Sonico, think Facebook for Latin America - you may recall in a previous post, recently announced that they have passed the 15 million mark in registered users (content in Spanish) - keep in mind they have only been around for 9 months. In the beginning of 2008, the network had about 7.3 million registered users. These numbers are supported by a March 2008 ComScore report.

So it seems like they have surpassed Hi5, Orkut, and Facebook (LATAM registered users) and thus becoming reigning leaders in Latin America…

Mashable first reported on this and as a result were contacted by Hi5 to clarify - to which immediately a follow-up post was written. According to a more recent comScore report (April 2008) - Hi5 is clearly still the leader in overall traffic.

This does not take away from Sonico’s strong growth (or any other of the social networks in the region)…what I gather from all this is that Latin America is poised for a huge boom of online communities, conversations, opportunities, and yes, even challenges. And as internet penetration increases more and more, expect this phenomenon to out pace even Sonico’s growth.

It is likely that you have heard about the social network Hi5, then again maybe not. While it does not rank in the top 10 social networking sites in the US - it does rank very high in most Latin American countries (in some even as the top online destination). I am not sure if there is any real explanation for this, Google’s social site Orkut is a favorite in Brazil. Neither of these networks were specifically developed for the South American markets…they have just been “overtaken” by them.

I have a profile on both: my Hi5 network is made up of my friends I made in Venezuela and Bolivia while my Orkut network has all my Brazilian friends I met while working at Terra.com. A little secret - most of them are on Facebook too. The question is, will any one country or region for that matter take over Facebook. Honor Gunday, the founder of one the largest social networks in Turkey, Zurna, coined this possible phenomenon as Orkutization.

It is always worth while to check out which social sites are the most visited in your country - you may be surprised and find additional communication opportunities.