The last Orkut holdout, after India fell last year

Jan 18, 2012 19:21 GMT  ·  By

Facebook has finally done it, it has overtaken Google's Orkut in Brazil, the social network's final holdout. Facebook now has only a handful of countries where it is still not the number one, several of those being countries where the site is blocked altogether.

comScore reports that Facebook had 36 million visitors in Brazil in December 2011, almost double what it had in the same month the previous year.

At the same time, Orkut only got 34.4 million visitors, a modest five percent growth over December 2010's 32.6 million.

“Facebook’s rapid ascent in the Brazilian market has certainly been one of the most interesting stories to develop during the course of 2011,” Alex Banks, comScore managing director for Brazil, said.

“Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market," he explained.

"That has all changed in the past year, during which the site has tripled in audience size as engagement has grown sevenfold to assume the leadership position in the market,” he added.

Most people hardly remember Orkut, a social network Google bought a few years back. It failed to catch on in most parts of the world, but flourished into very important markets, Brazil and India.

Last year though, Facebook managed to overtake Orkut in India, leaving only Brazil. Now, Facebook has conquered this market as well. What follows now is a slow decline for Orkut, especially since Google has another favorite social network now, Google+.

Google+ attracted 4.3 million visitors in Brazil in December 2011, a bit more than Tumblr, but a decent number for a site that is only months old. It remains to be seen whether Orkut users will migrate more to Facebook or to Google+.