Opera shows social network usage around the globe

Report shows Facebook most often visited in Macau, Twitter most popular in Paraguay

Social networks do more than allow you to spy on “friends” that you have not spoken to in decades. They also make the world a smaller place. Every country has its own regional networks, but the big ones, like Facebook and Twitter, have conquered the globe.

Browser maker Opera released its 2012 State of the Mobile Web report on Friday, which measures the popularity of social networks by country by looking at the number of Opera Mini users who visit them. Included in the report are Facebook, Twitter, along with three other regional networks, but since Facebook and Twitter "are the only social networks with true global representation," Opera says, those are the two that I will focus on.

Opera uses anonymous and aggregated data from the servers of the Opera Mini mobile web browser, a browser that compresses all data traffic on the fly, allowing it to build a picture of social media usage in more than 190 countries. In October 2012, there were 194 million Opera Mini users worldwide.

Facebook users around the world

Facebook is the most popular social networks globally, with 50.6%  of Opera Mini users visiting Facebook at least once during the month of October. 

When it comes to where people are accessing Facebook, your first though is probably that the United States will come out on top, right? In actuality, the U.S. comes pretty far down on the list in terms of percentage of unique users. The top country in that regard is Macau, with over 90% of Opera Mini users accessing Facebook every month. The U.S. only sees 49.54%.

In terms of total user numbers, and not only percentage of users, Opera says, it is actually Asian countries who top the list for Facebook with Indonesia and India coming in first and second, followed by Nigeria, Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia and Turkey.

The top country list for Twitter is remarkably similar: Indonesia on top, followed by India, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Kenya and the Philippines.

The map below shows where Facebook is used around the world, with the darker portions showing higher activity:

Twitter

Twitter, it would seem, sees less global popularity than Facebook, as Paraguay tops the list as the country with the highest percentage of unique users, but with only 15.75%. Even only 9.34% of users in the United States access Twitter at least once a month on Opera Mini.

The top country list for Twitter is remarkably similar to that of Facebook, though, with Indonesia on top, followed by India, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Kenya and the Philippines.

The map of Twitter shows fewer area around the world where Twitter is popular, compared to the Facebook map above:

The other social networks in the report

Opera also released numbers for Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and vKontakte, as well as Chinese social network Weibo.

"Most countries have one extremely dominant social network," the report says, which can sometimes make it hard for the bigger social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, to break in.

"The popularity of Odnoklassniki and vKontakte is inversely proportional to Facebook and Twitter, making these countries a challenge for social networks originated in the USA. The same goes for China, where the usage of social networks does not follow the same patterns as other countries. Inside China, the Chinese social networks are dominant, but outside they are practically non-existent in the Opera Mini domain lists," it says in the report.

Other countries are more diverse, though, specifically Estonia, which Opera calls "innovative and high-tech."

"Estonia has a high representation of both Facebook and Twitter, as well as more regional networks such as Odnoklassniki and VKontakte. Other countries such as Israel and Latvia also show a more diversified distribution of visits to different social networks," Opera says.

(Image source: https://www.smfschools.org)