Facebook only for English speakers

Facebook may dominate the social-networking scene in the UK, but it doesn't seem to be interested in conquering the non-English speaking world.

That's according to one analyst who said that Facebook would continue to lose out to other social-networking sites such as MySpace unless it changed its priorities.

Figures from web monitor Hitwise suggest that Facebook's UK market share has increased 30-fold since October 2006.

But Nate Elliot of Jupiter Research said that Facebook has less than 10 per cent of the European social-networking market.

"Facebook's exclusive focus to date on English-speaking markets explains why the site is not a global phenomenon. While Facebook is perhaps the largest network in the UK and is doing very well in North America as well, it only has a very small presence anywhere else in the world," Elliot said.

Elliot said that the reluctance of Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, to push the site in international markets and the lack of any concrete plans to translate the site into different languages were reasons why Facebook wouldn't succeed in other countries.

However, Facebook's popularity in the UK seems to be continuing unabated, according to Hitwise.

"An illustration of the site's brand strength is the fact that 'facebook' is now the third most searched for term in the UK," said Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise UK.

www.jupiterresearch.com
www.hitwise.com
www.facebook.com

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