors want to see that however big it has become, Facebook still has headroom left. (Check out our chart of five countries outside the U.S. that could provide Facebook with a lot more users.)

So how will it manage?

First, use its headstart

To understand Facebook’s approach to international growth, it’s worth looking back at the way the company became so global quickly.

From very early on, Facebook had a strong foreign user base. In fact, unlike most companies, it was not really the company’s home success that drove its foreign expansion — it was foreign expansion that fueled its meteoric rise and underpinned its blockbuster flotation.

As early as 2007, the vast international potential was becoming very clear, when London became the single most popular city on Facebook. But then came perhaps its smartest move of all: instead of spending months deciding which markets to target, building local sales teams and internationalizing its product accordingly, Facebook designed a tool that let users translate the service into their own language — effectively crowdsourcing what is usually a slow, labor-intensive job.

And it proved a stunning success: in less than 24 hours, for example, 90 percent of the site had been translated into French. Former Facebooker Andy Johns has called it “the greatest lever” the company had for growth:

It made Facebook a platform capable of supporting everyone on the planet… Growth was not about hiring 10 people per country and putting them in the 20 most important countries and expecting it to grow. Growth was about [engineering] systems of scale and enabling our users to grow the product for us.

It was an inspired, engineering-led approach that allowed Facebook to rapidly scale out into dozens of new territories without ever targeting or investing in them specifically. Take Turkey, a fast-growing internet market with its own language. Without any member of the team ever targeting the country as a business prospect, Facebook became the country’s number 1 social site — and now boasts 92 percent market penetration.

This has all given the company huge reach at relatively little cost, and brought in a ton of revenue too: this year is likely to be the first in which Facebook will make more money outside the United States than in them (U.S. revenue fell from 62 percent in 2010 to 56 percent in 2011).

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of that number. But for some context, compare that with Google, where international revenue only outstripped U.S. revenue for the first time in 2008 — four years after it went public.

Continued international progress is massively important, not least because it’s where new users are coming from.

Pingdom, which found Facebook’s six-month U.S. user growth at just 0.86 percent compared with Brazil’s 54 percent, says: “It seems evident that Facebook needs an expansion plan that involves all corners of the world, but that focuses on certain regions, like Africa and Asia.”

Facebook acknowledges the problem, and the opportunity. Alongside mobile and advertising, it has sold investors on hoped-for international growth. “There are more than two billion global internet users, according to an IDC report dated August 2011,” its S-1 read. “And we aim to connect all of them.”

Now it just has to deliver on that promise.

So where next?

The omens for continued expansion may be good. Thanks to its translation success, Facebook has already unseated eight dominant local-language competitors in the last two years, according to comScore – most recently, Orkut in Brazil and Poland’s Nasa Klasa.pl.

Recent data from Pingdom shows strong gains in other countries, leaving just a handful of nations where Facebook is not the top dog: China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Russia.

“Now there are only five markets where Facebook is not the #1 social networking site,” a comScore spokesperson told us. “What’s interesting here is that Vietnam, Japan and South Korea are amongst the top four fastest growing markets, with year-over-year growth rates of 80 to 270 percent.”

But these remaining countries are also the toughest nuts to crack. And the biggest prize of all, China, may need a sledge hammer — after all Facebook is blocked by the country’s Great Firewall.

If it can piggyback China’s explosive broadband and mobile internet adoption, Facebook’s own growth may surge even further. But this will be anything but a walk in the park.

Investors have been warned. Facebook’s s-1 filing cautioned:

“We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government.

“In the event that access to Facebook is restricted, in whole or in part, in one or more countries or our competitors are able to successfully penetrate geographic markets that we cannot access, our ability to retain or increase our user base and user engagement may be adversely affected, we may not be able to maintain or grow our revenue as anticipated, and our financial results could be adversely affected.”

China’s state authorities grant spartan online operating licenses to overseas players, especially powerhouses, leaving the market to indigenous networks, which themselves are allowed to operate only under a strict regime of monitoring and censorship by the government.

