I was talking to a colleague earlier about the rise of infographics. Yesterday, we saw one from The Dealmap, and recent notable ones include Facebook and Foursquare. My all-time favorite is Napoleon’s March.

They’re fun, illustrative, viral and of course promotional for whoever usually makes it. It also makes sense we see more of them in periods of market growth; the whole point is usually to show growth in some interesting graphical way.

The latest I’ve run across is from JESS3, comparing relative sizes of global entities in mobile and social media. I’m not sure how new it is (Foursquare’s numbers aren’t current) but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

It really gives you perspective at a glance — especially the size of the overall mobile subscriber base. I first mistook it for background but that big orange circle is global mobile users.

Other interesting points include the fact that Hotmail is still so big. And Friendster is bigger than Twitter?! Learn about it — infograph-style.