A study conducted by ComScore found that the popularity of social networking sites is soaring. Even though the number of people that create accounts on social networking sites has seen only a small increase as far as US citizens are concerned, people from Europe, Asia and Latin America have flocked on these sites over the last year.

The phenomenon started in the United States, and it is believed that the fact that the American market for social networking sites grew with only 9 percent over the last year is a sign that it is reaching maturity. This is not the case of the worldwide market. Even though the biggest growth was seen on the African and Middle Eastern market, which saw an increase of about 66 percent, most of the people visiting social networking sites come from America and Europe.

The most popular site remains Facebook. What is more, this is also the site that saw the most dramatic growth in the number of people creating a user account on it. Over the last year, Facebook has increased the number of its members by 153 percent globally. Most of the new ones come from Europe, where the site had a 303 percent increase in unique visitors.

The second most popular social networking site, MySpace, was not as fortunate as FaceBook. Even though it still clings in second place, its growth over the last year was of only 3 percent.

The international success of some of the social networking sites seems to be linked to the number of languages in which the site is translated, since some of the foreign users tend to be more interested in making an account if they get to see the features that a site offers in their own language.