Social Networking Capital of the World: The Philippines

The social networking capital of the world is now the Philippines. This is according to 24/7 Wall Street that was circulating on the net since second week of May this year. The Philippines after being coined as “the texting capital of the world”, is now “the social networking capital of the world”, now we have a new title. Filipinos, what do you think about this? 

Let’s define social networking. What is social networking? According to wiktionary.org, social networking is the interaction between a group of people who share a common interest; Using social contacts to network; Using internet's network groups (such as Facebook and Twitter) to network and communicate between consumers and businesses.

There are thousands of social networking sites in the internet. And currently Facebook is on top of the list, with more than 600 million active users. That is the reason why when you say social networking site, the first thing that will come up in a social networker's mind is Facebook. 

From a survey that was conducted by web analytics firm comScore, they found out that Facebook’s market share in some countries is extremely high, although the numbers of Internet users compared with the overall population is very small. With this market share, Asia really dominates the world’s biggest social networking markets: Again Philippines is top of the list with 93.9 percent penetration. Penetration means the total number of Facebook users vs. the total number of Internet users in the Philippines. That’s a huge percentage.  Malaysia and Indonesia is also on the top ten lists, with 88.4 percent and 87.5 percent penetration respectively.

These are the Ten Nations Where Facebook Rules the Internet:

     1. Philippines 93.9%

     2. Israel 91% 

     3. Turkey 90.9%

     4. Chile 90.2%

     5. Argentina 89.2%

     6. Malaysia 88.4%

     7. Indonesia 87.5%

     8. Peru 87.2%

     9. Colombia 86.9%

   10. Venezuela 86.2%

There is also a study from Universal McCann entitled “Power To The People – Wave3″ that also declared the Philippines as “the social networking capital of the world,” with 83 percent of Filipinos surveyed are members of a social network. They are also regarded as the top photo uploader and web video viewers, while they are second when it comes to the number of blog readers and video uploaders. 

Filipinos are so addict in Facebook huh! How about “Facebook addict of the world”, kidding.

Being known as on top of the list for any good means is an advantage. Filipinos being top on the list of a social networking site only shows that we Filipino are friendly and it is really in our culture the eagerness to connect, network, and socialize with other people, this time in high-tech way. 

Anyways, the question now is, are we becoming more productive by using this new medium or not. Are we just using it to find pleasure or to find treasure? If we Filipino are using this for our common good advantage, then we are on the right track. But if not, better yet still be on the bottom of the list and doing more productive offline.