Facebook: 200 million users, but 275 million visitors?

Facebook is going gangbusters in Europe. According to a news release from ComScore today, the social network's usage in European countries grew by 314% to 100 million visitors in February from 24 million the same month a year earlier.

Facebook's worldwide growth rate was 175% year over year, leaving the site with 275 million unique visitors in February.

That number is almost 30% higher than than the 200 million active users Facebook cited in a blog post last week. Why such a big discrepancy?

For one thing, ComScore reminded me, active users and unique visitors are not the same thing. You can visit various public Facebook pages and images without being a registered user, but you'd still notch Facebook a unique visitor. ComScore said it had looked into that difference and found that a substantial part of the extra 75 million visitors were not registered Facebookers -- but the firm didn't want to say exactly how substantial.

Satisfied?

If not, you can apply for conspiracy-theorist credentials to the crowd that thinks Facebook likes to underreport its membership numbers. My application is already in the mail.

-- David Sarno

Comments

[Suzie McCarthy]

That user number will significantly decrease if facebook passes its new governance TOS which will ban users from any country under US embargo. Quote: "You will not use Facebook if you are located in a country embargoed by the U.S., or are on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals."

Considering all of the publicity generated by facebook combined with Obama's historic lessening of the emargo it is incredibly surprising that not a single major news source has carried this story.

There is a new group on facebook dedicated to at least getting an explanation for this clause. The group is "VOTE NO! Don't let Facebook ban users in US embargoed states! " http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=83985877000&ref=nf