This article was published on September 9, 2011

Facebook is huge in Asia—now the continent’s fourth largest nation


Facebook is huge in Asia—now the continent’s fourth largest nation

These two interesting infographics developed by Ogilvy demonstrate the size and potential of Facebook in Asia.

It is well known (and much quoted) that, were it a country, Facebook would be the third most populated in the world. But did you know that, if it were a country in Asia (based on its Asian userbase), it would be the region’s fourth largest?

As shown in the graphic below—originally posted by Ogilvy’s Thomas Crampton—only China, India and Indonesia eclipse Facebook’s 179 million Asian ‘population’.

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Furthermore, Asia is a fast-growing segment of Facebook’s total user-base, with the continent now responsible for a full quarter of all visits to the world’s largest social network.

The second graphic shows that the user-base for Facebook in some countries is equal to more than 50% of its total population. In essence, this means that Facebook is more popular in Singapore and Hong Kong than it is in the US, its own backyard.

Generally speaking, Internet access is an issue for many Asian countries, and that is reflected in some of these statistics.

While the data on the right hand side of the second graphic shows that in many Asian countries, more than sixty percent of those with Internet access (based on the national Internet penetration statistics) use Facebook, the percent of the overall population on Facebook is still considerably lower for a number of countries, including the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Vietnam. This can be explained by the low Internet penetration in these markets.

So, while Facebook is popular in India, for example, it has considerable room to grow if more people in the country can get access to the Internet.

It’s worth noting that these statistics does not include Internet access from mobile, a key Internet access point for so many across the continent, and therefore do not tell the full story. Many people can, and do, access Facebook when away from their PCs.

We cannot be sure just how how large the number of mobile Internet users is, but we do know that increasing mobile access, and the growth of smartphones, is helping to increase the number of Internet (and Facebook) users in Asia, and across the world.

All things considered, these statistics are interesting and help reinforce that, while Facebook has experienced a slump in western markets, it continues to thrive in developing continents like Asia, and clearly has the potential to grow even further.

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