FACEBOOK IS looking east for its next phase of expansion, as the US company prepares to take on entrenched competition in China, Russia and Japan to become the first social network company to connect one billion people.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the world’s largest social network, said that after relying largely on organic growth to reach almost 500 million members, Facebook would soon begin to make its first strategic local moves.

“We are down to four countries that we are not the leading social network in,” he told an audience of marketers at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, naming Japan, Russia, China and South Korea. “Now for the first time we are focused on doing some specific things in specific countries.”

He did not specify whether that would involve local customisation of Facebook in those countries, or acquisitions.

“I think if we succeed, we have a good chance of being the company that brings to one billion people,” he said.

Facebook faces large, established competitors in Asian markets, including Japan’s Mixi and Tencent QQ in China. It also faces a Chinese government deeply suspicious of foreign media and internet companies.

Google recently quit China in a dispute over censorship.

Facebook has been used in broadly the same way all over the world up to now, although advertising and applications developed for the platform were more varied internationally, Mr Zuckerberg said.

Mobile internet would be a big driver of global growth in social media, Mr Zuckerberg added.

“We are getting our first crop of countries now that have more mobile usage than web usage,” he said, citing India as an example. “I think most people think it’s only a matter of time before that starts happening more universally.”

He said that Facebook would build “people-centric applications everywhere”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010