That is a controversial and technically difficult task for any social network. But, if it’s good enough for China’s own, it may be a move that Facebook, too, has to consider if it wants to break in.

But it’s not just China that could prove tricky. Google can attest to the difficulties of launching in unfriendly countries. Its $140 million acquisition of the Rambler portal’s Begun contextual ad agency was blocked in 2008 because of what Russian competition authorities said was insufficient paperwork.

And, while trying to make inroads to its five target nations, Facebook must also be on its guard to make sure it protects its leading position in other markets, many of which are small enough that launches or improvements from indigenous competitors could have profound impact.

The revenue question

Even if the company can push growth numbers by securing a dominant position in every single one of the world’s countries, there is another big question: how to keep revenue going up internationally too.

This is a very important problem it faces: during its IPO roadshow, executives explained that while an American user with high disposable income was worth $9.51 in Facebook ad revenue last year, Europe was worth considerably less at $4.86. Asia, meanwhile, came in at $1.79 and the rest of the world made Facebook just $1.42 per user.

So while international growth may be large, the granular detail on income is less impressive. These are not figures that will please Facebook’s investors if they do not rise — and, as Thomas Crampton of Social@Ogilvy & Mather’s Asia-Pacific unit has pointed out, users in lower-income countries like India are going to be hard to monetize more effectively.

Getting average revenues up could mean international users seeing more ads; working more partnerships outside the U.S.; using its scale to push revenue strategies that go way beyond advertising (such as a Facebook credit card). It could even require the company ditching a reliance on engineering solutions in favor of pushing harder at the drearier but tried-and-trusted approach of building large local sales teams.

Whatever the case, you can be sure Facebook will be trying everything it can to increase its international audience — and make it as valuable as possible.

After growth slowed just in time for its IPO, Facebook must look overseas for a jump-start.

Target countries are easy to see. ”Now there are only five markets where Facebook is not the #1 social networking site,” a comScore spokesperson tells paidContent.

But cultural differences, government restrictions and incumbent local rivals will all make Facebook’s growth challenging. (Check out our broader take on Facebook’s international ambitions here.)

Here is our map for Mark Zuckerberg’s overseas adventure. Cool countries are those with already-high Facebook penetration, hotspots are thosse Facebook must crack to become a true global powerhouse…

