• The Wall Street Journal, Monday, June 11, 2012 10:19 AM

Facebook may rule the roost in most global markets, but the rate at which the company is growing is another matter. In the United States, for one, the social network’s user growth rate is slowing sharply, according to new comScore data. In April, U.S. unique visitors to the Web site increased to 158 million -- up just 5% year-over-year.

“That was Facebook's lowest U.S. user growth rate since comScore began tracking the data in 2008 and was down from 24% growth in April 2011 and 89% in April 2010,” The Wall Street Journal writes, citing comScore. The trend is all the more concerning for a newly public company. Indeed, “Facebook went public last month on its prospects for growth,” writes WSJ. “But in some key areas, the social network's growth rates are already maturing.”

Worse still, the growth rate in the amount of time people spend on the site -- i.e., engagement -- also appears to be slowing. In April, Facebook users spent more than six hours a month on the site, up 16% from a year earlier. But that compares with a 23% increase in 2011 and 57% in 2010, according to comScore.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »