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A few weeks ago there was a flurry of hype in Brazil over the launch of a new Orkut invitation-only interface (Orkut being Google’s social network, recently made available for mobile via Android). Argentine social network Sonico just launched a Brazilian interface (their biggest user base is in Brazil), and an iPhone app and announced the placement of a country manager in São Paulo to take care of operations for this expansion. And Facebook is about to announce the winners of the application challenge announced during founder Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Brazil. Read more…

The number of Facebook users has been growing rapidly in Brazil, and in particular in India. Orkut is still the dominant social network, but the rate of growth is slowing. That said, the number of Orkut users is still millions ahead of Facebook or MySpace.

Orkut has more than 22 million users just in Brazil (according to statistics cited in a recent article in MediaPost, based on data from ComScore), while Facebook has just over 1 million, half of those added in 2009. Other sources suggest Orkut’s userbase in Brazil could be as high as 37 million. In India, Facebook has 3.2 million users and Orkut, 14.5 million. Read more…