1. China
”near 0% penetration”. Growth prospects: Poor — Zuckerberg can’t comply with online state censorship
#1	Tencent Qzone	Built on Tencent’s QQ IM network, Qzone lets users buy a 10-yuan-a-month “Canary Diamond” to decorate their zones with.
#2	Sina Weibo	Hit 300 million microblog users by delighting citizens with open info sharing. Now ready to introduce ads.
#3	RenRen	Billed itself as China’s “leading real-name” social net; now new regulations require all network customers use their real names.
The People’s Republic is the big prize. If it could piggyback China’s explosive broadband and mobile internet adoption, Facebook’s own growth would rocket. But that will be anything but easy. Currently blocked by China, the site claims ”near 0% penetration” there. It warned IPO filing readers: “We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to managing content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government. In the event that access to Facebook is restricted, in whole or in part, in one or more countries or our competitors are able to successfully penetrate geographic markets that we cannot access, our ability to retain or increase our user base and user engagement may be adversely affected, we may not be able to maintain or grow our revenue as anticipated, and our financial results could be adversely affected.”That’s the reality of it. One problem for Facebook is China’s state authorities, which grant spartan online operating licenses to overseas players, especially powerhouses like Facebook. Another is the increasingly powerful indigenous players to which the market has been left. Social network growth has exploded, but most of the operators are native incumbent portals, with eye-popping user counts. Succeeding social networks, the rise of weibos (Twitter-esque microblog services) has gained mindshare for allowing quick dissemination of information in the country notorious for restricting information flow.But the Chinese market is also in flux. Local services complied with new regulations compelling them to remove apparently false and controversial information, and to force users to use their real names.Will Facebook controversially kowtow to measures Silicon Valley and Wall Street might find reprehensible? If so, it could be the easiest move it would make in China – the country has been the rocks on which many a western company has floundered. But consenting to Chinese restrictions on online free speech would be utterly at odds with Zuckerberg’s open ethos – so let’s continue to consider China off-limits.
2. Russia
21.2% of online population (comScore, March 2012). Growth prospects: Very good — Already gained good toe-hold.
#1	VK.com	Russia’s fourth-most-used website has around 120 million accounts, is popular (and controversial) for its integrated file-sharing – and bears striking resemblance to Facebook.
#2	Odnoklassniki	Russia’s Classmates site puts a Facebook shareholder in an awkward position – DST owns it.
#3	Facebook	Has grown fast since launching in Russia in early 2010.
Russians are the world’s most prolific social network users, according to comScore. Facebook has already grown fast there. The country puts the site in a strange position, since two competitors (Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru’s MyWorld) are backed by Facebook investor DST. Now that DST has exited through Facebook’s IPO, however, the stage is set for a clean fight. “The figures suggest that local social networks will not be able to hold onto their dominance much longer,” eMarketer said in February. “The real question may not be whether Facebook will overtake local social networks there, but when.” Market leader vKontakte’s popularity may decline if it complies with a court ruling that it breaches copyright by removing its file-sharing feature.
3. South Korea
27.2% of online population (comScore, March 2012). Growth prospects: Very good – Already hurting competition.
#1	Cyworld	Tried and failed to enter the U.S. and Europe but this isometric 3D chat world succeeds at selling virtual goods to users.
#2	Me2day	This local Korean microblog service, operated by the Naver portal, is popular with celebrities.
#3	Facebook	Its monthly users doubled to 12 million in 2011, Korea Herald reported.
In the country that has been enjoying high-speed fixed and mobile services for years, Cyworld has locked up mindshare since 1999. But Facebook is poised for big gains – last year, it robbed Cyworld of members, prompting the incumbent to invoke a corporate revamp to fight back, Korea Herald reported.
4. Japan
23.4% of online population (comScore, March 2012). Growth prospects: Moderate – Zuck must beat the Tweet.
#1	Twitter	Guess who? Japan’s top social network is Facebook’s Silicon Valley sparring partner, whose first non-English endeavour has paid dividends.
#2	Mixi	The site has gained a strong local mindshare by founding early, in 2000.
#3	Facebook	Japanese user base grew by 78 percent through 2011.
After Twitter overtook local network Mixi, Japan is a “Twitter nation”. There, successive global records have been broken for tweets-per-minute, despite Twitter being predominantly an English-language medium. So Facebook will have to fight its domestic competitor on foreign turf.
5. Vietnam
37.8% of online population (comScore, March 2012). Growth prospects: Uncertain – To block or not to block?
#1	ZingMe	A focus on games has given the native site the lead.
#2	Go.vn	This Facebook rival is some competitor – operated by state-owned Vietnam Media Corp.
#3	Facebook	Has apparently suffered from censorship after earlier growth.
Facebook has been blocked in Vietnam since 2009, but many citizens circumvent it with a few clicks, The Economist reports. The communist government’s on-off embrace of social networks comes against a backdrop requiring their compliance with censorship laws. Confusion reigns.

After a delayed start, Facebook started trading at $42, about 10.5 percent above its offer price of $38. But over the course of the day, it gradually traded down to close at $38.09, barely squeaking in above its starting price. In after hours trading, the price remained around $38.27. According to analysts and industry reports, whenever the stock threatened to fall below the opening price, Facebook’s underwriters stepped in to prop it up.

“We are seeing the stock hit reality like a brick wall,” said GreenCrest Capital senior managing analyst Anupam Palit.  Facebook’s scale and engagement might have pushed its valuation to $100 billion, but, like every other public company it’s not immune to the larger economic trends.

