Facebook in Asia: Total Users and Age Groups [Latest STATS]
Facebook marked its 6th anniversary on February 05 2010 with a population of 400 million users. On February 11 2010, the social network hit another milestone – more than 100 million people actively using Facebook on their mobile phones. Today, there are over 3 billion photos being uploaded to Facebook each month and more than 500,000 active applications on its Platform. And recently, FastCompany magazine named Facebook, as the World’s Most Innovative Company 2010.
These days, 70% of Facebook users are from outside US. In Asia, Facebook is fast becoming the one the region’s leading social networks. Indonesia has the fourth highest number of Facebook users in the world, after US, UK and Turkey. With 18.9 million users, Indonesia is well ahead of Philippines, the country with 10.5 million Facebook users (refer to table below). This is followed by India (6.8 million), Taiwan (5.8 million) and Malaysia (5.1 million). In terms of penetration rate, Hong Kong has the highest “Facebook users per country population” rate in Asia, at 39%, followed by Singapore (38%), Taiwan (25%), Malaysia (18%) and Philippines (11%). The total Facebook users in Asia is 59.6 million, or about 15% of the global Facebook population.
| Facebook Users in Asia, by Country (as of March 01 2010) |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Country | Estimated Total Users* | % of Population^ | % of Total Online Users# |
| 1 | Indonesia | 18,943,640 | 7.88 | 63.15 |
| 2 | Philippines | 10,518,420 | 11.44 | 43.83 |
| 3 | India | 6,829,340 | 0.58 | 8.43 |
| 4 | Taiwan | 5,808,940 | 25.21 | 38.36 |
| 5 | Malaysia | 5,094,600 | 18.00 | 30.14 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 2,769,900 | 39.26 | 56.78 |
| 7 | Thailand | 2,525,280 | 3.96 | 15.68 |
| 8 | Singapore | 1,895,580 | 38.01 | 56.25 |
| 9 | Pakistan | 1,803,860 | 1.07 | 9.75 |
| 10 | Japan | 907,540 | 0.71 | 0.95 |
| 11 | Vietnam | 761,260 | 0.89 | 3.47 |
| 12 | Bangladesh | 748,440 | 0.46 | – |
| 13 | South Korea | 510,560 | 1.02 | 1.36 |
| 14 | Sri Lanka | 483,340 | 2.39 | 41.54 |
| TOTAL | 59,600,700 | |||
* Total Users from Facebook.com / ^ Total Population from Wikipedia.com / # Total Online Users from The World Factbook (CIA) |
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Vrroom! Vrroom! At 600 Tweets Per Second
Twitter posted an interesting stat today. In 2007, there are 5000 tweets per day (TPD). From the graph below, we can see a sharp increase in the second half of last year and TPD reached 35 million tweets by end 2009. Today, the figure is 50 million – or 600 tweets per second! Twitter users growth maybe slowing, but existing users are tweeting more than ever. ¶ @zhiQ
Facebook Acquired A Malaysian Startup
Facebook has acquired Octazen Solutions, a Kuala Lumpur-based maker of Contacts Importer software, reported on GigaOM. Octazen’s software already in-use on Facebook and helps the social networking giant to “grow by making it easy for users to invite their contacts on other services,” such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others. This ‘old’ PDF document explains a bit more on how the Contacts Importer works.
According to the article, Facebook said the acquisition as “talent acquisition”. Octazen’s two employees will join Facebook as engineers and remain in Malaysia (Octazen with an office in Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur), making them social network’s first Asia-based full-time employees of Facebook.
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Swivel Screen and Stylus Are Ancient; Get Ready to Hover and Gesture
New Scientist looks at Apple filed patents for hints on the upcoming Apple tablet. One is hover, under filing In addition to touch, users can hover over an element on the screen to activate it. Patents Filing: Simultaneous Sensing Arrangement with “touch sensing devices can include multiple sense points, each located at a crossing of a drive line and a sense line.” and just granted patent, Noise Detection in Multi-touch Sensors as “touch sensing devices can include multiple sense points, each of which can be stimulated with a plurality of periodic waveforms having different frequencies to measure a touch value at the sense point. Noise at one or more of the frequencies can interfere with this measurement.”
Second is gestures, where users interact with onscreen elements using gestures. Patents filing: Multi-Touch Gestures Dictionary that “..include a variety of motions associated with the chord and the meanings of gestures formed from the chord and the motions” and Swipe Gestures for Touch Screen Keyboards which “allow for a user entering text using the virtual keyboard to perform certain functions using swipes across the key area rather than tapping particular keys.”
