Facebook statistics - an update
It has been a while since I last posted a updated statistics about Facebook usage, growth and penetration. But now it's time again.
If you have missed my earlier posts please have a look here for all posts on Facebook stats (including this post).
Please note - all tables and graphs might be missing if you are reading the feed of this blog. Please go to TheKillerAttitude.com to ensure you see everything.
This time I post a number of "top ten" lists to highlight some aspects. In the end I enclose a complete table, all countries, all statistics.
Recently there has been a number of posts around declining usage of Facebook in the US and UK, based on figures from eg. comScore and Nielsen Online. It might be partially because of a saturation among the users for Social Networking activities. Read the update in this post though, where Facebook states they are measuring active users, not unique visitors.
Also recently, Facebook launched a Spanish translation in the beginning of February. Will non-english versions help continue to drive the growth? Read on for an indication.
And finally, Facebook just added a few countries to the SocialAd utility. Brazil, Croatia, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Poland, Serbia and Taiwan was added. When I looked at the numbers last week these countries where represented, but did not have any data yet.
What do we measure?
But first, some thoughts on what numbers we are following.
I have been looking into the numbers provided by Facebook through the SocialAd utility. As the target group for these figures are potential advertisers I believe Facebook are keen to keep the numbers as accurate as big as possible but also as accurate as possible.
As indicated both in the post from ReadWriteWeb I mentioned above, and in Robert Scoble's interview with Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook seems to define a "active user" as someone who has signed in over the last 30 days. Thus I do believe the SocialAd numbers reflects "active users".
But then, in this post Michael Arrington quotes Matt Cohler (VP Facebook), stating that there's 600 000 active users in Germany. The number in SocialAd is 480 000 currently. Oh well...
I have also used the member count in some country networks. Not for all countries, see overall tabel at the end to find out which countries.
The "networks" are something each user selects to join or not. Thus not all users based in a country is expected to be part of the country network. Also, a user can join a different network than the home country.
On the other hand, I do believe the country as stated in the SocialAd utility is based on the country the user selects when signing up for Facebook.
We should also note that the "network" figure probably are not taking into account which users are considered active or not.
If you look at the growth week per week, and compare the growth in SocialAd's numbers and the networks, you see this:
The networks I have looked at (yellow bars) shows a growth every week. The SocialAds data (blue - all countries, red - only countries with "network" data) are more bumpy. Every second week or so you see a growth, in between you only see minor changes.
And last, when calculating benchmark figures I have used population data from the CIA factbook and data on internet usage from Internet World Stats.
Enough introduction, on to the stats.
Countries with highest usage
So, which country is "most Facebooked"?
Depends on how you define it, of course. We'll use the data from the Social Ad utility.
If you look at number of user you get this top ten list:
US in the top, no surprise.
If you on the other hand look at Facebook penetration per country population you get this top ten list:
US falls down to #8. Note that several Nordic countries are among the top ten.
If you however use the penetration among the internet users ina country as benchmark you see a few countries which might be unexpected:
Canada ranks high whatever metrics you use though.
Where's the growth?
It is always interesting to see where the growth is. Let's see the top ten list of growth rate since beginning of the year, using Social Ad data.
So there is still growth according to the numbers. But of course the highest growth potential is where the penetration is lower.
What if you look at the growth in absolute numbers?
Well, US and UK in the top. So this is where most users are added, according to SocialAds. Not the same message as in the articles referenced in the beginning of this blog post.
Translation matters?
Before we look at all countries in one table, what about the Spanish translation? Did it have any effect?
To give an answer I turn to the "networks" data. As seen in the graph above no significant changes in the SocialAds data can be seen the last few weeks, so we will probably not see the potential effect here. Let's have a look at the top ten networks with regards to growth rate. (Note that I have not looked at all networks, but it is an indication.)
Hm, what's the language in the countries on the top half of the list?
It will be interesting to follow how this evolves. For Spanish, and for other translations as they are introduced. Stay tuned for next update.
The big picture
And for you who would like to see all countries. Here is a table to look into.
(As the tables will not get indexed I add this: Facebook statistics, usage, penetration for Turkey Israel France Malaysia Singapore China Switzerland Colombia Italy Germany India Spain Ireland Netherlands Australia Saudi Arabia New Zealand Mexico Egypt Lebanon United Arab Emirates Pakistan Dominican Republic Japan Sweden South Korea, Republic of Korea United Kingdom Norway United States (US) South Africa Canada Philippines Indonesia Russian Federation (Russia) Greece Denmark Finland Chile Belgium Argentina Venezuela Austria Jordan Peru Kuwait Thailand Panama Brazil Croatia Hong Kong Nigeria Poland Serbia Taiwan )
If you have missed my earlier posts please have a look here for all posts on Facebook stats (including this post).
