If you are planning on launching a new product in more than one country, test the name in each market first to avoid insulting local consumers. Ikea tested 9,000 translated product names in Thailand to make sure that none of them were offensive. Kraft should have followed Ikea's lead. Instead, the company recently renamed its global snack foods brand Mondelez International, a name that is racy in Russian.

You can read more on the good and the bad in global names at the Wall Street Journal.

Despite a slow start, Facebook is growing fast in Japan. eMarketer estimates that the site reached 7.6 million users in the country during 2011, a jump of 61.6% over 2010. User growth is forecast to remain strong through 2012, at 51.5%, for a total of 11.5 million users by year’s end.

Still Facebook penetration remains low in Japan—the site is forecast to reach 12% of internet users and only 9% of the total population by the end of 2012. However, new survey data shows that users of the site are hooked.

Read more:  eMarketer