Palit said he expected Facebook’s first day to be less dramatic than that of its public tech peers (like LinkedIn, Pandora and Groupon, which all saw a first-day pop of at least 30 percent), but added that today was “definitely more muted” than anticipated.

Still, he said that Facebook’s performance was generally positive considering that “the guys who have flown really high on their IPO have tumbled in subsequent weeks.”

Also, while first-day retail interest in other tech stocks had been essentially nonexistent, Palit said, retail buyers were much more interested in Facebook.

“It is a much more ‘tangible’ company because the average person uses it and knows what it is,” he said. “There are retail investors who want to say they took part in this because it is a big moment in market history.”

That played out today, he said, as retail buyers were willing to push the stock above $40, while institutional investors, who are more sensitive to valuation, wanted to keep the price lower. In the following weeks, Palit expects the price to continue to fall, eventually settling around $32.

On Friday, more than 460 million shares in Facebook changed hands, setting a new record for IPO trading volume.

3:52 p.m. ET: Facebook’s share price is back where it started at $38. The much anticipated pop is not happening. There’s still time for the stock to dip below its opening price. Facebook priced this well for itself but it won’t get the buzz that comes from a big first day.

3:00 p.m. ET: Facebook’s share price has slipped below $40 to about $39 putting it up about 3 percent on the day. The same can’t be said of Zynga, whose share price continued to drop after trading on the stock was halted a couple of times. The shares are down about 12 percent now.

2:11 p.m. ET: Doesn’t look like we’re going to get a Facebook pop today, unless things heat up later: we’re still hovering between $40 and $41. 386 million shares have changed hands so far today, and speculation is now turning toward what went wrong at the Nasdaq this morning: some traders apparently weren’t sure if their orders had been processed.

1:06 p.m. ET: Not much change in Facebook’s price, which is now at about $41 a share. Interestingly, shares of LinkedIn, Yelp and Pandora are down today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that underwriters stepped in to ensure Facebook’s stock didn’t dip below itss opening price of $38.

12:48 p.m. ET: Facebook shares continue to float around a bit, hovering around $40 to $41 dollars a share. Meanwhile, Zynga has taken a hit today with its stock price falling by 13 percent following Facebook’s debut. Zynga’s stock, which was halted for a time, is off about 5.68 percent.

12:04 p.m. ET: So far, no big pop for Facebook. Shares seem to be holding strong in the $38-$40 range, just barely above its offer price. The stock price is about $39.51 right now.  At least it’s not pulling a Zynga, and falling below the opening price on the first day. But LinkedIn, Groupon, Zillow and other recent tech IPOs saw at least a 30 percent pop on the first day of trading.

11:31 a.m. ET: And we’re off! As had been reported earlier this morning, Facebook started trading around $42. Shares are currently at about $40.90, about 7.6 percent above the original price of $38. According to Reuters, 82 million shares changed hands in the first 30 seconds.

11:20  a.m. ET: Alright already, NASDAQ. Trading was supposed to start at 11:05 a.m. But, here we are 15 minutes, still waiting… We’ll keep you updated.

Earlier: The time for talking has passed, and the time for buying has begun. Later today shares of Facebook will begin trading on the NASDAQ stock market in an initial public offering that could set records for the tech industry and rank among the most valuable IPOs in American history.

We’ll track the price of Facebook’s stock below, updating this post throughout the day with news and information about the event. The NASDAQ opens for trading at 9:30 a.m. ET, and closes at 4:00 p.m. ET. Facebook won’t go live immediately — the exchange saves IPO trades so they get their own special boost: we’re expecting Facebook trades to start at 11.

In the meantime, please check out our Facebook IPO coverage up until this point as well as our chart listing recent digital media IPOs, none of which have been as impressive as Facebook’s IPO is expected to be. And if you need some light relief or director’s commentary, check out our links to what the rest of the web is saying.