Please note - all tables and graphs might be missing if you are reading the feed of this blog. Please go to TheKillerAttitude.com to ensure you see everything.
This time I post a number of "top ten" lists to highlight some aspects. In the end I enclose a complete table, all countries, all statistics.
Recently there has been a number of posts around declining usage of Facebook in the US and UK, based on figures from eg. comScore and Nielsen Online. It might be partially because of a saturation among the users for Social Networking activities. Read the update in this post though, where Facebook states they are measuring active users, not unique visitors.
Also recently, Facebook launched a Spanish translation in the beginning of February. Will non-english versions help continue to drive the growth? Read on for an indication.
And finally, Facebook just added a few countries to the SocialAd utility. Brazil, Croatia, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Poland, Serbia and Taiwan was added. When I looked at the numbers last week these countries where represented, but did not have any data yet.
What do we measure?
But first, some thoughts on what numbers we are following.
I have been looking into the numbers provided by Facebook through the SocialAd utility. As the target group for these figures are potential advertisers I believe Facebook are keen to keep the numbers as accurate as big as possible but also as accurate as possible.
As indicated both in the post from ReadWriteWeb I mentioned above, and in Robert Scoble's interview with Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook seems to define a "active user" as someone who has signed in over the last 30 days. Thus I do believe the SocialAd numbers reflects "active users".
But then, in this post Michael Arrington quotes Matt Cohler (VP Facebook), stating that there's 600 000 active users in Germany. The number in SocialAd is 480 000 currently. Oh well...
I have also used the member count in some country networks. Not for all countries, see overall tabel at the end to find out which countries.
The "networks" are something each user selects to join or not. Thus not all users based in a country is expected to be part of the country network. Also, a user can join a different network than the home country.
On the other hand, I do believe the country as stated in the SocialAd utility is based on the country the user selects when signing up for Facebook.
We should also note that the "network" figure probably are not taking into account which users are considered active or not.
If you look at the growth week per week, and compare the growth in SocialAd's numbers and the networks, you see this:
The networks I have looked at (yellow bars) shows a growth every week. The SocialAds data (blue - all countries, red - only countries with "network" data) are more bumpy. Every second week or so you see a growth, in between you only see minor changes.
And last, when calculating benchmark figures I have used population data from the CIA factbook and data on internet usage from Internet World Stats.
Enough introduction, on to the stats.
Countries with highest usage
So, which country is "most Facebooked"?
Depends on how you define it, of course. We'll use the data from the Social Ad utility.
If you look at number of user you get this top ten list:
US in the top, no surprise.
If you on the other hand look at Facebook penetration per country population you get this top ten list:
US falls down to #8. Note that several Nordic countries are among the top ten.
If you however use the penetration among the internet users ina country as benchmark you see a few countries which might be unexpected:
Canada ranks high whatever metrics you use though.
Where's the growth?
It is always interesting to see where the growth is. Let's see the top ten list of growth rate since beginning of the year, using Social Ad data.
So there is still growth according to the numbers. But of course the highest growth potential is where the penetration is lower.
What if you look at the growth in absolute numbers?
Well, US and UK in the top. So this is where most users are added, according to SocialAds. Not the same message as in the articles referenced in the beginning of this blog post.
Translation matters?
Before we look at all countries in one table, what about the Spanish translation? Did it have any effect?
To give an answer I turn to the "networks" data. As seen in the graph above no significant changes in the SocialAds data can be seen the last few weeks, so we will probably not see the potential effect here. Let's have a look at the top ten networks with regards to growth rate. (Note that I have not looked at all networks, but it is an indication.)
Hm, what's the language in the countries on the top half of the list?
It will be interesting to follow how this evolves. For Spanish, and for other translations as they are introduced. Stay tuned for next update.
The big picture
And for you who would like to see all countries. Here is a table to look into.
(As the tables will not get indexed I add this: Facebook statistics, usage, penetration for Turkey Israel France Malaysia Singapore China Switzerland Colombia Italy Germany India Spain Ireland Netherlands Australia Saudi Arabia New Zealand Mexico Egypt Lebanon United Arab Emirates Pakistan Dominican Republic Japan Sweden South Korea, Republic of Korea United Kingdom Norway United States (US) South Africa Canada Philippines Indonesia Russian Federation (Russia) Greece Denmark Finland Chile Belgium Argentina Venezuela Austria Jordan Peru Kuwait Thailand Panama Brazil Croatia Hong Kong Nigeria Poland Serbia Taiwan )
Labels: facebook, facebookstats
posted by Johan Myrberger at
1:15 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting post. I am always curious about the success of Facebook. Would be interesting to see it in comparison to the growth of other social networks. Thanks for this! Raiha
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