14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is taking over the world. No, it isn't replacing governments just yet, but it is the largest social network in most places around the world. The last holdouts are falling one by one and in the few places where Facebook isn't number one, the site is completely blocked in the country.
Blogger Vincenzo Cosenza has been maintaining a 'world map of Facebook' for the past few years and the most recent one shows that Facebook only has nine more countries to go, with the caveat that not all countries are tracked.
"Facebook with more than 800 million active users has established its leadership position in 127 out of 136 countries analyzed (in this edition I’ve added Afghanistan)," Vincenzo Cosenza wrote.
"Since June 2011 the largest social networking service of the world has finally conquered Netherlands, and with it the whole Europe, Brazil, after a long struggle against Orkut, and Japan," he said.
Facebook conquered a few big markets last year, the most notable being Brazil where it finally overtook Orkut, Google's social network that proved especially popular in the country. Facebook also became the largest social network in the Netherlands, therefore taking over the entire Europe.
Facebook is blocked in China, so the country is off the table there. In Russia, VKontakte is the leader, Facebook comes in third. The situation in Japan is somewhat complicated, the map shows Facebook being the largest there as well, but other numbers say otherwise.
Even if Facebook were the biggest social network on desktops in Japan, mobile sites are particularly dominant there, so it may still not be bigger than local players such as Mixi.
But Facebook is growing even in the places where it still lags. The Russian and Japanese markets are particularly tough ones, but Facebook is growing bigger and bigger and becoming a bigger part of the web as a whole, so it's going to be close to impossible for local players to compete for too long.