Usage of Facebook is taking off in Europe, according to statistics from research company comScore.

Its report showed that there are almost 100 million Facebook users in Europe, up 314 per cent compared with a year ago.

The proportion of all European online minutes accounted for by Facebook has also risen from 1.1 per cent to 4.1 per cent in the last 12 months, comScore noted.

In the social networking category, this figure rises to 30.4 per cent of all online minutes.

The research also revealed that the UK remains Facebook's biggest European market, with almost 22.7 million users residing in the country in total.

It is followed by France, Turkey, Italy and Spain in the country rankings.

"Facebook has very quickly taken a leading position across most of the European social networking market, despite having a strong foothold in just a few European countries one year ago," explained Mike Read, comScore's managing director for Europe.

According to Facebook's own figures, the site now has more than 200 million global active users.

On average, each Facebook member has 120 friends on the site and over 100 million users log on to the website at least once a day.

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