London research firm GlobalWebIndex published a blog post, saying that the users of Facebook (FB) in China have reached 6350 million in the second quarter this year, more than eight times 790 million in 2009.
Promoted by this news, Facebook stock price rose sharply by 6.59%, or $1.34, to $21.66 in the regular trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange Friday, marking the highest single-day gain since September 12. But Facebook stock price is still 43% below its IPO (initial public offering) price of $38 on May 18.
However, although Facebook has seen user growth in the China, but its user base is still smaller than Tencent QQ space, which has 286.3 million users; in addition, Sina (SINA) microblog has 264.1 million users and Google+ has 106.9 million users. According to data released by the China Internet Network Information Center, s the total number of Internet users in China has reached 513 million.
GlobalWebIndex earlier in the year, 2000 Chinese Internet users surveyed concerning these users have accounts on which social networking sites, and use the service of which sites in the past month.
Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost declined to comment on the matter.
Facebook on Thursday unveiled a gift service “Facebook Gifts”, which allows the users to purchase goods and send to friends. This will be another new source of revenue of Facebook. Facebook said the service was first launched in the United States; with the increase in the number of partners, users will have a lot of merchandises to choose from. Facebook will share revenue with partners, but the sharing proportion is still unknown. Earlier this year, Facebook acquired social gift application developer Karm and began to prepare for the launch of “Facebook Gifts”.
Read the related article: Facebook launch new products to boost revenues.