North American Social Network Growth Levels Off

According to a study out today by comScore, social networking growth is beginning to level off. In comparison to the average worldwide growth in social networks of 25 percent, North America is growing at only 9 percent. This may also suggest that the huge shifts we saw of users from Friendster to MySpace and finally to Facebook may also begin to slow as users begin to settle into their favorite sites.

The largest source of growth abroad appears to be the Middle East and Africa which grew at a rate of 66 percent over the past year, growing from 18 to approximately 30 million users in June. Facebook also continued to expand its dominant position, growing 153 percent over the past year to attract over 132 million users in comparison to MySpace which attracted only 117 million users.

Another interesting statistic revealed by comScore’s release of June statistics is that Facebook has been growing phenomenally abroad. In Latin America the site has grown over 1,000 percent over the past year. The site has also grown more than 300, 400 and 458 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Asia respectively. Facebook is on the fast track to becoming the global social networking leader by a significant margin.

MySpace was only able to 3 percent worldwide growth over the past year. These statistics highlight the ongoing global competition for social network audiences. The discussion of monetization may still be premature for many as the battle for global leadership is ongoing.