And Facebook is growing rapidly in that part of the world with a population of about 400-500 million people: 29 percent growth in 2012, according to a new infographic from Socialbakers.

The “Arab Spring” popular uprisings in 2011 and 2012 contributed to that growth, according to Socialbakers — particularly in the most politically active countries, Qatar, Libya, and Iraq. Those three countries’s Facebook user numbers have soared in 2012, 115 percent, 86 percent, and 81 percent respectively. Facebook, along with YouTube and Twitter, helped protesters organize and collaborate during the popular uprisings in those countries.

Egypt, the most populous country in the region, grew the most by absolute measures, adding 2.5 million Facebook users.

It’s not profitable growth, at least not comparatively, and not yet: Facebook users in MENA countries are some of the least valuable users as far as advertisers are concerned. But that will likely change over time.

One oddity that I noticed in the infographic: Israel is missing from the map. In a variety of sources that I checked, Israel is included in the MENA countries in some cases but not all. It does seem strange, however, that Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon are shown on the map, but Israel is not.

Here’s all the data, in visual form.

photo credit: jonrawlinson via photopin cc

And while NBC might be tracking who’s winning in the arena, Socialbakers will be tracking who’s winning in the stands.

The social marketing company has created Cheer for London, a social media analytics tool that reveals what’s hot and and who’s cheering the loudest. The company calls it the CheerMeter, and it tracks Olympic-related tweets on an hourly basis, breaking them down into tweets per hour, per day, by language, and by sport.

“We’ve built the CheerMeter to act as a virtual stadium for all sports fans, supporters and critics to track the social media performance of individual sporting events, athletes, and associated brands in real time,” Socialbakers chief executive Jan Rezab said in a statement.

As you might expect with the opening ceremonies on, tweets are rising fast this morning:

The last hour saw over 40,000 tweets, already three times yesterday’s total. This will surely rise as the actual Olympic events begin and the signature sports take center stage.

Currently the top language is English, by a massive margin, and the top sport is rowing, probably due to the fact that rowing is one of the first sports off the mark, tomorrow. And, of course, the English love rowing.

London 2012 is 16 days, 200 nations, and 300 events. Perhaps in a couple of weeks the cheer meter will also be able to reveal how many tweets this Olympics will generate.

For updates — the tool is live and does update in real-time — check Cheer for London.

Image credits: Socialbakers

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SocialBakers, the social media analytics company, released a visual review of the Obama vs. Romney social media battle on Facebook this past May. Obama is clearly the heavyweight champ in this matchup: He was discussed 600,000 more times than Romney, reaches 45 million more Americans, and gained half a million more fans than Romney.

But does that mean that Obama will win the election? Or that Romney is a no-hope challenger? VentureBeat asked Jan Rezab, SocialBakers’ CEO for his opinion based on the social media sentiment analysis his firm has done. His comments are below, following the infographic:

So can election results be predicted by social media sentiment analysis? We asked SocialBaker CEO Jan Rezab:

“I don’t believe social media can be used to predict an outcome. It’s a great indicator. I think in 10 years we’ll be able to predict election wins via social media.”

Rezab concedes that Obama has a major advantage in the social media war. As sitting president, everything he does is news. ”Obama has the power to get more instantaneous media cover. If he steps out of the house, 50 journalists will meet him on the lawn.”

The First Lady factor doesn’t hurt either: Michelle Obama is very socially savvy and recently made headlines by joining Pinterest. One of Obama’s most popular photos, Rezab told VentureBeat, was the first family photo.

One bright spot in a presidential election that seems destined to get nasty: posts and status updates that were positive were much more likely to be shared, commented on, and liked. The most shared and liked post came from neither of the contenders but from Ron Paul: a picture of him and his wife on their wedding day.

70,000 likes, 7,400 comments, and 4,000 shares: not bad for a 55-year-old wedding photo. Not good enough, however, to make Ron Paul a legitimate presidential candidate.

Obama, on the other hand, had 620,000 new likes in May alone.