facebook

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the debate over Facebook’s valuation, pointing out that some analysts expect the company will be valued at $100 billion if it goes public next year.

An important but often-overlooked part of the argument: Most of Facebook’s users are outside the U.S., and that appears to be where the social network’s growth is as well.

Facebook

Screenshots from the mobile app Facebook for Every Phone

Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social network was at 750 million active users. With the number of active users in the U.S. hovering at 150 million, that means that 80% of the users are outside the country.

The folks at Facebook know this, and they’re increasingly directing efforts toward international growth – for example with a mobile app released yesterday called Facebook for Every Phone.

Built to work on any Java-enabled phone—more than 2,500 different phones according to the official announcement—the app aims to improve the experience for people with older or less powerful cellphones and pricey data plans. That’s just the sort of mobile user found commonly in developing countries, where many people have bypassed PCs and use mainly cellphones to connect online.

Underscoring the motives behind Facebook for Every Phone, the company said that it had signed agreements with 20 different carriers to provide free data access to customers using the app for the first 90 days of its availability. The carriers involved service the U.K. and Germany, countries that host a massive and mature user base, but also Egypt, Brazil, and the Philippines, countries where Facebook usage, while high, is still showing double-digit growth.

Meanwhile, the U.S., with 48.95% Facebook penetration, has shown signs of slowing.

The blog “Inside Facebook” reports that the mobile app, which allows for popular Facebook features such as News Feed and Photos, was designed to be less data intensive, keeping costs lower for mobile phone customers. The blog also mentions that the app was made possible by Facebook’s acquisition of Israel-based Snaptu in March.

The app also could allow Facebook to expand to more users. Users can import their phone contacts into Facebook’s Friend Finder, allowing the social network to suggest friends and prompt app owners to send invites to people not yet a part of Facebook.

It can be easy to ignore Facebook’s latest announcement because it ignores the power-user with the kitted-out smartphone and a 1GB data plan. But as ReadWriteWeb reminded its readers, a “principal of business is ‘go where the people are.’ When it comes to world wide mobile use, feature phones are where the people are.”

You think 750 million is a lot of people? If efforts like this succeed, we soon could be talking 1 billion.