Philippines tops social networking list

SINGAPORE – The Philippines has been dubbed the social networking capital of the world, with three Southeast Asian nations among the top 10 social networkers.

Facebook is the most popular website in the Philippines
Facebook is the most popular website in the Philippines

Wall Street 24/7 compiled the list using data from Comscore, Inside Facebook, New Media Trend Watch, and ZDNet to do its analysis.

The list measured social network usage as a percentage of a country’s internet users. It measured countries by their usage of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the internet.

The Philippines topped the list at 95 per cent, with 93.9 per cent of its internet population (29.7 per cent of its overall population) using Facebook, which exceeds Google as the country’s most popular website. Despite internet usage of only 29.7 per cent, at 16.1 per cent the country ranks eighth on Twitter usage, and the 46 per cent rise in online photo sharing this year is largely due to Facebook. 

Sixth in the global top ten, Malaysia has Southeast Asia’s second-highest social network penetration, at 91 per cent of its 64.6 per cent internet users. Photo-sharing is the country’s fastest growing social-networking activity, with its popularity having increased by 57 per cent in Malaysia. 

In seventh position globally is Indonesia, but at only 12.3 per cent it has a low percentage of internet users. Of those, some 90 per cent are engaged in social networking, which Comscore attributes almost exclusively to Facebook. 22 per cent of Indonesia’s internet users had visited Twitter.

Top 10 countries of social network users (as a percentage of internet users)

  1. Philippines
  2. Israel
  3. Turkey
  4. Chile
  5. Argentina
  6. Malaysia
  7. Indonesia
  8. Peru
  9. Colombia
  10. Venezuela

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