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| By Justin Smith | 33 Comments » |
While Facebook has over 230 million active users and has been rapidly growing around the world in the last 24 months, Orkut, the social network run by Google, has remained dominant in Brazil and India. Although Facebook has grown slowly in those two countries, it’s never been able to turn the corner – until now.
Starting about 60 days ago, Facebook’s growth began accelerating rapidly in both Brazil and India, growing several times faster in May and June than it did in March and April.
In fact, Facebook nearly doubled in Brazil during May alone. Its growth has continued in June, and today Facebook has just crossed the 1 million active user mark in Brazil for the first time ever – up 100% in the last 45 days.
Granted, Orkut still claims well over 20 million monthly visitors in Brazil, but we’ve seen this kind of pattern before. Facebook has the potential to double in new countries every 2-3 months several times over as it spreads through new populations, but it is probably still too early to claim that this is the canary in the coal mine for Orkut.
Curiously, however, just as Facebook started exploding in Brazil, the same thing was happening in India, the other major country where Orkut is the leading social network with 13 million monthly active users.
While Facebook has been growing slowly and steadily in India for the last couple of years, Facebook exploded in May and June, doubling from 1.6 million to 3.2 million monthly active users in the country in the last 60 days.
Do these trends correlate? Time will tell, but it certainly looks like Facebook is gaining significant steam in Orkut’s biggest strongholds.
Brazil and India are far from the only countries where Facebook is fighting to claw its way to the top spot. Nevertheless, Facebook continues to grow in almost every country we’re tracking the company in – and in most countries, by double digit percentages in total reach every month. Facebook is clearly a global phenomenon – it will be very interesting to see where things stand in another year.
Note: All data from Facebook’s advertiser tools.
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July 1st, 2009 at 8:34 am
Justin,
interesting post. Where do you get the data for Brazil and India, and does it show unique users or new Facebook members?
July 1st, 2009 at 9:05 am
Justin: could you share the source of Facebook data, or the methodology deployed (in case it’s survey based). I’m skeptical about such proclamations when the methodology is not shared.
Facebook has received significant airtime on TV in India, courtesy promotions by mobile operator Aircel which is promoting facebook alongwith its ‘Pocket Internet’ service. The commercials have been aired during IPL and T20 World Cup Cricket matches, which received the highest viewership in India. The promotions began two-three months ago, which co-incides with the rise in userbase.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:08 am
Ben and Nikhil: All data is from Facebook’s advertiser tools. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:52 am
[...] Justin Smith reported, "Facebook nearly doubled in Brazil during May alone. Its growth has continued in June, and today Facebook has just crossed the 1 million active user mark in Brazil for the first time ever – up 100% in the last 45 days." [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I think it perfectly reflects the lack of investment by Google on Orkut.
The platform has a very bad design (never actually changed it) and old technology.
I guess Google decided to only support Orkut and add small, incremental changes since its users are not in the main online ad markets.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] Justin Smith reported, "Facebook nearly doubled in Brazil during May alone. Its growth has continued in June, and today Facebook has just crossed the 1 million active user mark in Brazil for the first time ever – up 100% in the last 45 days." [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] de usuários indo no site todo mês, o Orkut continua dominando no Brasil. Mas segundo dados do Inside Facebook, o número de usuários do Facebook no Brasil está subindo loucamente, e em menos de 2 anos pode [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 6:23 pm
[...] owned Orkut miss a trick in India, by not partnering with more Indian companies? Inside Facebook reports, basing their findings on Facebook’s advertiser tools, that the social network saw a [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I think this was a very predictable occurrence. Orkut’s stronghold has been India, Brazil and a few other countries. There have been very few updates to Orkut overall and it just doesnt have the flexibility that Facebook offers. The applications arent as abundant on Orkut. Unless they do something really quick with their upgrades, its very likely that they would lose their position to Facebook and other social networking sites even in their strongholds very soon.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 am
[...] o blog não-oficial Facebook Insider a rede social americana Facebook dobrou sua audiência no Brasil e na Índia. O número de [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
[...] InsideFacebook While Facebook has been growing slowly and steadily in India for the last couple of years, Facebook [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
[...] Via: Inside Facebook [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm
[...] Via: Inside Facebook [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 6:14 am
[...] em 2009). Outras fontes falam que a base de usuários do Orkut no Brasil chega a 37 milhões. Na Índia, o Facebook tem 3,2 milhões de usuários e o Orkut, 14,5 [...]
