TO THE DISMAY OF YAHOO
Now you might ask, what particularly makes Filipinos anywhere around the world so attracted to Facebook. After all, it didn’t take long for them to become the dominant users of Flicker in just a few years to the dismay of Yahoo. Analysts agree that at least five important factors have together contributed to Facebook’s popularity with Filipino users:
Intrinsic Design. An organized, simple and easy-to-use interface with very little ‘in-your-face’ advertising pitches as compared with its competitors. Filipinos generally tend to join in or buy things on recommendation from family members or friends. Reputation is what matters most, not hard-sell, which turns them off;
Mass Appeal. It isn’t targeted towards a specific demographic like many other aspiring players even if, ironically, Facebook started out as a network for Harvard and other Ivy-league university students in the United States. And it’s not just exclusively for young people anymore. One of the older users of Facebook today is a lovely Filipina lady widow in her 80s who lives in California who goes by the name of Tita (or Auntie) Grace;
It’s Focus on Activity. Facebook is focused on ‘connecting’ as opposed to entertainment. It is used for multiple net-working activities – reuniting dis-tant relatives, classmates and old friends, business networking, dating, sha-ring photos, comments and feedback, status updates and more. Essen-tially, Facebook is Reunion, LinkedIn, Yahoo! Personals, Flickr and Twitter all rolled into one convenient package. Filipinos being highly social beings that they are love mixing up stuff like that so much so because it reflects some of their mix-this-with-that home-grown dishes or desserts like halo-halo.
Internal Structure. It has many creative and useful features that include applications, invites, I Like, requests, email messaging, chat, file uploads, link-sharing and an open architecture – including the masterstroke of open-ing its platform to applications developers, many of whom by the way, are Filipinos. All this has increased word-of-mouth and visitor engagement through a multitude of Filipino-inspired fan, community and group pages that bring together Filipinos wherever they may be around the world. And that includes those residing in New Zealand.
Respect for Privacy. Members have more control over what and who sees their content than in many other social networks where non-members can access personal content, a concern for many people and Filipinos are no ex-ception.
WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND
It is to humanity’s disfavour to try and bring down those they have raised to the heavens back down to the dregs of the earth. Recent news reports and negativity around Facebook losing audience are not reflected by actual figures as this post is being writ-ten.
While usage numbers may be reaching a saturation point in some places around the world, the global picture is still one of exuberant growth for Face-book, The table below shows the Top-30 countries by number of active Face-book users according to data made available from Facebook.
Top-30 Countries With Highest Number of Facebook Users July 2011
(Data from Facebook API and then compared to Facebook usage statistics lists)
|
Rank |
Country |
July 2008 |
July 2009 |
July 2010 |
July 2011 |
Growth |
|
1 |
USA |
27,811,560 |
69,378,980 |
125,881,220 |
151,350,260 |
20.23% |
|
2 |
Indonesia |
209,760 |
6,496,960 |
25,912,960 |
38,860,460 |
49.97% |
|
3 |
UK |
11,171,540 |
18,711,160 |
26,543,600 |
29,880,860 |
12.57% |
|
4 |
India |
711,520 |
3,236,140 |
10,547,240 |
29,475,740 |
179.46% |
|
5 |
Turkey |
3,464,640 |
12,382,320 |
22,552,540 |
29,459,200 |
30.62% |
|
6 |
Mexico |
1,042,820 |
3,644,400 |
12,978,440 |
26,770,300 |
106.27% |
|
7 |
Philippines |
162,640 |
2,719,560 |
14,600,300 |
25,307,800 |
73.34% |
|
8 |
France |
2,461,140 |
10,781,480 |
18,942,220 |
22,713,240 |
19.91% |
|
9 |
Brazil |
119,080 |
1,015,400 |
4,757,200 |
21,239,380 |
346.47% |
|
10 |
Italy |
491,100 |
10,218,400 |
16,647,260 |
19,806,660 |
18.98% |
|
11 |
Germany |
618,080 |
3,136,680 |
9,949,760 |
19,459,280 |
95.58% |
|
12 |
Canada |
9,621,820 |
11,961,020 |
15,497,900 |
16,597,760 |
7.1% |
|
13 |
Argentina |
417,980 |
4,906,220 |
10,542,040 |
15,642,240 |
48.38% |
|
14 |
Colombia |
2,412,000 |
5,760,300 |
10,226,820 |
14,631,600 |
43.07% |
|
15 |
Spain |
695,900 |
5,773,200 |
10,610,080 |
14,409,960 |
35.81% |
|
16 |
Malaysia |
450,580 |
1,995,040 |
7,317,520 |
11,221,040 |
53.34% |
|
17 |
Thailand |
114,180 |
697,340 |
4,216,760 |
10,612,380 |
151.67% |
|
18 |
Australia |
3,217,380 |
6,053,560 |
9,009,660 |
10,419,100 |
15.64% |
|
19 |
Taiwan |
71,340 |
685,460 |
6,745,160 |
9,932,740 |
47.26% |
|
20 |
Venezuela |
966,700 |
3,578,740 |
6,686,300 |
9,079,180 |
35.79% |
|
21 |
Chile |
2,105,820 |
4,830,680 |
6,944,540 |
8,527,460 |
22.79% |
|
22 |
Egypt |
783,440 |
1,618,040 |
3,518,460 |
7,885,820 |
119.35% |
|
23 |
Poland |
83,180 |
619,180 |
2,772,540 |
6,363,100 |
129.50% |
|
24 |
Peru |
148,940 |
839,220 |
2,551,700 |
6,260,980 |
145.37% |
|
25 |
Pakistan |
236,340 |
765,480 |
1,937,760 |
4,795,200 |
147.46% |
|
26 |
Russia |
67,760 |
412,840 |
1,244,280 |
4,648,080 |
273.56% |
|
27 |
Netherlands |
211,920 |
1,061,480 |
2,644,460 |
4,513,280 |
70.67% |
|
28 |
Sweden |
1,141,700 |
2,287,240 |
3,798,020 |
4,403,300 |
15.94% |
|
29 |
Belgium |
531,740 |
2,372,460 |
3,505,920 |
4,255,180 |
21.37% |
|
30 |
So. Africa |
878,120 |
1,720,820 |
2,884,080 |
4,095,280 |
42% |
Source: http://www.nickburcher.com/search?q=Facebook+usage+figures+2011
Given this, you might be led to believe that something launched in the USA like Facebook would be dominated by users who actually live and work there. In a way, we’d have to agree that this is largely due to the size of its own population and the high percentage of them who are actually ‘wired’ to the Internet. But if you take in the growth rate as another metric, the Philippines’ rate is 3.63-times faster that of the United States, and that’s only comparing July 2011 with July 2010 figures.
That’s not all. Given Filipinos’ ingrained love affair with digital gadgets that are Internet-ready as their means to connect to each other with a recent announce-ment that Skype (the world’s most popular VoIP service) is integrating with Facebook (now the world’s leading social network with over 750-milion users) to make it easier to call and video chat with friends and family on the social net-work, it’s likely that metric will continue to grow from strength to strength.
So, Uy! May Pacebuk Ka Na?
During the Spanish
Filipinos in Christchurch 