Facebook Enjoys 153 percent growth

Independent data has established that Facebook boasts 153 percent year on year growth. Meanwhile, rival MySpace is floundering with essentially flat growth.

This past June, Facebook was able to attract 132.1 million unique users. MySpace managed 117.6 million and the chasm is likely to widen. Also impressive was the performance of Hi5, which doubled its unique user base to 56.4 million.

Social networking as a whole is now considered a mature market in the United States, with a modest growth rate of 9%. Most of the potential for expansion comes from outsides the United States. In the same period, growth in the Middle East and Africa has exceeded 60% while that in Europe has outstripped 30%. But Latin America leads the pack with an 11 fold increase in unique user base.

Non-US users now account for 63% of the Facebook population. The diverging fortunes of Facebook and MySpace can largely be attributed to their differing approaches to emerging markets. Facebook has pursued them aggressively and localized content and language features accordingly. MySpace treads abroad with caution chasing the advertising dollars over the user population size.