Facebook Growing Fast In Foreign Countries

It seems that a global financial crisis isn’t about to stop Facebook’s spread.  Even as the European Central Bank delivers its biggest interest rate cut ever, a new report is documenting the social network’s impressive levels of growth overseas.

According to Ben Lorica, there’s been a 17 percent rate of change in North America over the last 12 weeks, but only Africa failed to tie or improve upon this number (showing a 15 percent rate of change).  Oceania, Central America and the Caribbean, Asia, South America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe generated rates of 17, 22, 32, 33, 45, and 49 percent, respectively.

 U.S. Share Of Facebook’s User Base Shrinking
(Credit: O’Reilly
Radar)

As a result, U.S. users now make up less than a third of Facebook’s overall audience, with their share dropping from 35 to 30 percent between May and December.

Since it doesn’t look like this trend is going to reverse itself anytime soon, Facebook is likely to adopt more of an international focus.  A sensibility along these lines is developing even now, with the Facebook Developers blog recently discussing a Facebook Developer Garage event in India and the Le Web Internet conference in France.

By gathering ideas and/or employees from other continents, Facebook might stumble upon some new monetization solutions.  At the very least, it’s liable to ensure that its worldwide user growth continues.