Southeast Asia dominates Facebook’s fastest growing list

Indonesia, India, Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia are all rated among Facebook's 10 fastest growing markets according to recent research from Inside Facebook.

I’ve recently covered the growth of Twitter in Asia, Japan has witnessed an explosive increase in Twitterers, and we know Facebook has been growing at a record rate in Thailand (which enjoys the fastest percentage growth rate worldwide) so it is fair to say Asia, and Southeast Asia in particular, are a hot bed for social networking right now.

With its huge number of Twitter users, it is little surprise to see Indonesia climbing the ranks of Facebook numbers.

From the blog post.

The future is in large, heavily-populated countries whose populations are rapidly modernizing. That’s true economically, and it may also be true for Facebook, judging from the June 2010 figures compiled by our latest Global Monitor report, which tracks Facebook’s growth in almost a hundred countries worldwide.

Indonesia grew the most, adding 1,190,600 new monthly active users to a total of 25.9 million. We’d thought this month might be the one that sent Indonesia past the United Kingdom to become Facebook’s second-largest country after the United States; instead, Indonesia still trails by about half a million MAU, but the milestone looks closer than ever.

Following close behind is India, with 989,640 new MAU over June. The difference between it and Indonesia is that India’s growth is still extremely volatile, swinging between a crawl and large gains from month to month. We don’t expect that to change this year, but India’s population is large enough that it should be fueling some of Facebook’s growth for a long time to come.

The Philippines and Mexico come in third and fourth, respectively; although some 8,000 miles apart, the two countries are similar in terms of population and Facebook penetration, so it won’t be surprising to see them paired again in the future. Both added over 800,000 MAU in June.

The FT’s Tim Bradshaw recently covered Facebook's plans to reach a billion users, it’s currently on 500 million, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks it could take three to five years. Emerging markets are key to this incredible milestone with Asia likely the number one target with its combination of (an enormous) aggregate population and maturing technology.

It seems likely these featured countries will continue to head the fastest growing markets while the social networking continues to grow across the Asian continent.