Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing.
(At least among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively.
If you break down Facebook’s growth into regions, its presence in North America is still growing at a healthy 38 percent rate (with 49 million visitors a month). Europe (with 35 million visitors a month) is growing nearly ten times as fast. And growth in rest of the world is on an even faster tear (403 percent growth in the Middle East and Africa, 458 percent growth in Asia Pacific, 10,555 percent growth in Latin America), albeit from a smaller base. (For another cut at the regional popularity of social networks based on Google search activity, see these maps at Pingdom)
Much of these huge growth numbers come from the fact that Facebook had hardly no presence in many of these regions until recently when it started its major push to translate the site to other languages. A year ago, it had only one million uniques a month in all of Latin America, three million in the Middle East and Africa, and four million in all of Asia Pacific. When you look at it that way, 10,555 percent growth isn’t as amazing as the raw numbers would suggest. And within these regions, it still has a lot of work to do. For instance,it is floundering in Japan.
The takeaway here is that Facebook’s growth is now coming from abroad, and it still has a long way to go in other countries. Will it get lost in translation, or are we looking at another global superpower here?
Not to rain on their party but how are they translating this massive audience into revenue?
excellent question. i want to know the answer, too. and i mean besides vc funding.
I think that they may be working on a way to monetize their website still…the proper way.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
I heard facebook’s revenue are dismal compared to the visitors it attracts…
The answer:
They aren’t! They really need to sort out the business side of this site..
World of Warcraft makes more money in a month than Facebook does in a year.
no one goes to a tween social site to buy stuff. facebook is nothing more than a online answering machine. woohoo. As fabk people grow up they will leave fabk for a more mature professional location that is niche to there profession or entertainment likes. Will they make money? only if they stop faking a bubble and buy a network of niche web properties and form a true business social network. They need to do something ASAP because they have been in a bubble for a long time and somethings gotta give. Saying your worth billions and pulling in pennies only works for so long.
Monetization follows acquisition of the loyal community of users. Remember that Google took over 5 years to find it’s means to monetize.
Also Google had something game changing, a great technology, and wasn’t valued ridiculously high. They were much more focused on product and development then Facebook seems to be. Facebook is no Google.
yay facebook {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/1FvpvvbXlm_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”yay facebook ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/4pp5QTqK96″}}}
We get it already, please something other than facebook
I think facebook is doing some very newsworthy things, I agree that coverage may be reaching the saturation point, but I still like to hear this kind of valuable information about the health of social networks.
whats point of this article?
this week has been a slow tech crunch week just 3-4 articles a day
What about Malaysia/Singapore? Jeff Roberto of friendster came over claimed they are the biggest and faster growing network in Malaysia.
what a huge jump in just one month. not too shabby.
it’s in one YEAR not one month
I agree with sabeur’s comment.. something other than facebook…
We at kreeo are working on that “something other than Facebook”. We are still in alpha, but if you wish to be an early adopter and help us improve our effort…please submit us a request to join our alpha.
MSFT will be happy with the investment.
Can’t compare worldwide apples to US oranges, but it is interesting to note that the traffic comparison (not unique visitors) on quantcast puts myspace at 2.3-2.4 times daily non-unique US visitors compared to facebook on 7/31/2008. Comscore numbers are unique visitors worldwide.
quantcast numbers
I think that should read 1,055%, not 10,555% growth for Latin America. Still a lot.
I cant help thinking that whilst these growth figures look amazing that the real story is somewhat different.
I’m interested in this stat “unique visitors” with the exception of fan pages, facebook is locked out to people accept users. Why don’t they give us numbers on actual people who have joined? or are these unique visits by the actual members? Stats always require clarity.
I think I’d like to see two figures, one showing number of members for a country or region and the other “unique visits” for that country / region. That way i can tell if there is anything more significant than “people logging on once a week” going on.
Members will increase for a while as more people join they trawl though their email contacts and add further people, and so on….. At some point this will plateau.
