Brazilians favor Orkut but Facebook catching up

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Despite the growth of Facebook in Latin America, Orkut is the most visited social network in Brazil. However, Facebook could soon take pole position, according to a new report released September 20 by internet analysts comScore.

The September 20 report titled "The Rise of Social Networking in Latin America" examined the state of the social media market in the region over the month of June 2011.

The report found that the popularity of Facebook has grown rapidly in Latin America and the social network, already the world's largest, had over 91 million visitors in June 2011 in Latin America, an increase of 52 percent from last year.

However despite the growth of Facebook, Google owned Orkut was the most popular social network in Brazil, whereas Facebook topped the charts throughout the rest of the region and the majority of the world.

According to the report Orkut received 35.7 million visitors in Brazil over the month of June 2011, representing an increase in growth of 20 percent from last year.

However the report indicates that Orkut could soon slip from pole position in Brazil as Facebook experienced a phenomenal growth rate of 192 percent, or 24.5 million visitors, in over the same period. The third and fourth most popular social networking sites in the country were Windows Live Profile and Twitter, with 14.6 million and 12 million visitors in June 2011, respectively.

Facebook is the world's largest social network and had an estimated 734,240 million unique visitors in June 2011. Its closest competitor, in terms of users, is Twitter, which in comparison had a mere 144,441 million unique visitors over the same time period.