As Facebook is taking steps to boost its presence in Japan, our sister site, AllFacebook Stats, is following suit, announcing an agreement with Japanese marketing agency Torchlight.
If Facebook were to launch its own search engine right now, it would immediately attract nearly one-quarter of that sector and become the second-most-used search engine in every major market in the world except China, Japan, and Russia, where it would place third, according to a recent report by independent digital marketing agency Greenlight.
Though Facebook is still frozen out of China, there is still major growth potential throughout Asia. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is in Japan now speaking about the social network’s plans to grow in the region that already has 255 million users.
For years, Mixi has been the social media site of choice in Japan. But new reports suggest that Facebook could overtake Mixi by the end of the year, thanks to The Social Network and a model that promotes more sharing of information.
Facebook hopes to grow its social influence in Asia, as the company recently announced that it invested in the Asia Pacific Gateway — a 6,214-mile underwater internet cable from Malaysia to Japan, with cables branching off to other countries.
According to the latest figures from comScore, Facebook’s user growth figures for April were down dramatically, with the social network up just 5 percent in unique visitors versus April 2011, following growth rates of 24 percent last year and 89 percent in April 2010.
There’s been talk lately about Facebook’s growth potential among international markets. Much of this will depend on if and when the social network determines how to sell things on mobile, and if it can set up a seamless, user-friendly payment platform.
Facebook Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg spent this week in China and Japan: Was it a pre-initial public offering vacation with girlfriend Priscilla Chan, business, or a little bit of both?
Facebook has reached a membership of 10 million in Japan, more than double the number in September. But how close is that to overtaking the country’s leading social network, Mixi, which reported 15.2 million monthly active users last month?
Most likely, Facebook will reach the one-billion member threshold sometime during 2012. One seventh of the world’s population will be on the social network.
