Conflating importance (subjective) with how many people are on a network is not a good plan. That said, these numbers are certainly interesting.

I resisted facebook for a long time. In the end though, my choice was to either stay off facebook, or not participate in a fairly substantial part of my friends and family's communities.

When my Grandma joined facebook, I followed.

Not being on facebook in some networks is like not having a home address, or a telephone number. Have you ever tried to maintain acquaintance with a homeless person? It's difficult---and requires a lot of extra work on your part.

"This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another."

I resisted facebook for a long time, too, but finally went and got an account. It's turned out to be a valuable communication tool for keeping in touch with family. Especially lately. I got to know more about family members through their facebook than anything else, since I don't live anywhere near family anymore and we just don't manage to catch each other by phone. With some, facebook is pretty much the only thing they do online, so emailing them is about as useless as trying to phone.

Granted, finding out about some things on facebook instead of in person can be a bit of a shock, but that has more to do with relationships (or lack of them) in real life. I'd rather find out about them on facebook than not at all. Still, some of the things people post on their facebook is rather alarming. I suspect they're going to regret doing it in the not-so-distance future!

Yeah, it's been a time waster, too, and I know a lot of people who have no interest and refuse to get it. I've found it to be worth it and use it a lot. My husband hardly uses his at all, other than to check updates and change his status through his Blackberry. Each to their own.

don't forget that the figures for asia are skewed -- facebook is blocked in china.

I am usually glad I joined facebook, though I highly suggest periodically checking your privacy settings! Overall, it really is useful for communication and keeping in touch across vast distances.

I joined facebook as a freshpeep in college. At the time, I found it weirdly addictive, but not terribly useful.

Now, thanks to all the changes, I've come to find the site increasingly annoying, and have considered deleting my profile. But facebook has become so very integral to the way many of my peers interact, that deleting my account would put me at a severe disadvantage in making and keeping real-life friends. And since I'm a pretty awkward, geeky individual to begin with, that's a disadvantage I can ill afford.

"NOTES: (1) Facebook World Users and Facebook World Penetration Statistics are consolidated for August 31, 2010 from the official number of Facebook users reported in each country or world region."
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats25.htm

Is there somewhere on Facebook that gives this information? If so, where?

I assume its based simply on counting how many people assign themselves to each country. Sure, it gives a rough idea, but it includes the vast number of spam accounts, and the occasional person who may have set up two accounts (either for some specific reason, or simply forgetting/abandoning their old account). I imagine its an upper limit for the number of people who may be on Facebook.

I'm confused that you singled out Europe and North America, when Europe only has 19.9% usage and Oceania/Australia has 33.4% usage. I would find the high rate in the islands to be much more noteworthy.

(Long-time reader, first-time commenter. Really, I love your blog, and I'm sorry my first post is snark.)

Being on Facebook has made me feel more friendless than I actually am, left out of other people's social circles (that I could be part of, but don't get invited into), and generally lonely whenever I see how much and in which ways some of my friends and family members are connected. It's like a constant reminder of being an outsider. Very much like how I felt in high school - interesting given Facebook's origins.

I've thought many times of deleting my profile or of just defriending everyone and staying on just for the groups, organizations, and causes I like to get updates about. But I don't, because the little bit of connection that I do get from it is about all I have now that everyone uses this as their method of communicating. Rich sociological research ground, no doubt.

Putting Australia/New Zealand in one group and the other Oceanic countries in another group would probably be a bit more informative.