For the first time Facebook is making its site available in a language other than English. The social networking site will now be available in Spanish.
In order to broaden its international growth and compete with rival MySpace, Facebook needs to launch in as many different languages as possible. MySpace is way ahead of Facebook when it comes to what languages it is available in. Currently MySpace is available in more than 20 countries.
Facebook said it also plans to introduce German and French versions of its site. The company says that sixty percent of its 64 million users live outside of the United States. More than 2.8 million users live in Latin America or Spain. Forrester Research predicts Facebook will be able to reach the same number of registered users as MySpace by the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009.
Current users who want to view Facebook in Spanish can change their language preference from their account settings. Beginning Monday users in Spanish speaking countries will automatically see the site in Spanish.
Outside of the United States, Canada has the most active users with about 8.7 million users followed by the UK at 8.6 million. Turkey has the fourth largest amount of active users with 2. 8 million, followed by Australia, France, Sweden and Norway.
If Facebook wants to compete on an international level it will have to launch in more local languages than just Spanish, German and French, although that is a good start to help it boost its user numbers internationally. Gaining traction in markets such as China where Facebook currently has around 170,000 users would go a long way toward increasing its international presence.
