On March 9 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of a French-language version of his popular social networking site. The launch follows the debut of a Spanish-language site in February and a German site earlier this month. Facebook relied on French-speaking members of the site to translate the site to French from English, as it has done with previously launched Spanish and German versions. Facebook has enjoyed spectacular international growth in the past year, despite being published only in English until recently. Roughly 60 percent of Facebook’s more than 67 million users live outside the United States.France is the sixth most active country on Facebook, while Canada, with its own sizable French-speaking population, is third.

The United States is No. 1, followed by Britain, Canada, Turkey, Australia, France, then Sweden, Norway and Colombia. Users who added the Facebook translation application were allowed to submit translations online while browsing the site. Facebook users then approved all translations through a voting system. Facebook members who wish to use the site in French, German or Spanish can now change languages in their account settings to those languages. Anyone who signs onto Facebook from a French-speaking country automatically sees the site in French. Facebook is playing catch-up in terms of languages to rival News Corp’s MySpace, which has national sites in more than 20 countries. MySpace offers versions of its site in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French, German and Italian, including a site for U.S. Spanish speakers and another for French Canadians.