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Number of Social-Network Users in Latin America Doubles in '07

The number of social network users in five major Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) more than doubled from Jan. ‘07 to to Jan. ‘08 - it was up 103% - according to an Analytics 2.0 analysis, using comScore data.

During the same period, the number of US Hispanic and Puerto Rican social-network users increased 48%.

The main social networks of the five-country LatAm region, by number of users:

• Orkut - 12.9 million (up 27% from 10.1 million in ‘07)
• Sonico - 7.3 million (Sonico launched during the second half of ‘07)
• hi5 - 4.2 million (up 72% from 2.2 million in Jan. ‘07)
• MySpace - around 3 million (13 million users in all markets analyzed)
• Facebook - 2.2 million (up 4,152% from the Jan. ‘07 count of 52,000)

Social networks in Latin America have a regionalized presence, Analytics 2.0 notes:

• Orkut, for example, is popular in Brazil, but has no significant presence in the other countries.
• MySpace dominates the US Hispanic and Puerto Rican market, increasing 26% in the past year (Facebook grew 251%):
• Bebo and Friendster have minimal presence and are visited mostly by US Hispanics.

Other findings from the analysis:

• The number of internet users in the five major countries analyzed is approaching 46.3 million, a 16% increase from the 39.8 million in Jan. ‘07.
• The number of Puerto Rican and US Hispanic internet users has grown at the same rate, bringing the total to 66 million.
• Six in 10 of total internet users in the five major countries of the region are using one of the above-noted social networks, whereas 77% of internet users in Puerto Rico and the US Hispanic market are doing so.