Mike Ashworth
How’s their revenue? I hear that it’s disappointing this year, which is why Owen is gone!
2TB of memcache to the rescue…
What about China’s QQ: 300 million active accounts with 700 million registered accounts.
http://cnreview...a_20080806.html
Their “new facebook” can be little tricky, lets see. Revenue ought to increase due to double ads in new facebook, and people will be left with nothing to complain about facebook. Also new facebook reduces burden on facebook servers, as well as client side. Client side becomes faster means more people in developing country will start using it.
We in india suffering because of Orkut monopoly, which gives no “real” outputs. That is you can make good “orkut friends”, but they will never ever become “real life friends”
Hope orkut sinks fastest..
Not to tell about fb platform etc, fb is too big. They are venturing in fb connect, which is bad from revenue pov, but gud for web.
Facebook is the next best thing since Chicken Soup…
Kudos to Facebook They rock my world!
Marci
MySpace and Facebook are clearly the two leaders in this fight but it will be interesting to see how each of the major social networking sites grow in the next year. Facebook has recently updated their site and it has been getting mixed reviews from what I have heard and read.
As a user of both MySpace and Facebook, I still prefer MySpace (slightly) and I am not a huge fan of the Facebook redesign. But I guess that I am only one person in a global audience of millions and everyone has a right to their own opinion. So, I propose this question to everyone. Who do you like best: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster or Orkut?
http://kreuzer3...etworking-site/
becoz of stupid facebook SPAM and invitation.
These growth numbers are ridiculously impressive, given their existing size. Given this sort of growth level and the likely impact on the Internet and Internet behavior for years to come, your coverage seems appropriate.
I am wondering if folks have a lot of experience in the Internationalization within applications. I thought that Facebook did about as good a job as you can do, but it’s still a little cumbersome (you have to tag words as a “verb” for example, which makes it tough to rapidly change your application when trying to achieve viral growth and can lead to bugs!).
Any cases out there of where Internationalization has been worth the effort in terms of monetizing relative to focusing on English-only growth? Or is it still better to focus on English-usage and nailing that and not worrying about Internationalizing your applications?
Jason
(http://blog.faceitapps.com)
While I agree that their revenue numbers matter too, that is still only part of the story. YouTube was big news before the buyout because of what they had managed to accomplish – and Facebook is on the same path.
Credit has to be given to any organization that can build such a massive audience in such a short time.
I also agree that I would love to know about “registered users” to compare against the visits. In 2007 Fb was averaging about 2.2 visits per day who spent almost 25 mins on the site.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all that has increased in 2008.
I’m not too surprised, to be honest!
When did facebook overtake myspace? I’m guessing maybe March 2008?
Melon
want to meet you
Wow that kind of growth is insane…. My hat goes off to them, they are definitely doing something right…
Excellent information. Thank you.
To those of you who are heavily against updates on facebook and social networks, I challenge you to re-define your understanding of the role social networks play and will continue to play in business and our day to day lives.
You may have heard the phrase “E-mail is for Old People” while I find it offensive and off base, the premise hints at a shift. Millennials do not use e-mail except when they have to.
I go into greater depth here:
http://virtualw...rks-and-e-mail/
But in brief, as a Millennial we utilize our social networks for most of the services older generations use e-mail for. The exception being when we need to communicate with non-millennials.
For that reason, the coverage of social networks and their evolution and scope is paramount to understanding how business will be done in the future.
“But in brief, as a Millennial we utilize our social networks for most of the services older generations use e-mail for. The exception being when we need to communicate with non-millennials.”
no actually you aren’t special, sorry
Who said anything about special? I said we have different usage behaviors as a group based on what was available when we sought out a solution to our needs.
Troll, your statement fails to even make sense. Never the less, here’s a lollipop. If you have an intelligent objection, please, surprise me and share it.
