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I have noticed a lot of Facebook invitations coming from friends in Canada, but hadn’t thought it was indication of a general trend. Then I checked out Google Trends.

While it is interesting that Facebook is undergoing overall international growth that makes it an emerging competitor to MySpace, it is perhaps even more interesting that certain social networks are of specific interest to people in certain, culturally similar countries. Media trends in the US and Canada are not often divergent, but these results show a startling difference:

Why Facebook might enjoy sronger growth than MySpace seems obvious to me. Facebook’s networking functions are far more innovative and user friendly, encouraging the addition of friends and facilitating the location of long-lost contacts. And Facebook is not littered with annoying ads and banners (yet). But why US-based and US-created Facebook would be attracting a larger market share specifically in Canada eludes me; perhaps it is a symptom of unpredictability and user momentum in the social network market?

Update on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 11:23AM by

Ken Thomas

Since I wrote this post Facebook has continued to soar.

Charts for this comparison between the US and Canada today look quite similar to charts a year ago, with higher peaks in Canada.

Interestingly, today’s Google Trends data shows MySpace is still 3x more popular than Facebook as a search term in the US. Given the fact of Facebook’s greater popularity, does this show us that Facebook is better at viral spread and its audience does not need Google to find the page? Or that Google’s metrics can be misleading? Or that Facebook’s success is more international than MySpace’s? Or something else?

The chart for Australia looks more like what I’d expected for the US.