Technology
The Ten Nations Where Facebook Rules The Internet
May 9, 2011 5:20 am
Last Updated: May 9, 2011 9:19 am
In 10 countries, more than 86% of users are on Facebook. That kind of dominance is rare for any company.
Facebook has 600 million members worldwide and continues to grow. It faces the same challenge that Google does in continuing its meteoric rise. Google has never really gotten more than 20% market share in China. That market is dominated by local search engine Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU). Google also faces stiff competition against local sites in Japan and Russia and has probably peaked in large Western nations. Meanwhile, the US government and EU has begun to question whether the search engine giant has become a monopoly.
Facebook has challenges of its own outside its home market. Use of Facebook is curtailed in China. Other nations such as Singapore have tried to block the site as well. Social network sites including Facebook and Twitter played a critical communications role in the recent uprisings in the Middle East. That will not endear them to some of the regimes in that region.
According to data provided by web analytics firm comScore, Facebook’s market share in some countries is extremely high, although the numbers of Internet users compared with the overall population is very small. Eighty-seven percent of online visitors in Peru use Facebook, but only 27% of the people there have Internet access.
24/7 Wall St. looked at the ten countries in which Facebook has tremendous dominance of the online market. Most are concentrated in Latin America or Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia. There is no obvious explanation for this except that some of these markets are among the first where Facebook introduced its service.
Facebook’s overall presence in the US is smaller than it is in the nations on our list. Inside Facebook reported late last year that “The overall penetration level of the US has continued to creep up through monthly volatility” and now stands at 43.8 percent. Facebook’s growth in America may continue rapidly, if the ten countries on this list are an indication of its potential
For the sake of comparison, 24/7 Wall St. has also included the penetration of LinkedIn and Twitter in the countries listed on “Ten Nations Where Facebook Rules The Internet.” Twitter has 5% to 15% online penetration is most of the nations, although it moves toward 20% in some. LinkedIn’s presence in most is very small.
24/7 used data from comScore, Inside Facebook, New Media Trend Watch, and ZDNet to do its analysis.
These are the Ten Nations Where Facebook Rules The Internet
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