As Facebook’s growth domestically has slowed, Facebook has looked abroad for continued growth opportunities. So far Facebook has been experiencing some phenomenal growth, especially in Latin America. Unfortunately though, the spectacular growth that Facebook is looking for in other countries is not coming easily. An Associated Press article this morning highlights many of the challenges that the company faces, specifically in Russia.

Not that the competition wasn’t unexpected but brand loyalty to many of these sites appear to be significant. Just last week I was walking through the Apple store in Bethesda, Maryland when I saw one of the customers browsing Vkontakte, a Russian Facebook copycat. In an article on Techcrunch yesterday, Serkan Toto highlighted why Facebook and MySpace are facing an uphill battle in Japan.

The article compares Facebook and MySpace to Mixi.jp, the current leading social network in Japan. Much of Serkan’s analysis is unfair though because if you zoom into Facebook’s growth in Japan, it is significant as the chart below illustrates.

In the past year alone, Facebook has more than doubled its presence in Japan and thanks to translating the site into Japanese, the company experienced an immediate jump in traffic only a few months ago. It’s clear though that Facebook’s international expansion won’t be an easy one as it attempts to battle the native social networks. If the hype surrounding Facebook is going to remain though, the company will need to continue posting significant growth numbers abroad, something that has already been slowing according to the most recent numbers from Comscore and Hitwise.

So what will Facebook do to continue their growth? Well, the first thing is to release more languages that are currently in the process of being translated. The second step is to continue to release innovative features that position the company above the competitors. Any other ideas on how Facebook can boost their growth?