Orkut, which is currently the king of social networking sites in the world, is facing tough competition from Facebook, which is fast catching up with it, even in India and Brazil, where the Google creation had been reigning for years. It is hard to imagine that barely a year back Orkut had more than double the popularity than Facebook.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, only 26 years old, has predicted that Facebook will soon reach one billion users. And nobody is challenging this claim, as Facebook continues to grow as the most innovative social networking site.

Facebook’s steady growth is threatening Orkut’s reign in many regions and causing Google to be worried about its own popularity. Moreover, Facebook, with a user number of 500 million and growing every day, and with strategically targeted advertisements at its users, is challenging Orkut’s place in the throne.

One of the main reasons for Facebook’s growing popularity maybe its availability in a number of different languages. Popular games and applications like Farmville and Mafia Wars add to the success. And newer applications get added every once in a while.

Facebook has apparently hired some of the best engineers from Silicon Valley for this purpose.