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“widespread unrest does not arise from long-standing political failings of the system,” the authors wrote, “but rather from its sudden perceived failure to provide essential security to the population.”

If current trends continue, the authors note, prices will permanently cross that barrier as early as next July. Prepare for a lot of angry people.

the relationship between income elasticity and the price (in-)elasticity of food means that “quite modest increases in global income will drive food prices up alarmingly unless matched by increases in supply.”

at the social network served up 39 percent more ad impressions in the most recent period than Q1 2012.

That impression increase likely has as much to do with Facebook's daily active user base growing by 26 percent year-over-year to 665 million people as it does any efforts to further boost its advertising revenue—up 43 percent year-over-year to $1.25 billion

Facebook’s mobile monthly active user base climb 54 percent to 751 million people (including 189 million people who only check Facebook from their mobile devices, up 128 percent year-over-year), but once again mobile jumped as a percentage of Facebook’s ad revenue, having gone from 0 percent in Q1 2012 to 14 percent in Q3 to 23 percent in Q4 to 30 percent in Q1 2013. Desktop ad revenue "stayed flat," Ebersman said, before qualifying the stagnation. "Flat desktop revenue does not reflect a particular trend relative to desktop demand. Instead, more inventory is being shown on mobile because that’s where people are spending more time," he said.

Imagine people in developing countries thinking Facebook is the gateway to the Internet. They would log into Facebook to access email, Wikipedia pages, weather information, and food prices. If they wanted additional services like the ability to stream video, they can buy it with a simple click—through Facebook. That’s Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Internet.org. 

“Connecting the world” is Facebook’s vision—one that can’t be achieved without the support of other organizations, including the six telecom companies it partnered with for the Internet.org initiative.  Zuckerberg said the organization is looking for an additional three to five partners to bring on board, ones that will bet big that Facebook subsidies of social services will pay off by up-selling their data plans.

By using Facebook as an on-ramp to the Internet, the next one billion people will use social logins not just to control various apps, but their entire Internet usage.