Image courtesy of Flickr user by Alex E. Proimos

• Facebook gets a reality check on IPO day
• Facebook buys Karma app
• Infographic: A look back at Facebook’s revenue and valuations
• Facebook IPO: Tracking the price
• Facebook IPO: Here is the best of the web
• Why 900M isn’t the only number that matters to Facebook
• Place your orders: Facebook IPO shares set at $38
• How recent digital media IPOs have fared
• Why 900M isn’t the only number that matters to Facebook
• 10 startups that couldn’t have done it without Facebook
• Are Facebook Credits the key to the social network’s future?
• VCs simply love the Facebook Mafia
• Will Facebook adapt to mobile or will mobile adapt to Facebook?
• Facebook’s biggest problem is that it’s a media company
• Weigh in on Facebook’s future prospects
• Facebook brings bigger pics and posts to mobiles
• A preacher, 500 startups, and a dream to change it all
• Facebook’s delicate balance between profits and privacy
• Boy in the Hood(ie)
• Facebook sets price for biggest-ever US IPO
• Facebook’s monthly rent is $1M+, and other gems from S-1 update
• Facebook just revealed its Kryptonite: mobile
• Facebook has nothing to fear, except itself
• It’s here: Facebook files for $5 billion IPO

Much more in our Facebook IPO archives.

Photo courtesy of SeanPavonePhoto / Shutterstock.

Facebook will debut on the NASDAQ on Friday, as expected, under the ticker symbol FB. According to the company, it will offer 421,233,615 shares – which breaks down to 180 million new shares and 241,233,615 shares from existing stockholders, i.e. Zuckerberg and company. That would raise the company and its investors a cool $16 billion.

In addition, Facebook’s current owners have also agreed to relinquish another 63,185,042 in the next 30 days if its underwriters see fit, and given the enormous demand and escalating IPO share target they probably will.

The IPO will value Facebook at an astonishing $104 billion. To put that in context check GigaOM’s look at the other big digital media IPOs of the last year – which no longer look so big by comparison. For the rest of our Facebook coverage during IPO week, check out our special pull-down section on the GigaOM homepage.

Stock market debut: 5/24/2011
Deal size: $1.3 billion
Valuation: $8.4 billion
Number of shares offered: 52.2 million
Set price/share: $25
Opening price/share: $35
* Most-recent opening price: $21.93

YNDX data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 12/16/2011
Deal size: $1 billion
Valuation: $7 billion
Number of shares offered: 100 million
Set price/share: $10
Opening price/share: $11
Most-recent opening price: $8.49

ZNGA data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 5/4/2011
Deal size: $743 million
Valuation: $4 billion
Number of shares offered: 53.1 million
Set price/share: $14
Opening price/share: $18
Most-recent opening price: $6.39

RENN data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 11/4/2011
Deal size: $700 million
Valuation: $10.5 billion
Number of shares offered: 35 million
Set price/share: $20
Opening price/share: $28
Most-recent opening price: $12.66

GRPN data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 3/2/2012
Deal size: $107.3 million
Valuation: $1.47 valuation
Number of shares offered: 7.15 million
Set price/share: $15
Opening price/share: $22
Most-recent opening price: $21.63

YELP data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 5/19/2011
Deal size: $353 million
Valuation: $4 billion
Number of shares offered: 7.8 million
Set price/share: $45
Opening price/share: $83
Most-recent opening price: $112

LNKD data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 6/15/2011
Deal size: $235 million
Valuation: $2.6 billion
Number of shares offered: 161 million
Set price/share: $16
Opening price/share: $20
Most-recent opening price: $11.50

P data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 1/26/2011
Deal size: $151.3 million
Valuation: $1.5 billion
Number of shares offered: 8.9 million
Set price/share: $17
Opening price/share: $23.50
Most-recent opening price: $9.06

DMD data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 2/17/2012
Deal size: $55 million
Valuation: $290 million
Number of shares offered: 5 million
Set price/share: $11
Opening price/share: $14.30
Most-recent opening price: $14.98

BCOV data by YCharts

Stock market debut: 5/11/2011
Deal size: $50 million
Valuation: $263 million
Number of shares offered: 5 million
Set price/share: $10
Opening price/share: $10
Most-recent opening price: $1.15

FFN data by YCharts

* All most-recent opening prices are from May 17, 2012.

