Although
Facebook's growth appears to be slowing in the United States (the site added a mere 320,800 new users in June, down from 7.8 million new users in May), the U.S. is only half the story. Or actually,
significantly less than half the story. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the site's explosive growth over the last few years has been how much of this expansion took place outside the
U.S. This is in marked contrast to its predecessor and rival MySpace.
MySpace isn't totally unknown outside the U.S., of course. U.S. unique visitors dominated the initial MySpace boom,
jumping from 32.5 million in December 2005 to about 75 million in June 2008, but the number of foreign users also increased substantially over the same period, from 15 million to 40 million. Thus the
proportion of non-U.S. unique visitors increased from 31% to 35% over this period.
To begin with Facebook was even more U.S.-centric: in December 2005 virtually all its roughly 11 million
users were in the U.S. By June 2007, however, a significant number of non-U.S. users had showed up, contributing about 17 million out of a monthly visitor base of 52 million, or about 33% of the
total. And the proportion kept growing, until U.S. users were easily in the minority: by June 2008, there were roughly 35 million U.S. visitors versus roughly 95 million foreign visitors to the site,
meaning non-U.S. visitors made up 70% of the traffic. By January of this year, the proportion was even more skewed, with 115 million U.S. visitors versus 335 million non-U.S., making up just 25% of
the total monthly visitor base.
Facebook's global reach makes it a good candidate for the first truly global mass medium. Obviously print, radio, and television have blazed the broadcast trail, but how many truly global
newspapers, magazines, or shows are there? Most newspapers with an international following usually appeal to a small segment of any given country's population, confined to the business or diplomatic
elites. And while certain TV shows cross cultural boundaries well, they're not always popular at the same time (see the taste-defying popularity of "Baywatch" and "Hogan's Heroes" in Germany). Big TV
events, like the World Cup and the Olympics, are transient, and anyway different country's national media tend to focus on different events. Some shows follow immigrant populations, like telenovelas
in America, but these still don't attract much attention among the mainstream population.