The Channel Wire

August 13, 2008

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are all seeing significant growth in their subscriber base -- just not in the United States. According to a report conducted by comScore, a company that measures online digital growth, world-wide growth of social networks has grown by 25 percent, compared to just nine percent in the United States.

The region driving the most growth in adapting social networks like Facebook and MySpace is classified as The Middle East-Africa region. In June 2007, comScore recorded 18,226,000 unique visitors in that region. In June 2008 that number jumped to 30,197,000 unique visitors, a jump of 66 percent from the previous year.

While North American social network users may have been early Friendster, MySpace and Facebook adopters, the domestic numbers have leveled off. Compared to the Middle East-Africa region, North American network growth was recorded at nine percent.

"While the social networking trend first took off in North America, it is beginning to reach a point of maturity in the region," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. "However, the phenomenon is still growing rapidly in other regions around the world -- especially as the established American brands turn their focus to developing markets."

The other markets that are being developed, besides the Middle East-Africa region, are Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific, all of which have grown more than 20 percent since July of 2007. Europe leads the charge with the highest number of new adopters. In 2007, there were approximately 122.5 million users. In 2008 that number jumped 35 percent to 165.2 million. Latin American social networking users grew 33 percent from 40 million to 53.2 million users. The Asia Pacific region grew from 162.7 million users to 200.5 million users over the course of the past year.

The Asia Pacific market is a good example of how some social networks will catch fire in some regions while not in others.

Before MySpace and Facebook began to dominate online social networking, Friendster was the toast of the town. But before long, MySpace caught up and overtook it with users. The same thing happened to MySpace -- which is by no means dead in the water -- when Facebook became the big dog. In the United States Friendster became a second or third thought. But in the Asia Pacific market, Friendster is alive and well. In fact, the social networking company recently hired Richard Kimber, former Google regional managing director of South Asia, to be the new CEO and a member of the board of directors. Along with that announcement came a cool $20 million in venture capital to expand Friendster's footprint in the region. From 2007 to 2008, comScore reports that Friendster grew from 24.6 million to 37 million users.

"Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia Pacific and is clearly leading the competition," said Kimber in a statement.

Facebook is no slouch either. The social network grew 38 percent in North America over the course of the past year. That's a relatively modest growth rate when considering that Facebook growth in Europe alone grew 303 percent from 2007 to 2008. The Asia Pacific market grew 458 percent from 3.7 million users to 20.7 million in 2008. The Middle East-Africa region grew 403 percent from 2.9 million to 14.9 million users. Meanwhile, Latin America saw the largest percentage growth year over year going from 1 million users to 11.9 million users for a growth rate of a staggering 1055 percent.