Let’s wait and see if these features are available in Apple’s latest creation. ¶ @zhiQ
Twitter “Local Trends” Not Localized for Asia Yet
This morning, Twitter Local Trends is activated on my Twitter profile. Twitter officially roll-out the feature to limited users on January 22 2010. By now, the feature is already available to most users. Users can choose to set Trending, by Country or City. Unfortunately, none from Asia. For now, only 6 countries are available for selection – US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, Canada. There’s a total of 15 cities, all US cities except two (Sao Paulo and London).
Local Trends is a natural evolution for the Twitter’s Geotagging, which “attach a longitude and latitude to all of your tweets” and was released in August 2009. Prior to Twitter’s geotag APIs, there’s already an application (one of a handful) called TwitterLocal that filter tweets by location, by “caching all tweets with valid location.” Now, Twitter goes meta with Trending topics for each location.
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Twitter in Asia: Total Users, by Country
According to Sycomos latest report on Twitter, Asian countries constitutes about 7.74% of the Twitter unique users worldwide. Indonesia topped with 2.34% of unique users, followed by Japan (1.47) and India (0.97). On a global perspective, more than half of Twitter unique users (56.59%) are located in the US and followed by UK (8.09), Brazil (6.73), Canada (4.36) and Australia (2.63). This is based on analysis of active 13 million unique users, between Oct 16 2009 and Dec 16 2009.
comScore reported the total global unique users of Twitter.com has reached 60 million. However, Fred Wilson argued that “Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com.” Twitter ecosystem refers to all interactions with Twitter APIs, via the plethora of third-party Twitter apps i.e. Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Facebook, iPhone apps, etc.
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Maxis Unveils Its Platform Play
Maxis, leading cellular provider and exclusive iPhone distributor in Malaysia, just launched its mobile applications marketplace, 1Store Developer Sentral. The 1Store (the name most likely aspired by 1Malaysia) will feature Java/Symbian-based mobile applications. Developers (individuals and companies) can now register at here. And the applications are available to over 11.4 million Maxis and Hotlink subscribers. Maxis is using its existing billing infrastructure to charge subscribers for downloading applications from 1Store. It is opening up its billing APIs to both purchases and in-app micropayments. Developers will then get paid via funds transfer (for local developers) and TT (for foreign developers).
Over 3.5 Million Users and Facebook is Still Not Malaysia’s Buzziest Channel
According to the latest Digital Brand Index (DBI) by Edelman and Brandtology, Twitter overtook Low Yat Forum as the Malaysia’s buzziest channel (in terms of brand mentions). In the Top 10 list of Buzziest Channel in Malaysia, Malaysia’s leading social network, Facebook, is no where in sight. On methodology, the survey states it “monitors key brands.. across a list of popular online channels.” With 350 million population worldwide, Facebook is undeniably one of today’s most “popular online channels.” The absence of Facebook in the Top 10 – it’s either not covered in the DBI survey or it implies Facebook users in Malaysia converse less about brands compared to Twitter’s users. If it’s the latter, is Facebook a viable media for brands in Malaysia?
Southeast Asia Is The Epicenter of Mobile Web: Opera Report
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According to the latest Opera Mobile Report, Southeast Asia experienced the highest annual growth for mobile web usage. Opera is tracking users of Opera Mini, its browser for mobile. The latest November 2009 report shows Southeast Asia led in every category of growth, in terms of page view (575%), unique users (362%) and data transfer (580%). Worldwide, Opera Mini users jumped to 41.7 million in November 2009, from 16.4 million last November.
AirAsia the First Airline with 100,000 Fans on Facebook; Southwest Will Be the First with 1,000,000 Fans
On the morning of December 9 2009, AirAsia became the first airline in the world with 100,000 fans on Facebook. This makes the award-winning airline the most popular Malaysian brand on Facebook; also, one of the top Asian brands, in terms of Facebook fans. The airline with less than 50,000 fans in August this year. In 4 months or so, the airline organically grew its fan base and surpassed the 100,000 mark. However, within a day, the 100,000 mark is surpassed by US-based Southwest Airlines.
Fans Growth of AirAsia Facebook Fan
To Revitalize Friendster, Just Blend Together Microtransactions, Social Games, Music and a Fair Dose of Luck
Friendster started looking for buyers in July 2009. On 10 December 2009, the once leading social network is acquired by Malaysia’s MOL Group. No financial details were announced. However, in July this year, TechCrunch estimated Friendster to worth around US$137 million. (UPDATE: TechCrunch reported Friendster valued at $26.4 Million in sales)
Why buy Friendster? According to the new MOL/Friendster Group CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah, it’s because of its “strong South East Asia base… very focus, has a very strong following in Malaysia.” He believed “right localization,” in terms of features, contents and applications, is Friendster’s competitive strategy. Ultimately, he envisioned Friendster as South East Asia-centric community, a platform for Asian-ized contents and applications.
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