Facebook Records Surge In UK Users

Social networking site and MySpace rival, Facebook, now reports more than 3.5 million users in the UK, after a massive surge in popularity in the past six months.

Londoners make up the website’s second largest regional user group worldwide, with around 450,000 in the capital.

Figures compiled by comScore for MediaGuardian.co.uk showed a steady increase in unique users in the UK – up to just over 500,000 in October 2006.

Since then UK user numbers have rocketed, to 1.35 million in December and 2.67 million in March.

By the end of April, comScore estimates Facebook was being used by an estimated 3.69 million people in the UK.

The figures record a year-on-year traffic growth of 1,617%, but still put Facebook behind MySpace, Bebo, Windows Live Spaces, Blogger and Piczo in terms of UK social networking websites.

Facebook’s audience share among the top 10 UK social networking sites is around 16%, compared with MySpace’s 43%.

The website estimates that 1.4 million of its UK users are “active” – defined as someone that uses that site at least once a month. Globally, Facebook has 23 million active users.

“We’ve seen phenomenal growth in the United Kingdom over the past few months,” said Matt Hicks, the senior manager of corporate communications for Facebook.

Strong international growth this year has been driven by English-speaking countries, with the UK third behind the US and Canada. Growth has also been strong in Norway, Australia, South Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, Sweden and India.

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