Inside Facebook

Facebook grew by 1.5 million people in October across the 15 countries we track in the greater Middle East in our Global Market Monitor. A loosely-defined region stretching from Morocco to Pakistan, it is dwarfed by Facebook’s growth in most other parts of the world. In October currently totals slightly more than 12 million monthly active users, out of the 326 million that Facebook had worldwide by the end of the month.

But the growth seems to be picking up — in September, for example, it grew by  700,000, less than half of last month’s increase. Six countries gained more than 100,000 users in October, including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco.

Of course, the caveat is that we don’t include Turkey on this list, as it is also part of Europe. In that region, it is the second-largest Faceb0ok country, with 15.3 million monthly active users — more than the rest of the greater Middle East, combined.