Inside Facebook

Facebook now has 326 million monthly active users, according to the data the company makes publicly available, and Europe countries make up around a third of this number. From the United Kingdom to Turkey, many of the largest countries in the region gained the most users, totaling 108 million monthly actives by the end of this month — across Europe, that’s up around 10 million from October.

The trend is shifting from what we’ve seen before, when the United Kingdom and northern European countries with smaller populations gained the most. Now, in order to make our list of the top 20 fastest-growing countries in the region, you need to be a big country with room left to grow. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and a few others have already apparently maxed out with more than 30% of the total country using the site every month; in fact, Iceland continues to have the highest Facebook penetration rate in the world, at 51.6% percent.

The United Kingdom gained the most new users of any European country last month, with 1.98 million new people using the site. It continues to be the single largest country for Facebook on the continent, with 22.6 million monthly active users. Behind the three Scandinavian countries mentioned, it has the fourth-highest-penetration rate, at 36.9%.

Meanwhile, France and Italy both grew by more than a million users, with Turkey, Spain and Germany close behind.

Here are a few milestones, across the map. Turkey passed 15 million users to reach 15.3 million from 14.5 million last month, making it region’s second-largest country; in a sign of its popularity, we’re seeing Turkish applications and pages become regular hits. Germany, a country with an entrenched set of local competitors (albeit ones that are patterned after Facebook) went from 4.36 million monthly active users to 5.08 million. Greece grew from 1.90 million to 2.09 million. Ireland, where Facebook’s European headquarters is located, grew from 995,000 to 1.15 million.

In contrast, the only two countries in the world to lose Facebook users were Cyprus (see here for more on that mysterious case) and Norway. The latter country has the second-highest penetration rate in the world after Iceland, coming in at 45.1%. But, in a statistical blip of Facebook fatigue, it fell from 2.26 million last month to 2.17 million monthly actives.

Overall, Facebook’s growth makes it an interesting new place for third parties to do business, which explains the recent surge in European applications and monetization companies.

To get a full look at Facebook’s monthly global gains, check out our Facebook Global Market Monitor.