<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Facebook use in the Arab countries is growing as such a rate that within a year, Arabic will overtake English to become the most popular Facebook language in the region, the Jerusalem Post reports.\r\n\r\nThe Arabic Facebook interface launched in 2009, growing to 10 million users within two years. As it stands, these users represent around a third of all Facebook users in the Arab world, with studies suggesting that two times as many people frequently use Facebook in the Middle East and North Africa rather than buy a daily newspaper.\r\n\r\nMiddle Eastern PR agency Spot On PR commissioned the study, indicating that Facebook's Arabic interface has grown 175% a year, double the rate of the social network's growth worldwide. Algeria saw the biggest rise, growing 423% annually.\r\n\r\nThe agency includes some interesting statistics:\r\nThe Arabic platform\u2019s 10 million users make up about 35% of the region\u2019s Facebook subscribers, up from 24% in May 2010.\r\n\r\n56% of Facebook users in Egypt (3.8 million) opt for the Arabic language version. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, 41% use Arabic and in Saudi Arabia it\u2019s 61%. By contrast, Morocco has 17% recorded Arabic users and at the bottom of the list is the United Arab Emirates, with its big expatriate population, with just 10%.\r\n\r\nAccording to the MENA Facebook Digest, the Middle East and North Africa is home to approximately 10% of the world\u2019s Facebook users with some 56 million subscribers. This includes some 19 million who joined during the past year, a growth rate of 51%.\r\nThe social network played a pivotal role in the Arab Spring, helping to organise protests and give oppressed citizens a voice when feeling pressure from autocratic regimes.\r\n\r\nDespite the rise in use, Internet access in the region is still low and there is a high level of illiteracy, suggesting that the majority of users are middle-class and educated citizens."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/07/08/arabic-set-to-overtake-english-as-facebooks-biggest-middle-east-language/>