Indians are No 2 on Facebook

With 43,497,980 users now, India has the world's second highest number of Facebook users in the world now. It is more than the population of either Argentina, Kenya or Canada and almost twice Australia's population.

Last week, India added 5,452,980 more users to beat Indonesia (43,057,320) to the second post.

USA leads the number of FB users with more than 152.5 million users, according to the website checkfacebook.com, a comprehensive analytics platform for Facebook.

While an overwhelming 72.8% of Indian FB users are male, more than 48% of users are from the 18-24 years age group and more than 27% from the 25-34 age group.

Interestingly, more women use FB in the US (55%) than men (45%) while 24% users are in the 18-24 category with 23% from the 25-34 age group.

But the numbers last week grew the fastest in Brazil at 7.84%, followed by India with 5.07%.

Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly popular in India with their importance being underlined and had made their presence felt during the anti-graft movement led by activist Anna Hazare last year.

Informed circles felt one reason for the movement's widespread publicity was the rapid spread of the word on social networking platforms.

Last December, India had asked FB and other social media networks to act against uploading of offensive material on web platforms sparking off a debate over the distinction between freedom of expression and derogatory content on internet platforms.

At the same time, FB has raised concerns without naming India that revenue growth could be hurt because of content censorship and other restrictions by the governments of one or more countries.

The world's largest social network Facebook has an estimated 812 million users worldwide while it is restricted in some countries including China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

10 largest countries:
1. United States - 152,564,400
2. India - 43,497,980
3. Indonesia - 43,057,320
4. Brazil - 37,907,400
5. Mexico - 32,031,340
6. Turkey - 31,247,120
7. United Kingdom - 30,245,180
8. Philippines - 27,596,960
9. France - 23,597,540
10. Germany - 22,600,660