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According to a senior executive at the company, it may well happen.  They expect that even the number of members in America will eventually be surpassed by those from India.  At present around a third of internet users living in India are members of Facebook.  The company predicts that this will rise further in the future, eventually causing the number of members from the US to be exceeded by those from India.

It may come as a surprise to some but apparently only a quarter of Facebook’s total audience of 800 million (give or take a few) is based in America.  The remainder – some 600 million people – come from all over the world.

India is currently the third biggest country represented on Facebook by the number of users.  Taking second place on the social networking giant is Indonesia: perhaps not a country many would guess would take up that position.  Indian users are currently closing fast on Indonesian ones, so it would appear that the Indonesian market will soon drop down into third place overall.

One key reason for the jump in the number of users from India who are logging on to Facebook is that internet usage is gathering pace over there.  New internet users in India are coming in at anything between five and seven million per month.  With a third of existing users on Facebook, this means that Facebook could gain anything from 1.6 million to 2.3 million new users every single month.

Canonical, the company that markets the open source Linux distribution of Ubuntu, will be porting Ubuntu to smart phones, tablets, and more.  The company is expected to make an official announcement at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida.

The move is not entirely unexpected, since the entire impetus behind Ubuntu has been to create “Linux for humans” rather than for machines – something that Canonical’s founder, Mark Shuttleworth, has in common with Steve Jobs, whose focus was on user experience rather than machine code perfection.

So can this work?  Would Ubuntu work on smaller machines?

As it is currently, probably not.  But Apple’s OSX wouldn’t work on mobiles either, so Apple made iOS.  The biggest difference between the companies being size and the fact that Canonical doesn’t seem to have plans to build and market their own device, only something that will run on devices.

Some of the current design trends in Canonical’s proprietary Ubuntu desktop interface, Unity, are actually there in order to facilitate a smooth transition for users when moving from a Unity-enabled computer to a Unity-running smart phone or tablet.  This is intended to create a uniform user experience – something few Linux users are interested in, by most accounts, but which everyday (read: non-technical) users can appreciate.

So when can you expect to see Ubuntu Unity on a smart phone?  Probably not anytime soon – in fact, likely right around the time you see Windows 8 and Microsoft’s planned Metro interface; around 2014.

With Google acquiring Motorola Mobility and Microsoft fast moving to (maybe this time) embrace mobile, it could be a very shaken market by the time Canonical gets their foot in the ring.

ShopIgniter, a company that provides a range of e-commerce software, has been highlighted by IDC Research as one company that is worth keeping an eye on in the months to come.  ShopIgniter earned the title of 2011 Innovative Company to Watch for its big strides forward in the social commerce field.

A quick look at what ShopIgniter currently has to offer reveals why this is the case.  It offers social commerce software that focuses on the three most important things to remember in this field.  These are marketing, merchandising, and metrics.  ShopIgniter aims to make it much easier to handle all three of these aspects in one software product.

The company provides a range of features that most e-commerce salespeople will be chomping at the bit to try.  For instance, you can create a store on Facebook; access fully fledged social commerce analytics to better understand your business and much more besides.  There is no doubt that ShopIgniter is ahead of the crowd when it comes to social commerce online, and this is why it has earned the title above.

It also offers solutions for brands and retailers, thus delving into all areas of social commerce potential.  If you have fans and you cannot monetise those fans, the company can help.  Similarly if you want to start in social merchandising and you do not know where to begin, this would provide a good place to start.  The future is looking bright for ShopIgniter, and the people who use it.

You may not have heard of Sociable Labs before, but this is all set to change in the coming months.  The company has secured $7 million in funding for its immediate future, which is involved with the idea of social sharing.  It believes that this will be an integral part of e-commerce in the future, with companies that have an online presence able to capitalise on their social audience.

The founder of Sociable Labs is Nisan Gabbay.  The idea that has pushed the company forward is to make the social media marketplace into a people-to-people area.  This is in direct contrast to the idea of businesses promoting to customers.  Clearly, the idea is to be more trustworthy and accessible, instead of promoting your business to people who feel as if they are simply being marketed to all the time.

It is early days yet for Sociable Labs but the early signs are very good.  Facebook has invested in the company and it would appear that the investment was a good one.  The goal of Sociable Labs is to provide customers with a solid return on their social media investment.  The company is also known for experimentation, which will hopefully see them achieve far more than many other companies in the area.

There is a clear message here – Sociable Labs might be the new kid on the block, but it has the potential to deliver more and better results than many other social media marketing companies.  We shall see what happens.