With Facebook going public today, we thought we’d take a quick look at where the social network has the greatest potential for growth. <a>Pingdom</a> So we posed this question: what if Facebook had the same penetration in Africa and Asia as it does in Europe and North America? How many users would the social network have then? The numbers are pretty staggering.

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Facebook's
amazing
growth
potential

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A little
thought
experiment

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What if Facebook had
the same penetration in
Africa and Asia as it
does in Europe and
North America?

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The result is
astonishing

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Facebook would have
over 2.3 billion users

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Here's how we
get there

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As of end of March 2012, Facebook
had
901 million
monthly active users

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28.6%
of Europeans and
42.1%
of North Americans
already have Facebook accounts

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Let's split the difference (between
Europe and North America). We
then get a Facebook penetration of
35.35%

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That means, somewhere around
400 million
people are using Facebook out of a
possible
1.16 billion
in Europe and North America

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In Africa and Asia,
Facebook adoption
is lagging behind
quite dramatically

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Only
4.28%
of people in Africa are on Facebook and
5.6%
of Asia is using the social network
Remember 35.35%?

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But, what if the almost
5 billion
people in Africa and Asia went on
Facebook to the same extent as
people in Europe and North
America?

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In one fell swoop,
Facebook would have
1.7 billion
users in Africa and
Asia alone
Remember the 901 million
monthly active users?

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Add the already existing Facebook users
in other parts of the world, and
Facebook would have a total of
2.3 billion
users

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And that's only if Facebook
would see the same level of
adoption in Africa and Asia
as it already does in Europe
and North America!
And no new users would sign
up in the rest of the world!

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If
35.35%
of all the people across the world
were on Facebook,
2.44 billion
people would be using the site

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Imagine
that!

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However, that is about
200 million
more people than are currently
on the Internet worldwide
Multiple accounts, anyone?

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Still,
imagine
that!

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Sources
http://newsroom.fb.com/
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/05/14/top-10-facebook-winners-losers-countries/
http://internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/
And a few of our own calculations :)