If Facebook’s future is mobile, it may not be enough for it to merely secure a piece of the mobile ad market: It might need to make the mobile ad industry figure out how to work with Facebook.

Berg Insight calculated that global spending on mobile advertising was $3.4 billion in 2010. And while it’s growing at rate of 37 percent per year, Facebook’s total revenues in 2011 were $3.7 billion, of which $3.1 billion came from ads. Meanwhile more than half of its 845 million monthly active users accessed the social network through mobile apps or its mobile website, both of which sport no ads.

Of course, most customers are using both platforms, not one or the other, so Facebook doesn’t need to build a $3 billion mobile ad business overnight. But even if Facebook were to replicate a fraction of its Web-based ad business on mobile, it would account for a large portion of the money currently being spent on mobile ads.

Mobile hasn’t been unkind to Facebook

Facebook isn’t losing money on mobile today. Far from it. EMarketer principal analyst Noah Elkin pointed out that 90 percent of Facebook’s customers are crossing between platforms, meaning they’re generating ad revenue in one way or another. They may not see any ads when they’re accessing the network from their phones, but they’re certainly seeing them when they log in from their Web browsers. One of the reasons those customers remain active and loyal to Facebook is because they have the flexibility to network socially from anywhere, so you could argue that mobile drives more ad views, not less.

It’s the remaining 10 percent, or 83 million users, that Facebook is worried about, Elkin said. Facebook doesn’t make a dime in ad sales off them, and while they may be a small segment of Facebook’s customers now, they’re its fastest-growing segment, as they are coming from the developing markets where Facebook’s future growth lies.

“The big concern is the mobile-only audience is growing faster than the multi-channel or desktop only audience,” Elkin said. “The long-term concern is that the mobile-only audience will come to dominate the social network.”

Enter the sponsored story

Facebook’s answer isn’t the display or search advertising responsible for the lion’s share of the mobile ad market today but the sponsored story, which it only recently introduced on the desktop interface and now plans to migrate to mobile. The format is so nascent that it’s not even really factoring into eMarketer’s current ad spend figures for traditional online spending, to say nothing of mobile.

Elkin said the format is promising not only because Facebook can use it to tailor ad content specifically to its users’ interests — which it knows a lot about — but also because it could factor in location and presence data unique to mobile. That means more value for advertisers and more revenue per ad. Ultimately that could overcome the limitations of mobile, where a small screen gets cluttered pretty easily. But it’s also an untried advertising format, and as my colleague Mathew Ingram points out, not even Facebook is convinced sponsored stories will work.

“If Facebook is successful, one of the impacts will be that it will grow mobile advertising overall,” Elkin said. Google, Apple and Millennial Marketing wouldn’t stop growing in the mobile ad space, but Facebook’s mobile ad revenue would be additive. In fact, one of the reasons eMarketer is projecting such huge growth in U.S. mobile advertising — jumping from $1.45 billion in 2011 to $10.8 billion in 2016 — is because it projects Facebook will precipitate a surge in new ads starting in 2014. If Facebook flops, then eMarketer will have to revisit its growth numbers, Elkin said.

Don’t piss off your future customers

Facebook faces some daunting tasks. It can’t just build a mobile ad business. It has to build the mother of all mobile ad businesses. And it has to do so with an ad format that’s still unproven.

Ultimately, its entrenched customers will cut Facebook some slack. They might gripe about ads crowding the limited real estate of their phones, but they’re not likely to abandon Facebook, considering how much of their online lives are embodied in the social network. But then again, those aren’t the customers Facebook is losing money on.

It’s the mobile-only users just discovering Facebook in India and other far-flung countries across the globe that the company needs to please. For many of them their first and only experiences with Facebook will be through mobile phones. If that experience isn’t engaging (and as my colleague Kevin Tofel writes, the Facebook mobile app experience is often subpar) then customers may abandon the social network entirely.