With Facebook topping 330 million active users over the past week, the company’s strongest growth region continues to be Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook added close to 17M active users in Asia alone. Since my previous post, the share of active users from Asia grew by 2% (to 13.5% of all users), and roughly 1 in 7 users now come from the region. With a market penetration under 2%, Facebook is poised to add many more users in Asia (and Africa).
Compared to the U.S., the proportion of Facebook users in their teens (13-17) or in the 18-25 age group are much higher in Asia:
As was the case in other parts of the world, expect the share of users 45 and older to climb as Facebook becomes more mainstream in Asia. Growth was strong across all age groups in Asia over the last 12 weeks, particularly among teens (+90%) and the 18-25 age group (+60%).
In other regions, notably North America, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, growth in the 18-25 age bracket, lagged behind users 45 and older.
In closing I want to highlight countries (within several regions) where Facebook has been growing rapidly:
In Europe, growth has been fastest in the East: as an example, the number of active users in Poland doubled over the last 12 weeks. Growth in Southeast Asia remains strong in countries that have been home to Friendster’s core user base. While Facebook added over 800,000 active users in Brazil, for now Orkut remains the dominant social network in South America’s most populous country.