Social networking: Global phenomenon

NEWS

The latest statistics from ComScore show social networking sites such as Facebook are growing rapidly across the globe, even as that growth slows down in the US where they originated.

Earlier on Tuesday, performance firm Pingdom released numbers pulled from Google Insights for Search, showing that different social networks have very different levels of "interest" across the world. ComScore's numbers, also released Tuesday, underscore the fact that social sites are increasingly global in nature - and sometimes unexpectedly.

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According to ComScore's numbers, social-networking sites may be nearing a peak in the US. The industry's foothold in the US and Canada grew only nine per cent from June 2007 but in Asia it grew 23 per cent, in Latin America 33 per cent, and in Europe 35 per cent. And social networks grew a massive 66 per cent in the Middle East and Africa. The nine per cent growth in North America meant it was the only region of the world where the growth of social networks did not outpace the growth of the internet-using populace as a whole, which ComScore pegged at 11 per cent.

The fastest-growing site is, not surprisingly, Facebook, with a 153 per cent increase in unique visitors noted. Most of that growth is international - its US growth was estimated at 38 per cent. Hi5, a San Francisco-founded site with a big foothold in Latin America, grew 100 per cent. Friendster, another US social network, grew 50 per cent. Growing at 41 per cent is Google's Orkut, at 32 per cent is AOL's Bebo, and at 19 per cent is Skyrock, a France-based social network that remains extremely popular among the youth in its home country.

News Corp's MySpace, still the biggest social network in the US, is not doing quite as well internationally. Its unique visitors have gone up only three percent year-over-year, ComScore said.

ComScore executive Jack Flanagan said in a statement: "Facebook has done an exceptional job of leveraging its brand internationally during the past year. By increasing the site's relevance to local markets through local language interface translation, the site is now competing strongly or even capturing the lead in several markets where it had a relatively minor presence just a year ago."

Facebook's internationalisation strategy has consisted of leaving the single site intact but allowing members to translate it into the local languages of their choice. MySpace, with its focus more on media consumption rather than communication, has launched several dozen localised editions of the site instead.

MySpace representatives have said the site's aim is to gain a long-term foothold across the world, not to be a hot global fad. At the same time, it's been engaging in high-profile marketing projects outside the US, and at this point it doesn't seem to have produced results yet.