Social media
Statistics: Facebook is Taking Over the World
Filed under: Facebook, Social Media, Trends
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Four months ago I wrote about the countries that are not yet dominated by the social networking giant. These were Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Japan. One I didn’t mention is South Korea. In that post I made some predictions and now is the time to prove me conservative.
India
Four months ago in India Facebook had just passed Orkut as the dominant social networking site. Facebook had 14,852,060 users. I made a prediction that within a year Facebook will have 27 million users in India. Guess what, just four months later there’s already 22,057,280 Facebook users in India and penetration in online population is 27.23%. 35 million user by years end seems possibel
Brazil
Still the kingdom of Orkut but Facebook is gaining traction. Four months ago there was about 7 million Facebook users in Brazil. Now it’s almost doubled to 13,409,220 Facebook users in Brazil. I believe that Orkut is enjoying its last year as the biggest social network in Brazil.
17.66% penetration in online population.
Russia
There was a bit less than 2 million Facebook users four months ago now the number is 4,211,720 and the penetration in online population is reaching a tipping point with 7.05%. Read more about Social Media in Russia.
Japan
1.65 million people used the global social networking site four months ago. Now it’s 2,553,660. Still a long way to go but the growth rate is pretty impressive. My estimate was 3 to 4 million. 3 million should be reached by May and 4 million some time before 2011 is over. Penetration in online population is still low with 2.58% using Facebook.
South Korea
Somehow I missed the South Korea last time. The story seems to develop similarly to other markets. There was about 1.6 million Facebook users in the end of October 2010. Now the active user count has more than doubled to 4,010,980 and the penetration in online population is 10.17%
China
China is still blocking Facebook but somehow some of the Chinese people have access to Facebook. The numbers fro Socialbakers say 659,060 active users and 0.16% penetration. There are some rumors that the door of China might be opening for Facebook. Then they will stand no chance against Facebook domination
The force of network effect is powering the growth of Facebook. At the moment the only thing that can hold it back is the government of China. However the same network effect might influence the policymakers to do away with the restrictions. In this light the 50 billion dollar valuation Facebook got from last financing round seems cheap.
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Image background by Jerry Jones
Posted on: February 24, 2011
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