Europe's Facebook Growth Moved East in June 2010

[Editor's Note: The data cited in this article is excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Visit Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.] Growth for Facebook's top countries in Europe dipped sharply in June of 2010, giving several eastern European countries that rarely break into the monthly top 10 a chance to show off their progress. Germany, a central European country that has lagged its neighbors directly to the west, lead the pack with 403,860 new monthly active users. That equates to 4.2 percent growth for the month, which isn't stellar. But the important detail here is that Germany's growth has been fairly steady of late, instead of moving in fits and starts as it did earlier this year and last. Italy, also, is steady from May. Surprisingly, Romania comes in third, with 253,360 new users -- almost 20 percent growth for the country, in which only a third of the population is online at all, according to World Bank figures. Romania was also logging high growth earlier this year, then dropped off. But even moving in fits and spurts, it's fast approaching 10 percent penetration. Hungary, also, managed to claw its way up the rankings in June, along with Russia, which was actually shedding Facebook users for several months. There's no telling whether Russia will continue growing or slip again -- with under a single percentage point of penetration, Facebook is definitely not yet part of the Russian way of life, unlike a site like the Facebook doppelganger Vkontakte. The rest of the European countries that saw decent growth in June aren't remarkable this month, unless for their relatively lower rate of growth in June as compared to May. France, for instance, dropped from 1.4 million new MAU to 163,500 in June, while Turkey, which has been a reliable grower, isn't present at all, having actually dropped a few thousand users. Such changes in growth from month to month are typical, though, and nothing to worry about yet. Here's the top 10 chart: Greater Europe now has some 152 million members on Facebook, making up about a third of the social network's total userbase. Its growth rate in June was 0.7 percent, leading to a total penetration of 23.5 percent. Full data on Facebook's audience growth throughout Europe and in countries around the world is presented in the July 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor report, available through Inside Facebook Gold. An Inside Facebook Gold membership also includes data on language growth, audience demographics by country, and user behavior stats for the Facebook business ecosystem. To learn more about the membership, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

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Europe's Facebook Growth Moved East in June 2010

Chris Morrison

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Chris Morrison