Facebook Ads goes social and useful (?)

When I went into Facebook today I noticed this ad:

Two things struck me as interesting, which I hadn't noticed in Facebook ads before:

• Govermental information related to society
  The ad (for those who don't live in Sweden) tells you that you don't need a little sticker on your number plates from now on. (The sticker was a way to show that you had paid the taxes related to the vehicle).
  This highlights the value of Facebook Ads for other messages than the pure commercial that have been the main part of the ads so far.
  When you click on the ad you end up at the Swedish Transportstyrelsen.
  
• Social recommendations
  Notice the "like"-button, and that two of my friend have "liked" the ad.
  I hadn't noticed this before, but apparently this was announced in August by Facebook.
  (One reason I hadn't noticed might be because there wasn't any ads "liked" by my friend before?)
  This is obviously a way to ensure that the ads as such become more personal relevant for you, in two ways: They are "filtered" by your friends, thus the content might be more likely to be relevant for you and they are "recommended" by your friend - you noticed your friends names and look twice.

That you start to see this type of "useful" information, rather than pure "spam ads", in Facebook leads me to some observations:

• Facebook starts to be seen as a valuable platform for information spreading
  As the Facebook penetration in Sweden continue to grow, now with more than three million users, it's becomming a mainstream channel that is useful not only for businesses.
  
• A targetable information channel
  With Facebook ads you can target the demographics of your receivers quite well, so local information, information for a specific gender and/or age group, information for specific interest groups etc can be effectively spread.
  
• It adds further value to Facebook
  I get more value out of this specific ad than most others than I have seen so far.
  
• More natural placements than Google ads
  My initial reaction was that this specific ad found a better placement through Facebook than it would have if included in the Google ad platform.

What do you think? Will we see more information spreading through Facebook ads, as opposed to commercial messages?

Three million Facebook users in Sweden - statistics and demographics

The number of Facebook users in Sweden have now passed the three million mark.

This number have been close for a while, already in the end of October this blog mentioned the 3-million users in Sweden.
However, since October the number of Swedish Facebook users has oscillated around three million users and regulary gone back below the three million mark. But now it seems to be stable above.

Since I had a closer look at the statistics and demographics of Facebook users in Sweden when the number passed the one-million mark and the two-million mark I will once again drill down in the numbers. Enjoy.

The growth
The first million users in Sweden was reached in November 2007, the second million of users was reached in March 2009. Now, end of 2009, the third million users are reached in Sweden.

Based on the graph of the number of Facebook users in Sweden it doesn't look like the trend is flattening yet. Will the growth continue, or is the user base saturated?

When you look at the number of users per age you get the following distribution:

Most users are between 14 and 24 years old.

The genders
The Facebook users in Sweden is evenly distributed between male and female users: In all age groups there's a small surplus of female users (except for the 65+ group; perhaps male persons are more likely to fake their age?) The penetration
The current number of Facebook users in Sweden means that one third (33%) of the population are using Facebook. Out of the age group 15-64 years old nearly half of the population (47%) are on Facebook. In the group of people between 15 and 39 years old three out of four (73%) are on Facebook.

When you look at the penetration for each age you get this graph: Note that the 19-years-old have more than 100% penetration. Obviously there's some errors here (I discuss a few possible reasons in the end note).

It is also interesting to note that the reach is close to 10% even among the older part of the population. I'd say that there's plenty of room to grow towards four million users - as we have a notable part of all ages on Facebook it might continue to grow.

Compared with the one-million and two-million mark...
When you compare the age group penetration today with the previous distribution it is obvious that Facebook has got a foothold among the people above 35 years of age, and that this is where there has been a growth in the number of users. Note also that the highest penetration is in the age group of 15-19, which is a change from earlier this year. Facebook is no longer a place only for people in the early twenties, but a place where you'll find individuals of all ages.

Notes:
Are these numbers correct? What is meant by a Facebook user - someone with an account, or someone with an active account?

The numbers in this analysis is from the Facebook ad system and the Swedish demographics is from SCB.

