By thomascrampton ⋅ October 8, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment
As this chart shows, the sale of digital items rapidly overtook advertising as the major source of revenue for the Japanese social network GREE (same is true of other social networks in Japan and China).
For those unfamiliar, digital items sold can be anything from a gift for a friend to a pimped-up avatar. Benjamin Joffe has done some interesting studies of the topic.
Will Asia export this business model to Facebook?