Following on from our social predictions for 2012 last week, we thought we'd take a look at some of the new innovations in international social media and highlight some of the “one's to watch” this year.

Following on from our social media roundup at the end of 2011 let’s take a glimpse at some of the predictions for the social sphere in the next 12 months. Over the past 2 years social networks have become unstoppable behemoths overtaking many of the top portals and search engines as the place where people search. Last year they enabled people to start riots and topple governments, but most importantly became the first place where news breaks globally.

Thanks so much for all those who attended the inaugural event on Monday 21st of November. We had a packed audience and an excellent line-up of speakers covering lots of great areas.

We have only few weeks left until the end of 2011, we thought we’d take the chance to round up some of the most exciting and significant developments in the sphere of international social media in 2011.

Over the last six months, Libya became the Facebook’s fastest growing country in terms of percentage increase in national users. The North African country has gone up 588.86% with Facebook users rising to 316,000 in only six months. According to The Guardian, the political events in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt brought about “Twitter revolutions”. Twitter and Facebook were used as a medium avoid the strict censorship of traditional media in the Arab world and to allow the people’s voices to be heard by the rest of the world.

Despite the floundering Euro-zone economy – the German ecommerce sector is in rude health. Germany currently has the largest online population in the EU - there were more than 50 million German Internet users in late 2010 and this year, the online trade in goods in Germany increased by about 17% to €21.48 billion. 2011 is the first year that revenue from e-commerce has broken the 20billion euro turnover mark and outstripped traditional mail order sales by 10%.

Arabic is the official language in 23 countries, and is spoken by almost 320 million people around the world, from Southwest Asia to Northwest Africa. Arabic is also the liturgical language of over a billion Muslims around the world