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If there's one rule about getting uptake of your social networking site, it's that there isn't one rule about getting uptake. If there were a clear cut strategy for growing internationally, everyone would be doing it.

Most of the time stories like these are written retroactively ("of course the best way to grow a social network among colleges is to open up slowly and in tiers!"). That way, the author is always "right." Here's the rare exception where the author might be eating her hat soon as it's revealed that Myspace's plan was better all along. It's way too early for analysis.

Way too early? Using Facebook's own audience to translate it into their own languages sounds like a pretty dang good one. They don't have to do any work, and their number of translations will keep climbing. I think you can make some legit guesses based on that.
I'm not disagreeing it's a cheap way to get your site translated. But how's that help your user numbers? The point of the article is that the author thinks it'll fuel growth, even without any evidence that that's true.

I know from personal experience that just having a site in x language does not make it popular in x's country of origin. OkCupid has been doing the "users translate the site" idea for a while now, and still has to put in work beyond that to promote the site beyond the US.

Why the hell do people assume that there are only 2 social networking websites ? There are tons of social networking websites and ones popular in the US or europe arent necessarily going to gain traction internationally. They may or they may not. There is just no way to know right now. In India for example Orkut is far more popular than Facebook.