July 4th, 2009 at 7:57 am
[...] em 2009). Outras fontes falam que a base de usuários do Orkut no Brasil chega a 37 milhões. Na Índia, o Facebook tem 3,2 milhões de usuários e o Orkut, 14,5 [...]
July 7th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
[...] sources suggest Orkut’s userbase in Brazil could be as high as 37 million. In India, Facebook has 3.2 million users and Orkut, 14.5 [...]
July 8th, 2009 at 7:24 am
dawg orkut is fo FOB’s and loser iight!
Facebook is the shyt..the beast yeahh GO FACEBOOK!
pc out!
July 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am
[...] is fighting hard to gain ground against Orkut in India, and now is launching a new developer contest for original applications developed in the [...]
July 12th, 2009 at 7:13 am
[...] por muitas companhias e dezenas de milhares de desenvolvedores e, como se não bastasse, parece que vai vaporizar orkut no brasil, onde começou a dobrar a audiência a cada dois [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 1:24 am
We need to wait for 3 to 4 months more to infer correctly whether the rise in facebook’s growth in India is due to the ruboff from Aircel campaign…the growth curve seems to coincide with the Aircel campaign though.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Yes we must admit that Facebook is getting popular in Brazil,India and other countries.However it must be pointed out that all social networking services can effectively feed into each other as the first service that one joins forms an ice-breaking feeder into the rest of the web2.0 experience.Whereas Yahoo is shooting itself in the foot over shutting down Geocities/Yahoo!360,etc services Google just needs to have all of its Gmail,Googlemail,and other Google account holders(who sign in with other email addresses to its other services)automatically registered with Orkut-ditch the exclusive invites system.This would give all Google account holders their own first default entry into the rest of the web2.0 world.One could say that Orkut was the spearhead that gave Facebook its expansion room in Brazil and India.We must also realise that there is plenty of internet users of the emailsphere who have yet to be absorbed into the web2.0 world.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:41 am
[...] Is Orkut in Trouble? Facebook Just Doubled in Brazil and India By cbmilne33 Is Orkut in Trouble? Facebook Just Doubled in Brazil and India [...]
July 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
[...] o FB e se posicionar estrategicamente para seu crescimento por aqui. Foi nesse blog que li o post Is Orkut in Trouble? Facebook Just Doubled in Brazil and India, que mostra o seguinte [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
[...] has made some in-roads in Brazil, now touting more than one million users and growing. Numbers doubled in May alone, according to InsideFacebook.com. Graphic courtesy of [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 10:42 am
[...] fato aqui é que o Facebook é, no mundo, o que o Orkut é no Brasil: tem pelo menos 230 milhões de usuários ativos. Entendeu? Veja outros dados oficiais, ou de especialistas ou comparados em outras matérias que [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
[...] has been growing rapidly in Brazil this summer – its audience in the country doubled in May alone – so the Brazilian developers and publishers on hand are likely very excited to hear from the [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Hello,
it is great to see, how much fast facebok is growing in brazil. I want show you perhaps also an good alternative page: http://www.stuxum.com and they have cute people inside
Kisses
Nat
August 5th, 2009 at 9:58 am
[...] fact is that Facebook is, in the rest of the world, what Orkut is in Brazil: it has more than 230 million active users. Got that? See other official data, or comments from experts, or take a look at other information [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 4:13 am
You can now even study the Facebook marketing statistics and demographics on http://darealya.com/facebook-marketing-statistics-demographics-re-1 via http://www.checkfacebook.com
October 5th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
[...] Os dados do gráfico foram obtidos no site insidefacebook e também no criador de anúncios do [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Thanx for the valuable information. I love orkut. But my friends are spending more time on face book. So Iv got no choice but to move.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:56 am
[...] into Orkut’s advantage in Brazil as well. While ultra recent data isn’t available, this blog post dated July 1st from inside Facebook suggests the same trendline in Brazil as in [...]
November 7th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Hi,
I am currently using orkut and facebook i always choose orkut as my regular usage..
Because orkut was really nice social site and this article giving me info about orkut so i really like it..