[LINK] "Is Brazil big enough for Facebook and Orkut?"

[rfmcdonald]

Facebook has surpassed Orkut in Brazil, just as Facebook has surpassed other social networking sites in other countries. Local alternatives have stopped, are stopping, or will stop being viable alternatives to the global juggernaut.

(On a related note, apparently Tumblr's doing well in Brazil.)

Not long ago we were making the prediction that Facebook would become the dominant social force in Brazil. Over time Brazilians seem to have started to identify themselves with Facebook and looked at it as the best place to start their online lives over from scratch, helping lead to its widespread adoption.

At the beginning of 2012, numbers revealed that Facebook attracted 36.1 million visitors, that is an increase of 192% on the year, while Orkut received 34.4 million visitors during the same month.

“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. That has all changed in the past year, during which the site has tripled in audience size as engagement has grown sevenfold to assume the leadership position in the market” comScore.

When Orkut came along in 2004, Internet use was stagnant in Brazil and the social network gave the people their first taste of social media, with a simple interface and Portuguese language option making it easier to use in comparison with MySpace - soon Orkut became a part of the social culture. But it seems that it wasn’t enough for its users... In terms of innovation, Orkut failed, while Facebook is offering new applications, games and the ability to connect with people beyond Brazil.

The shift of power between Facebook and Orkut is significant especially because Google was confident about its dominance in Brazil. The battle for dominance has become even more interesting now Google is attempting to overtake Facebook in the form of Google+ (4.3 million members).

[. . .]

At the same time, Tumblr is used by 49 million Brazilians, but Tumblr’s main audience is in the US with 249 million visitors, followed by Brazil and UK (34 million). The founder and CEO David Karp announced that this service is now serving 120 million people and 15 billion page views every month. According to thenextweb.com, the average Tumblr blog is re-blogged nine times, helping to distribute user content to wider audiences mainly via RSS, Twitter, Facebook.

Experts are convinced that while the North American market is almost saturated, markets like Brazil or India could help Facebook hit 1 billion users by August.