On the eve of Facebook's public stock offering, consumer-measurement company Nielsen has released figures showing that, although the United States has the most Facebook users, higher percentages of the population can be found in other countries.
More than two out of every three Americans who are active online visited Facebook at least once during March, but even higher percentages of the online populations did so in Brazil, New Zealand, Italy and Taiwan, according to the Nielsen Co. report, “Global and Social: Facebook's Rise Around the World.”
The 152 million Americans who visited Facebook at least once in March make up nearly 70 percent of U.S. residents who are on the Internet. Meanwhile, 77 percent of Brazilians online regularly use Facebook – but even that is not the top mark.
Nearly 80 percent of online New Zealanders visited Facebook in March, a grand total of 2.7 million people on the islands, the highest share in the 12 countries Nielsen measured.
What about the other end of the scale? Only about a quarter of Japan's Internet-connected population, or 15 million people, visit Facebook. In Japan, blogs are more popular than social media sites, Nielsen said.
Overall, Facebook is the dominant social media network around the world, ranking first in all but Japan for the countries included in Nielsen's report.