Dec 19, 2008: Central Europe loves Facebook.  Or parts of it do, anyway.  Although the social network didn't really start releasing versions in different languages until March of this year, new reports put Facebook's growth in two countries in the triple digits.

Germany stands as the less remarkable example.  Sahana Mysore notes that Facebook's user base in this nation is about 18.5 percent of the one Xing's attracted, and only about 9.2 percent of leading social network StudiVZ's audience.  Still, Alexa marks Facebook as Germany's 13th most popular site, and Mysore writes, "During 2008, the number of Facebook users in Germany grew 144% from just under 500,000 to nearly 1.2 million."  Not bad.

Then, with Italy, the stats get almost jaw-dropping.  She continues, "In the past five months alone, Facebook has grown an incredible 763% from 572k users in July to 4.9 million today!"

Mysore says that 8.5% of the Italian population is on Facebook, and according to Alexa, it's the country's third most trafficked site.  Since only Google and Windows Live are ahead of Facebook, this pretty much counts as a complete win in the social networking arena.

Onlookers may criticize Mark Zuckerberg's choice to worry about growth instead of revenue, but he at least seems to be succeeding in this respect.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/12/19/facebook-growing-fast-in-germany-italy