There is definately some errors involved, but as an indication of the penetration and demographics these numbers might be used.

The age and gender is self-stated. Especially the age contains error sources. Eg. no doubt that the youngest Swedes, those below 13, also have found Facebook. (To a large degree this is probably driven by all the social games (eg Farmville) that can be played on Facebook.) But since the minimum age in order to register a Facebook account is 13 there is a number of kids who have stated an age of 13 or above. And the birth year can not be changed for an account, so this error might still be in place even when the user have passed the age of 13.

"Facebook Ads uses IP address and a user's profile information to determine a user's location." - it is not exactly clear how Facebook uses this combination to determine which users are Swedish. You might very well have individuals logging in through a Swedish IP, but who are not "part of the Swedish population".'

Further more, Facebook has the information of exact birth date, and the SCB numbers is an estimate of the age distribution for the year, not at the current date specifically. Thus the mapping of age information towards the Swedish demography from SCB have some errors.

Active users or not? - This is not clear, but my educated guess is that Facebook lists accounts which have been accessed in the last 30 days in the ads utility, thus the answer to this question is probably "Yes, active users".

Two million Facebook users in Sweden - here's the demographics

Sweden now has over two million Facebook users. That's a lot.

(Update December 2009 - now more than three million users, read more here)

It took Sweden around 16 months to go from one million users to two million users. This means that the overall penetration of Facebook currently is 22% in Sweden.
As you can see from the chart below the growth rate started to increase in August last year, and doesn't seem to decline yet.

Just a week before Sweden broke the one million mark that I looked into the demographics of the Swedish Facebook users. So - let's have another look at the demographics and see what have changed.

Age of Swedish facebook users
This is the age distribution from Facebook:

If you combine this with the population in Sweden for each age group you get a similiar curve indicating the relative number of users within each age span:

You can notice a very high penetration (over 80%) among the population between 19 and 24.

From the chart below you can see that the media age is around 25 years, you find the first 25% of the users below 20 years of age and 75% of the users below 32 years of age:


Gender of Swedish Facebook users
When we look at the gender distribution we see that there is more women than men on Facebook in Sweden:

The female users are in majority across all age groups:


Also, when you compare the similiar graph from 2007 you notice that the "undefined" gender group has gone down. I believe Facebook no longer allow the users not to state gender?

And while we are comparing with the numbers from 2007, let's have a look at the penetration per age group side by side:

You can note that the population age 35 and over still has room for growth, but percentage wise has grown more than the 20-24 age group since 2007.

That's enough of graphs for now. Let's wait for the 3 millionth user in Sweden for some more graphs...

As a last note - when Facebook hit one million users in Sweden I noted that Facebook was the second most visited site in Sweden according to Alexa. Now, when the number of Swedish users has doubled the same Alexa lookup only put Facebook as number 5:

Ahlgrens bilar: Volvo and more

Some time ago I wrote about Ahlgrens bilar. The highlight was how they made three products out of one by simply packing each colour in separate bags.



I also listed some other related candy that was manufactured under the same brand.

Volvo + Ahlgrens = TRUE
The main reason I write this update is the news that Volvo and Ahlgrens are launching a joint campaign. Candy cars in the format of the Volvo model V70 are launched as "Sweden's most environmental car".

I like this type of cross-brand campaigns. And what can be more natural than a joint effort between two of the biggest car brands in Sweden? And at the same time surfing the environmental wave.

But why did they mix all colours in the bag? Shouldn't all cars be of the green flavour?





One size doesn not fit all
Also, as a follow up to my earlier post. I failed to notice that the main product (Ahlgrens bilar) is available in multiple sizes. At least five different bags (30, 55, 70, 125 and 160 g).


Now also "sweat and sour"
And finally. Yet another sub-brand of Ahlgrens bilar is spotted. The "sursockrade" version.

Hm, some candy anyone? I'll probably stick to the mainstream version myself, but will at least try the new alternatives. What about you?

