See, Facebook Really Isn't a Global Phenomenon

Nate Elliott | November 09, 2007, 02:13 PM

I got some sideways glances a few weeks back when I said that Facebook isn't a global phenomenon. And when Facebook announced the Microsoft investment a few days later, they very pointedly stated in their press release that "almost 60 percent of Facebook's users are outside the US." It seems that some people really do think this is a truly global site.

But I've spent the last half hour data-geeking the new Facebook ad targeting tool -- the one that lets you look at how many users there are based on different target criteria like age or gender or country -- and doing some rough calculations. The data couldn't be much clearer. While 55% of Facebook's users from outside the US, the majority of those non-US users live in Canada and the UK.

In fact, according to the quick math I did from Facebook's own data:
- 63% of Facebook's users are from North America
- 78% of Facebook's users are from the US, Canada, or the UK
- 84% of Facebook's users are from countries where English is the primary language (in order: the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Ireland)

So it looks like my analysis was right: nearly all of Facebook's audience consists of native English speakers from a small handful of countries, and unless they invest in creating local versions of their site they'll continue to cede the non-English speaking markets to local players.

And yes, of course there's a difference between "global" and "non-English." But I think most readers will agree that it's hard for a business to call themselves "global" when they get nearly two-thirds of their users from a single continent, and more than three-quarter of their users from just three countries.

Language translation and deeper forms of localization form a big part of our new report, Social Networking Across Europe: Using Localization and Personalization to Drive Growth. If you're a JupiterResearch client, I recommend you go have a look. (If you're not, don't worry: we'll be releasing some of the data publicly in the coming weeks.) We also cover the idea of cross-border and cross-language web usage in our report Demographic Profile: Understanding the US Globaphile.

And for more fun with Facebook data, go check out Social Media Today.