Facebook is taking over the world…. imagine (and maybe they are) is they were able to match their explosive traffic growth with explosive revenues!! How successful has their social ads been thus far????? http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
This is good, but yeah… revenue and registered users are more important… and Facebook is behind MySpace on these points.
I think this surge of traffic is coming from people creating fan pages and then promoting them… get it?
Nonprofit organizations, for example, are creating fan pages and then sending the link to their new page (you don’t have to be a member of Facebook to view the page) to hundreds of thousands of people. People then click on the link… hence an unique visitor… but they aren’t joining Facebook or becoming fans for the most part.
http://www.face...ons/27795452714
You can’t do much with fan pages as far as marketing… that’s my theory!
It’s possible and definitely a factor Heather.
However, more likely – at least in the US market that it’s coming from the 24+ demographic joining facebook.
In the US I think you’ll find that H.S. Juniors – College Grads 1-2 years out of College will almost all (80%?) have Facebook accounts many of which are used actively.
The demographics for FB are also significantly different than myspace. Just from casual observation Facebook has secured the college/professional demographic, while myspace has the non-college, typically less professional demographic. Once a model is figured out to actively tap their markets, the FB audience will have significantly more revenue to spend.
BTW you mention the registration of pages, but what about the hundreds of thousands of Myspace accounts created by pornspammers on a daily basis? I know I reject 3-7 a day, even after their attempts to crack down. Each of those is a registered account.
It may also be the 40+ Gen-X and Boomer groups.
I’ve had a LinkedIn account for years. In three months, the Facebook connections have zoomed past LinkedIn.
MIT and Stanford classmates; and old staffers have been drifting onto Facebook. It’s been great to reconnect with old friends who have been absent for over 30 years. Waiting for my old China and Japan connections to join Facebook.
Dash,
Exactly! The LinkedIn’ers and other non-millennials who were initially skeptical of Facebook as a professional/socially relevant platform are starting to join and embrace the site which is really helping the audience demographic as a whole mature.
¿y SONICO (www.sonico.com) no aparece en la lista?
@Sonico FAN: en latinoamerica (el mercado natural de sonico) la gente esta migrando hacia las redes en donde están sus amigos… esas son myspace y por supuesto facebook… no tiene sentido inscribirse (y ser activo) en mas de una o maximo dos redes. no le auguro mucho exito a sonico
I guess this means MySpace is dead in the water as a social network.
I don’t understand with so many social networking sites including the one I use (which won’t be Facebook – tried it and hated it), why isn’t there more techcrunch press about the other ones? Is Facebook associated with Techcrunch because lately it makes one wonder. At least give all of the others, both large and small, fair air time. And you can’t say the others aren’t newsworthy.
Lately it’s nothing but Facebook here, repetitive of what Facebook keeps saying. I’m just facebooked out in the news department. They could invent a new wheel (or steal the idea) and I really wouldn’t care at this point.
Same thing happened with Myspace – News saturation was a total turn off after a while when it became repetitive and therefore not newsworthy anymore.
(Steps over dead bloody horse)
The answer is probably yes. Facebook’s massive investment is all about PR and Press, because without having your friends on Facebook their is absolutely nothing to do. This is Facebook’s business model. Technology wise they are a shell of a service, nothing really great and any technology has been pimped out of developers, so spend on massively on Press, including Bloggers like Techcrunch, to build you ups, make you the bomb (a must have) and get users in. If you can’t accomplish this then you are dead in the water. Techcrunch build hype for Facebook and I ma sure the rewards are nice for Techcrunch as well
This is the way the world works.
@The answer is probably yes. Facebook’s massive investment is all about PR and Press, because without having your friends on Facebook their is absolutely nothing to do.
Oh really? News to all the busy people on all the other social networks. FB is definitely uninformed if they believe that. They are one of many and one of the drops in the pond of s/n sites, and if FB is looking at just numbers to validate their popularity, then they are following the mindset of kids that the number of contacts on a social networking site is validation of actually being liked and loved. How many FB “dead” sites are there? (Abandoned).
