Facebook: 200 million users, but 275 million visitors?

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Facebook is going gangbusters in Europe. According to a news release from ComScore today, the social network’s usage in European countries grew by 314% to 100 million visitors in February from 24 million the same month a year earlier.

Facebook’s worldwide growth rate was 175% year over year, leaving the site with 275 million unique visitors in February.

That number is almost 30% higher than than the 200 million active users Facebook cited in a blog post last week. Why such a big discrepancy?

For one thing, ComScore reminded me, active users and unique visitors are not the same thing. You can visit various public Facebook pages and images without being a registered user, but you’d still notch Facebook a unique visitor. ComScore said it had looked into that difference and found that a substantial part of the extra 75 million visitors were not registered Facebookers -- but the firm didn’t want to say exactly how substantial.

Satisfied?

If not, you can apply for conspiracy-theorist credentials to the crowd that thinks Facebook likes to underreport its membership numbers. My application is already in the mail.

-- David Sarno