Clones of Facebook, some of which are of similar color, font and layout with Facebook, have appeared suddenly in local languages around the world. These websites provide identical core services, letting users post pictures, make groups and choose friends.

Facebook Inc global campaign began in February and has since rolled out 18 foreign-language editions, including Norwegian and Czech, with plans for 54 more. However, all those clone websites complicates the campaign.

Facebook’s international challenges illustrate just some of the ways global expansion can bedevil major US web companies as they seek swarms of users and advertising dollars in new markets.

Winning over people who are already hooked on local-language sites hocking similar services with a similar look is Fcaebook’s particular problem.

In Russia, for example, where Facebook launched in June, the entrenched social-networking engine online is Vkontakte, a Russian-language Facebook clone that boasts more than 14 million users.

Facebook officials predict that they will win finally, partly because they can spend more resources on improving their sites than upstarts can.Facebook said it would extend its translation tools to those developers to make Facebook even more compelling for overseas markets. It has a strong network of outside programmers who write web applications for the site.

In additional, its users can connect with friends from other countries while some local sites can’t do.

Facebook spokesman Jaime Schopflin said: “Although they can get traction in individual countries, they can’t compete on a global scale.”

But social-networking sites reflect real life, and many Russians dread moving to a neighborhood where they have no friends.

Moscow resident Galina Ryazanova, 21, a recent college graduate who uses both web sites said: “All of my Russian friends are on Vkontakte, and I don’t think they will shift to Facebook because everyone is already set up on Vkontakte.”

To keep up with her non-Russian friends, Ryazanova visits Facebook about once a month, she said, but uses Vkontakte three or four times a week. She criticized Facebook for pulsing too many distracting applications and for allowing users to translate part of the site, bringing what she called poor-quality Russian.

In many English-language countries, Facebook governs the social-networking market and is rising rapidly in other countries. It is the most popular social-networking site in Britain and one of the top three in France, tracking company comScore reported.

But it seems that Facebook gains ground less quickly in countries such as Germany and Russia. According to comScore, Germany’s StudiVZ and Russia’s Vkontakte are widely outdrawing Facebook.

Facebook software engineer Alex Moskalyuk said his company has no direct strategy to attract users from competitor sites.

He also said, “You can spend your time worrying about the competitors or you can spend your time innovating your product. We choose the latter, not the former.”

That strategy obviously changed in June, when Facebook filed an intellectual-property lawsuit against German clone StudiVZ in a federal court in California.

Facebook claims StudiVZ unfairly copied its content, but StudiVZ says Facebook is trying to stifle the competition as it pursues the global market. The faceoff has fueled speculation that a string of lawsuits against clone sites could begin.

The stakes are high. Microsoft snared 1.6 percent of Facebook for $240 million in 2007, valuing Facebook at roughly $15 billion. Investors poured $430 million this year into the parent company behind China’s Facebook-like Xiaonei. Der Spiegel reported that a publishing company bought StudiVZ for $132 million last year.

Vkontakte dominates the Russian market along with one other site, which is geared more towards adults.

“Vkontakte has already become like a habit,” Nikita Glushik, 19, said as he checked the site at a Moscow Internet café. He said he had never heard of Facebook.

Russia’s renewed sense of national pride might be enough to give an edge to Vkontakte, with the sites so identical.

“Vkontakte is Russian and Facebook is American, this is the biggest difference,” Ryazanova said.

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