Paul is quite right. As a programmer I know the costs of the developing and maintaining FB, so the VC money was mostly spent on PR and Press, the most cost-effective marketing.
Analyzed already by many observers, FB did the right things:
1. Initially targeted uni students.
2. Grow a cult among the young (they are not “kids”). Which young won’t to let behind out of fashion?
3. These young users were our future, and will become ones of us in minutes, with money. And they love spending without worrying about mortgage.
Why Facebook need to make money now? Facebook has become something which many fans could not live without, because the grown cult is inside the blood and the soul of users. These users were encouraged to have quick, short and shallow thinking, so they are perfect targets of marketing. They are commodity of FB. I see this, and I am sure many investors and gold digger saw this.
Facebook also is the most popular with the current/recent college grad population, many of which are involved in new tech ventures – so, I’d wager that it’s the most visible/relevant to the Tech Crunch writers, and a decent sized portion of the Tech Crunch reader base.
There’s always guilt by association. Sites align themselves with other sites to bump their ratings and search engine hits. When it seems that’s all a site is doing, credibility becomes questionable.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a news and feed freak. But I want to see some diversity on all topics. This topic here just isn’t hitting the mark.
But are the making money and it is sustainable?
I think facebook used some fake data to increase number of visitors.
Nice move facebook
Now tell us how Techcrunch has grown over the years.
I don’t have an account, but was considering one until I read a comment that they limit “friends” to 5,000…is this true?
2000, and wow.. who needs that many “friends”.
Hint – they aren’t your friends.
Yea, too many, and you can’t even search the world for people
on Facebook, only the ones in your AREA. What a scam.
And friends are illusionary people anyhow. RIGHT?
i’m no english major but i think you’re title is grammatically incorrect – should be “Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, But Also The Fastest Growing”?
this is YoY growth, so lets be clear that a 1055% growth isn’t really that impressive when it’s based on a start of 1033 users!!
It is 1033 thousand. ie 1 mill.
p.s how many are active users where facebook is an established presence? i’m guessing not that many based on widespread anecdotal ‘facebook fatigue’…
This confirms there is somewhere between 15 and 30 million people that socialize online every month in Latin America, if we take into account what is happening at psicofxp, sonico, and http://www.descubrimos.com
Did ever used their social ADD systems? I found it interesting, but did not try it yet. What do you think?
I don’t think you meant this but it’s a hilarious (and quite appropriate revelation)
http://www.ldre...ention-anymore/
Impressive growth to be sure, but I wonder if there’s more to this than meets the eye. In my mind it raises some questions about:
1. Where each product is in it’s lifecycle
2. Measurement of Unique Visitors and what that means in terms of site growth vs. frequency of usage
3. How much revenue is generated per user
Myspace should be considered a mature social network, and as such it’s not surprising that it’s growth has slowed. If you go back in time, you’re likely to see even more impressive growth numbers for Myspace early in it’s product lifecyle. I would be very very surprised if Facebook’s growth rate didn’t level out very soon, unless it can snatch up market share in highly competitive markets in places like Japan (Mixi) and Southeast Asia (Friendster).
Comscore’s measurement of Unique Visitors is slightly suspicious to me because it says nothing about what makes the best social networks valuable, though it can be a great measurement for measuring the health/spread of traditional publishing web sites. Unique Visitor numbers say nothing about the millions of visitors who use these sites, and generate revenue for them, multiple times a day/week/month. They also say nothing about how many of those visitors have been converted to membership, are active members, or are members/frequent users of multiple social networks.
Revenue – Does Myspace’s model make more money than Facebook’s? The only thing I can say for sure is that Myspace serves a lot more ads, and has, in many cases, more interesting ad partnerships.
It would be nice to know how many members each site has, how many are unique to the site, how active they are, and what the lifetime value is.
that rollingstone piece on facebook was the best. you just know that tail is wagging the dog in terms of a business plan.
