Facebook Gaining On Orkut Like A BRIC House

In its quest for global dominance, Facebook lately is making inroads in Brazil and India -- countries where Google-owned Orkut is the leading social media property. The number of Facebook users in the two countries has doubled in the last two months after failing to gain much traction against Orkut previously.

The social network now has more than 1 million in Brazil and 3.2 million in India, according to new data from Inside Facebook.

Facebook is not about to overtake Orkut -- which has 22.5 million users in Brazil and 14.5 million in India as of May, according to comScore. But unlike Facebook, Orkut has seen its growth slow in those countries in recent months. The social site has added only about 500,000 users in Brazil since January and 1.5 million since then in India.

And given Facebook's potential to double in new countries every two to three months, it could just be a matter of time before it catches up. With 230 million active users worldwide, the site is still growing at the rate of roughly 600,000 new members a day.

"Brazil and India are far from the only countries where Facebook is fighting to claw its way to the top spot," wrote Justin Smith, editor of Inside Facebook, in a Wednesday blog post. "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."

One country where Facebook has not seen explosive growth is China, the largest of the so-called BRIC nations that also includes Brazil, India and Russia. In April, Inside Facebook estimated the social network had only 300,000 users in China, out of a population of more than 1.3 billion. Less than a drop in the bucket.

The blog attributed Facebook's difficulties in China to various factors including an Internet culture there that prizes anonymity (because of close government scrutiny of online activity), the popularity of different social applications and games in China, and young users more focused on entertainment sites than social networking.

The infamous "Great Firewall" of China could prove a long-term obstacle to Facebook's expansion there. In June, the Chinese government blocked access to popular sites such as Hotmail, Flickr and Twitter in advance of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square student-led democracy movement. YouTube has been blocked since March.

And China no doubt took note of the role social tools like Twitter and Facebook played in helping to fuel protests in Iran following the disputed results of its presidential election. Without rapid growth in China, hitting Facebook's ultimate goal of 1 billion users will just take a little longer.

Facebook-Audience Growth-Brazil chart

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