Facebook Adds 40+ Million Users in 90 days

Written by Paul van Veenendaal @ ViralBlog

In October 2008 I wrote that Facebook surpassed the 110 million active users mark, now three months later the popular social network site has reached a major milestone: 150 million users!!

CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

You read it correctly: More than 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. And in several countries Facebook’s user-growth doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in just 90 days!

Some keyfindings:

• Facebook’s growth rate accelerated by at least 25% in least 60 countries
  
• Facebook now reaches over 10% of the national population in 26 countries
  
• Italy, Indonesia, Tunisia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania grew by more than 100%
  
• Canada, Chile, Colombia, Norway, South Africa, Egypt and Lebanon, Panama and China saw no double-digit user growth
  
• The US gained 10 million new users. The US accounts for 30% of Facebook’s total active users
  
• New additions: Macedonia and Oman
  

As stated before Facebook still struggles in some countries and continents to gain ground. Facebook is no match compared to local competitors like

• Vkontakte in Russia and Ukraine (26 million users)
  
• Raymond Spanjar’s Hyves.nl (8.0 million)
  
• Hungary’s iWiW, (1.7 million)
  
• Germany’s StudiVZ (12 million)
  
• Google’s Orkut in Brazil, India and Pakistan (67 million)
  
• Poland’s Nasza Klasa (11 million)
  
• Japan’s Mixi.jp (20 million)
  
• Hi5.com in Portugal. Hi5 was the most visited website during 2008 with around 6.5 billion pages visited
  
• Bebo in New Zealand (1 million) and Ireland (1.3 million)
  
• And then there are also still the global competitors Netlog, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Bebo with a strong user base in Europe, South America and Asia.
  

However in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Turkey Facebook has made solid gains, nearing Skyrock in France and Netlog in Belgium, doubling its users in Spain in 3 months time and outpacing Splinder and Netlog in Italy, Netlog in Turkey and Lunarstorm in Sweden.

Growth since 2006 of Facebook Active Users until 140 million users
(Source: Inside Facebook)

Inside Facebook expects Facebook could cross 200 million monthly active users as early as April, or in about 90 days.

Some more quick Facebook statistics:

• Average user has 100 friends on the site
  
• More than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
  
• More than 13 million users update their statuses at least once each day
  
• More than 3 million users become fans of Pages each day
  
• More than 800 million photos uploaded to the site each month
  
• More than 5 million videos uploaded each month
  
• More than 20 million pieces of content (web links, news stories etc.) shared each month
  
• More than 2 million events created each month
  
• More than 20 million active user groups exist on the site