That’s exactly what I witness here in Europe. Facebook is growing fast and has big community already.
But we are site way behind the US.
Just a short note – you don’t seem to be considering Chinese social networks, such as QQ in your analysis – it’s reported to have 300m active users, dwarfing MySpace and Facebook together: http://www.psfk...-the-dough.html
Erick, did TechCrunch draw this map? And you just decided you knew where to separate Europe, Middle East and Asia on that single land mass?
If the map is from FB: How can FB determine, which part of Iran their users are in (The Middle East border lines cuts Iran in two pieces)?
Russia is cut into 3 parts, and the western border of China also does not seem correct. OK, for Russia and China IP-geolocation data is theoretically available.
But if they aggregate per continent, why are Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia left out entirely? While Myanmar is left in?
I’d send Zuckerberg back to the drawing board, if I were on his board
Anyway: the main point is that growing from nothing, 400% is still very small. Hey, we grow 2000% this year (but our product was only released in Dec 2007).
It is true that every product has a shelf life; however, I personally don’t think this is Facebook’s case. It has grown so fast that it´s really impressive. Facebook applications and features definitely set it apart from other online networking communities. We all should get ready for the new Facebook; it seems like it will provide some cool enhanced features. It seems that finally those annoying “add this application” pages will disappear. I think it will definitely keep on growing until it reaches a point when having a Facebook account is almost indispensable, like Windows Live Messenger.
http://www.KillerStartups.com
@ I think it will definitely keep on growing until it reaches a point when having a Facebook account is almost indispensable, like Windows Live Messenger.
Facebook fatique is what spurns other products to do better (with no need to “take” from another site) It’s been the driving force behind the other s/n’s success (and loyalty) It’s too far gone to undo what’s been done. Redesigning and moving back to a better product wouldn’t fly. It’s flatspinning now.
Slow steady growth sustains. Multiply.com is one example of one that will be sustain. And yes, loyalty there doesn’t stop one from always looking at what else is out there, how it works, if it works, and abandoning accounts as a result of what’s found.
Everyone online can be rich and beautiful with the right avatar choice (especially when it’s someone else’s). Doesn’t pay the bills when those beautiful rich avatars can’t do the click thing. (Because the “should be doing their middle school homework” group aren’t and won’t be. No money/credit card/paypal means no clicky.
We’re adults and most of us prefer being treated like one. Facebook is doing the online community a favor. They are giving us successful alternatives.
While hi5 is #1 the social network in 25 countries, and the leading social network for the global Spanish speaking market, numbers tell only part of the story. There are some real differences in the ways social networking is used outside of the U.S. that will have an impact on social network adoption globally.
-In Mexico City hi5 users enjoy sharing photos with their U.S-based family members in their network
-In Thailand hi5’s millions of users like engaging with each other via photo comments which they call “ments”
-In Romania hi5 users love social, self-expression by beautifying and personalizing their member profile pages with glitter, colors and pop culture themes
Hi5’s approach is different in several ways – it’s culturally-unique, we tailor functionality to the users in each of our markets, we are open, and, although we also have a platform of our own, we emphasize community and personal experience ahead of being a “utility.”
The combination of our localized approach and our focus on bringing people closer together has allowed us to gain popularity in Spain and other markets across the globe. We believe that the real growth of social networking over time will come from the ability to provide a culturally-relevant experience.
@Hi5’s approach is different in several ways – it’s culturally-unique, we tailor functionality to the users in each of our markets, we are open, and, although we also have a platform of our own, we emphasize community and personal experience ahead of being a “utility.”
I actually didn’t find that to be the case in comparison to the ones I use and have tested (which is darn near all of them). I found that the #1 draw for any social neworking site is a connection to the developers, staff, customer support, improvement policies etc. It’s the connection and response that makes more of a difference. My best “for instance” still is Multiply.com ’s staff. Where else does the CEO speak to the users on a one on one basis. Where else does the staff do more than post an announcement and then abandon the announcement as if it was a “this is what you get and you have no input or say about it”.
