Orkut is a social network that Google launched in 2004. Its popularity in Brazil, where 60% of Orkut's users are based, led to it being hosted and managed by Google Brazil from 2008 onwards.
Facebook's user base increased 192% during 2011, according to a comScore report released Tuesday. In December 2010, 12.4 million Brazilians visited Facebook.com. One year later, that number skyrocketed to 36 million Brazilians.
In contrast, Orkut's user base hardly increased, gaining less than 2 million visitors.
“Facebook’s rapid ascent in the Brazilian market has certainly been one of the most interesting stories to develop during the course of 2011,” says Alex Banks, comScore managing director for Brazil. “Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market.”
Now that Facebook dominates Brazilian social networking, there are only six countries remaining -- China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Poland and Russia -- where Facebook is not the premiere network.
As more Brazilians flocked to Facebook, the audience became more engaged. Visitors spent 4.8 hours, on average, on Facebook in December, compared to just 37 minutes a year earlier. December visitors viewed 500 pages of content and returned to the site 27 times throughout the month.