According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, that analyzes mobile web usage from Opera Mini, Opera’s mobile web browser, Facebook is the most popular social network globally among Opera Mini users, growing 619 percent in 2009. Not only has the site surpassed VKontakte and Friendster in usage in Russia and Southeast Asia, but it also appears to be in the process of overtaking Google as well.

Facebook’s Astounding Growth in South East Asia

Facebook’s mobile usage growth in South East Asia in 2009 has been astounding by all counts. The social network is now the top most visited site in Indonesia, Philippines, and Brunei, second most visited site in Malaysia and Singapore – just behind Google, third most visited site in Cambodia – behind Google and Yahoo, and forth most visited site in Thailand and Laos. Although Google is still the most visited destination in most of the South Asian countries, the lead might prove to be fickle, given Facebook’s recent gains. We have specially created the chart below to show Facebook’s position in comparison with Google in South East Asian countries.

Facebook Giving Google a run for its Money

Another important aspect highlighted in the report is that Facebook is now neck and neck with Google in most countries around the world when it comes to unique mobile visitors. Google manages to retain the top spot in USA but UK goes to Facebook, Google clings on to India, while Facebook captures the top spot in Indonesia. All in all Facebook has managed to secure the top spot in 4 out of 10 countries, whose mobile usage data has been reported by Opera, whereas Google manages to retain the top spot in only 3 out of 10 countries. For a complete comprehension of the competition brewing between Facebook and Google, take a look at the chart embedded below.

Facebook Top Social Network on Opera Mini in 2009

Since Opera is extremely popular in South Asia, Opera’s state of the mobile web report is some what skewed towards South Asian countries. Due to this reason VKontakte used to be the top social network on Opera Mini – as it is extremely popular in Russian speaking countries. However, Facebook has overtaken VKontakte in terms of unique users in 2009. Twitter is another success story, which has managed to grow by almost 2,900% amongst Opera’s users. The only social network to lose users is Frienster, which saw a usage decline of 29%.

From this report, as is also evident from a lot of other reports before it, 2009 could really be termed as the year of Facebook by all counts. From Facebook’s performance during the previous year, we can safely say that it is not a question of “if”, but “when” Facebook becomes the top web property world wide.