Again, we are adults and treat us like one and you have an adult following for life. And their kids’ lives, and their kids’ lives.
Regardless of my culture, you need to connect to me. Not just expect me to use your site to connect to other people and that’s about it.
@ adriana:
I value your try to provide an explanation of the success of hi5 internationally, but the fact that you work for them makes me both suspicious (with a very good reason) and think that you are just posting in order to promote your employer’s site (hi5).
the reasons why a social network grows in one country and does not in another one are a mistery in most of the cases, even for the people that have designed/built the service. Take the example of orkut, that dominates in brazil — ask anybody working on orkut, and they will have absolutely no idea why this happened (there are some sociological theories, but nothing concrete or that allows one to provide “the” reason).
that said, there are user acquisition strategies that have absolutely no relation to the quality or the features of the service. One of the best examples, in my opinion, is the dominance of MSN messenger in Europe and LatAm. MSN’s strategy was to “buy” those markets, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in distribution deals, PR and marketing.
And the Messenger example brings one and probably the main reason why users choose one social network over the others: their friends are already there!!! Even when, for example, Yahoo! Messenger has a better design, provides better features and is easier to use, if all my friends are using the MSN product, I have no option but use it. And it happens, to a large extent, in all social networks, walled gardens where it only makes sense to belong if my friends are part of it.
So, in the case of hi5, because you mentioned it, and also in the case of Facebook, the growth (adoption of the service) can be explained by PR, Marketing spending, word of mouth, friends already using it, et cetera. And engagement is probably a function of how many friends a user has in the service.
let’s be clear, the quality of the service, the “local” flavor (other than a translated UI), and other “thoughtful, local-friendly” features are just bla-bla-bla. Again, orkut sucks (or sucked) in terms of design, usability, features… and still, it is huge in Brazil!
lastly, I really don’t believe hi5 knows exactly what users need in local markets. Your company doesn’t even have an international team! so please don’t sell the idea that you were actually aware of what your users really “wanted” in Malaysia or in Portugal or in Spain. Please be a little more humble, or at least don’t try to seem a company that really understands local markets. You don’t
What’s about Skyrock ?? better than Bebo and Friendster!!
This is very interesting
What about Tencent (QQ)? I think you fail to mention them – completely.
Yeah he’s right Why don’t u add QQ to the list of diagrams
facebook is less that awesome to work with form an advertising standpoint. they have yet to fully overhaul the “pages” system which could be a huge source of revenue for them. their framework is incredibly limited and difficult to work with, and is almost impossible to track from an analytics perspective (unless you have one hell of a media buy in order to get an iframe). not to mention…. their videos? it’s one of the only video hosting sites out there that don’t allow you to syndicate or embed the hosted video on other sites… FB need to step it up, social networks are evolving, and it’s going to be tricky to stay up to par.
Wow some really interesting numbers.
http://www.yocial.com
Yehh! you are absolute right. Can some one explain me that is Facebook can help to increasing website traffic? How ?
Does anyone still think that Sonico has a chance?
Didn’t think so.
@ Dash: “Monetization follows acquisition of the loyal community of users. Remember that Google took over 5 years to find it’s means to monetize.”
That’s a convenient half truth. The real truth is Google could have dropped Ads into their search engine at any time during those 5 years but they chose to live off VC funding and focus on the core product. Once they did decide to monetize it still took them awhile to come up with the current system – they originally launched with CPM pricing. They “stole” the CPC bidding concept from Overture/Yahoo and lost the lawsuit accordingly (but won the search war).
FB on the other hand has been trying to monetize for a few years now and is still struggling to come up with anything of real value.
I think that Yahoo Mail or Hotmail is actually a closer business case comparison to a social network site like Facebook than a Search Engine is as well. Forget the hoopla, you need to understand audience intent in order to provide a real valuation.