beyondbrics

For Facebook in Latin America, there’s plenty to “like”. The social networking site continues to see impressive growth across the region, dominating overall numbers and threatening to overtake Orkut in the all-important Brazilian market.

Facebook had 91m visitors in LatAm in June, according to a report from comScore in September. The figure represents a 52 per cent leap compared to the same period last year and puts the site far ahead of Windows Live Profile, which came in a distant second with 35.6m visitors (see chart below).

Latin America continues to be one of the burgeoning international markets, and Alejandro Fosk, senior vice president Latin America for comScore, says cultural factors have helped drive continuous growth in social media.

As Fosk says: “Keeping contact with friends and being very proactive in terms of uploading information and sharing information – that’s something that we all share as Latin Americans and I believe it does explain part of the success of social media here in the region.”

Orkut, which is owned and operated by Google, came in third. However, it remains the most popular social network in Brazil, with 35.7m visitors in June – a 20 per cent increase from the year before.

But as the chart below shows, Facebook is catching up fast. Traffic from Brazil hit 24m visitors in June – up from 8m last June.

Brazil represents a crucial market not just because of its large population, but for just how “social” the users are. Brazilians on average have the second most friends on social networks with 231 (Malaysia is first at 233), according to a study by TNS Digital Life.

The good news for Orkut is that this doesn’t necessarily mean people are abandoning them for Facebook: 21.1m people visited both sites in June 2011. So while Facebook continues to make a run at Orkut’s Brazilian dominance, it looks like there’s room for both for now.

“What we’re seeing in all other markets is that the the leading social network sank when Facebook came to market,” Fosk says. “Orkut was the first to come to this market. What we’re seeing now is Brazilians are using both.”

Twitter comes in as the fourth most popular social network in LatAm, but might be the dark horse to topple Facebook in the market. While it still has a long way to go, the micro-blogging service is enjoying tremendous popularity. Twitter engages more than 23 per cent of Brazilians – the third highest percentage in the world, while Venezuela comes in at 21 per cent, and boasts a 59 per cent rise in LatAm in the last year.

“If you see the growth of Twitter in some particular markets such as Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, they are closely related to political instances, like election periods or important things going on,” Fosk says. “In the case of Venezuela, you have the president of Venezuela, [Hugo] Chávez, he’s using twitter a lot, so the population uses twitter because it is the only way to express their thoughts. It is not such an open market in terms of the news.”

Related reading:
Case study: Facebook goes to Canada, FT
Social media in China: be everywhere, beyondbrics
India’s social media: Facebook vs Orkut, beyondbrics