DN-phone. Not iPhone or Gphone.

Or "DN-mobilen" in Swedish. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter today launched the DN-phone. Read the article (in Swedish) here.

In summary; it's a Nokia phone (pity it wasn't a SonyEricsson) with a subscription from the Swedish operator Telenor. Sold by Dagens Nyheter, and only to current subscribers of the paper version of the newspaper.



The converged arena
So - what's this? A newspaper acting as a mobile operator? Basically that is what the proposition looks like in general. That it is actually a "real" operator behind it is not that important.

This is another example of the converging and new media landscape. That newspapers have a web site is an old example of this. Today you also see the next steps of this, like newspapers being a provider of blog spaces. Also to a large degree you see interaction with readers being enabled. As one example comments to articles are often enabled.

Mobile services are not new either. Mobile versions of newspaper web sites are there. You can subscribe to newflashes via SMS or MMS. And you can send in news via eg MMS and get featured in the newspaper.

This is however the first time I have seen a newspaper phone being marketed!

The packaging
The neat lesson from the DN phone story is how an existing product (phone+subscription) is modified slightly, rebranded and brought to market through a new channel. They have essentially applied a new business model and go-to-market model for an existing product, and with that opened up a completely new part of the arena.

A lesson similiar to the one about repackaging of candy cars.

The reaction
Apparently the interest was high enough to generate a large number of calls to the switchboard. Will be interesting to see the next chapter on this story.

The numbers
The subscription costs SEK 199 per month ("call-for-all") and must be kept for at lest 12 month.
The same phone with similiar subscription (SEK 199/month and minimum 12 month) would cost SEK 1170 if bought from Telenor directly.

With the DN option you basically get the phone for free (save SEK 1170) and you get free access to the mobile version of the DN web site (mobil.dn.se).

mobil.dn.se
It was only a few days ago that DN also launched an improved version of their mobile site. What I like the most with it is how they use the vertical scrolling in the browser to display comic strips. Try it! Might not be new, but it was the first time I saw comics in the mobile in this way.

I and my blog qouted by mainstream media

Metro quoted me in relation to the Facebook uptake in Sweden. Metro even recommended this blog.

Is this good? I guess so, it is always nice when you get reactions to your blog. Of course for your ego, and also for the brands of this blog and myself. The online article have generated some traffic to this blog, but I still get the majority of the traffic from other sources.

I must say the actual quote might not be that valuable. "You can see yourself that it [Facebook usage] is growing. You find more and more people you know [in Facebook]. Facebook is the only site that is really broad right now. On other social networks you find considerable less people you know".

I also discussed the accuracy of the figures with Metro. This was not at all discussed in the article.

Two of the questions around this:

• The figures are probably based on registered users. This is fine, but does not say anything about the number of active users.


• These numbers are not available for all countries (see Jeff Pulver's post for a list of the countries). Why? Do the other countries have significant less users? Or are there other reasons for countries not to be included in the list?

Anyway, Facebook is widely used in Sweden. See my post on that Sweden passed 1 million users here and the post with detailed statistics from Sweden here.

And finally. I was a bit disappointed that the paper verion of the article was shorter and didn't mention me or this blog... That's life I guess, better luck next time.

Update 071109: Turns out that I was quoted in the paper version after all! Not in the "mainstream", green and daily edition, but is the purple, weekly, edition called 'Metro Teknik'.

Over one million Facebook users in Sweden

After my post last week with some details of the Facebook statistics in Sweden I noticed today that Sweden now has over one million Facebook users. At least according to the same source I used last time.
And if you look at Alexa you see that Facebook is number two among the most visited sites in Sweden.

So, it is not a surprise that Expressen, a major newspaper targeting the broad population, offers "share on Facebook" as an option for each article on the web.

Update 071107: Also Aftonbladet, the other "major tabloid newspaper" in Sweden, has a "show on Facebook" option for the articles. Thanks Bengt for mentioning this in a comment. I actually looked at this at Aftonbladet when writing the post, but apparently missed it.