2008 was an amazing year for social networking; overall, the number of unique visitors to social networks grew by hundreds of millions, bringing with them unique, fresh opportunities (and challenges) for adertisers and application developers.

Which countries have the highest number of Facebook users per capita? The analytics may surprise you.

When it comes to relationship status, not all countries are created equal, at least not in the world of online social networking.

According to statistics obtained from Facebook’s analytics system, there is a disproportionately large percentage of users reporting their relationship status as “single” in Middle-Eastern and South Asian countries; meanwhile, there is an equally heavy percentage of users reporting their relationship status as either “In a relationship,” “Engaged,” or “Married” in European countries.

Although we hear often about the prevalence of social networking among teens, Facebook usage and age demographic data suggest that the vast majority of Facebook users are adults.

The following graph shows a country-by-country breakdown of the percentage of Facebook users below the age of 18, and dispels the myth that most Facebook users are teens.

Here are the 10 countries with the highest number of Facebook users:
USA
27,811,560
UK
11,171,540
Canada
9,621,820
Turkey
3,464,640
Australia
3,217,380
France
2,461,140
Colombia
2,412,000
Chile
2,105,820
Norway
1,170,660
Sweden
1,141,700

Here are the 10 countries with the highest Facebook penetration (shown as number of Facebook users as a percentage of population):

Country
Population # of fb Users % penetration
Canada
33,311,200 9,621,820 28.88%
Norway
4,770,440 1,170,660 24.54%
UK
60,587,300 11,171,540 18.44%
Australia
21,357,022 3,217,380 15.06%
Denmark
5,482,266 777,380 14.18%
Chile
16,598,074 2,015,820 12.69%
Sweden
9,201,650 1,141,700 12.41%
Hong Kong
6,963,100 837,900 12.03%
Iceland
316,252 37,480 11.85%
Singapore
4,588,600 464,680 10.13%

Here are the 10 countries with the lowest Facebook penetration (shown as number of Facebook users as a percentage of population):

Country
Population # of fb Users % penetration
China
1,324,798,000 205,800 0.02%
Romania
21,438,000 9,060 0.04%
Russia
141,912,800 67,760 0.05%
Bangladesh
158,665,000 96,100 0.06%
India
1,135,062,000 711,520 0.06%
Brazil
187,172,536 119,080 0.06%
Nigeria
148,093,000 99,720 0.07%
Indonesia
231,627,000 209,760 0.09%
Japan
127,690,000 162,400 0.13%
Paraguay
6,127,000 7,920 0.13%

Facebook Audience by age group:

Age US Users
13 58,020
14 335,540
15 982,280
16 1,370,140
17 1,675,400
18 2,193,900
19 2,502,240
20 2,360,100
21 2,146,180
22 1,984,460
23 1,754,680
24 1,449,080
25 1,202,660
26 944,640
27 788,580
28 670,400
29 516,540
30 447,560
31 401,980
32 343,920
33 309,340
34 264,240
35 233,220
36 212,580
37 205,920
38 185,040
39 143,440
40 117,700
41 102,840
42 94,500
43 88,200
44 81,280
45 73,940
46 68,960
47 68,400
48 64,200
49 55,360
50 51,160
51 47,360
52 43,880
53 38,520
54 33,700
55 30,960
56 26,340
57 25,000
58 23,060
59 17,160
60 14,860
61 13,600
62 9,800
63 8,600
64 7,660

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