Facebook soars to No. 1 spot globally

Facebook owes its results, in part, to its technology-driven international strategy.

Rather than launch local-language versions of Facebook for new markets, complete with a local Facebook bureau, Facebook opted to provide translation tools that let users take the existing site and personalize it in their own tongues.

The tools, which users can tweak to create more accurate translations, helped Facebook roll out in new countries faster than many rivals, giving it an early presence in local markets that grew exponentially as users encouraged friends to join the site.

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"It was a very scalable process," says comScore senior analyst Andrew Lipsman. "They have gotten these things up and going quickly, and the audiences are up."

MySpace has taken a different tack. It is opening offices in countries where it knows there are ad dollars, as well as friends, to be made. The strategy makes the company slower at expanding in new markets, but MySpace believes the approach ultimately makes its local offerings better able to reflect the cultures of new countries while also catering to advertisers.

MySpace's non-U.S. audiences will soon account for more than 50% of the site's revenues, says Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of sales and marketing.

Hi5 is following a hybrid strategy. In May, the social network launched tools letting users translate the site into any language. Before that, the San Francisco company hired a third-party provider, Lionbridge Technologies, to translate the site into languages like Japanese and make it reflect the added countries' cultures.

The company's user base has grown to more than 56 million, thanks in large part to those efforts, says comScore's Lipsman.

"Hi5 has really put an emphasis on cultural relevance beyond just the translation," says Lipsman.

The site remains popular throughout Latin America, home to four of the five countries where it shows up most often in searches, according to Pingdom.

Although Facebook has focused on tools, it isn't ruling out opening local bureaus to help make the site more culturally relevant -- and to sell ads. But executives aren't convinced that new offices are necessary.

Once there are users, the thinking goes, advertisers will follow.

"The platform is open, and as soon as advertisers find value they just start creating campaigns," says Olivan. "So it is pretty much universal."

This article was reported and written by Catherine Holahan for BusinessWeek.

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