Brazilians have begun embracing Facebook in big numbers over the last 3 months, and in order to help foster continued growth, Facebook has launched a developers contents in the country. The Facebook Developer Contest – Brazil follows the formula of previous challenges in other countries, with Brazilian developers vying for cash prizes for Facebook Applications and Facebook Connect integrations.

This contest is the latest in the “Build, Engage, Win” series that Facebook has created targeting developers in specific countries, with successful implementation in from France, Spain, Germany and India. It’s also a great way to make inroads towards taking some of the market share currently enjoyed by Orkut, which still has almost 6 times as many monthly users as Facebook.

Facebook’s audience in Brazil has grown ten-fold from a little over 130,000 to more than 1.3 million in the last year, with most of those users coming on board in the last 3 months. However, there’s still a lot of room for continued growth. Brazilian developers who invest time and effort in Facebook should have a large audience as the number of Facebook users in Brazil continues to grow this year.