Facebook Penetration In Asia Pacific [2008]
by Nicholas Guan on July 28th, 2008
You’ve probably heard people going “Everyone is on Facebook”.
But… is that really the case for Asia Pacific? I chanced upon this blog by Eric Baillargeon, and the Facebook numbers on it simply left me drooling. Eric obtained his global penetration figures from the the Facebook ad center and has been extremely generous to share it with the world.
So back to the topic of “Everyone is on Facebook”. I am part of the consultancy department in OgilvyOne Singapore and we are currently putting together a report on “Can Brands Have A Social Life in Asia Pacific”. The reason why we’re producing this report specifically on Asia Pacific is simply due to the lack of it around. Asia Pacific is an extremely diverse region and it is not fair to compare it against the world or the west.
To give you a preview of what to expect in the report, here are some figures I’ve compiled from Eric’s blog and Internet World Stats. Latest figures are dated 3 May 2008.
Top 5 Users in Asia Pacific (n)
1) Australia, (2 865 600)
2) Hong Kong, (753 300)
3) India, (589 600)
4) Singapore, (419 340)
5) Malaysia, (360 440)
Bottom 5 Users in Asia Pacific (n)
1) Vietnam, (25 715)
2) Sri Lanka, (53 639)
3) Taiwan, (56 500)
4) South Korea, (71 200)
5) Thailand, (97 240)
Top 5 Users in Asia Pacific (% of Internet Users)
1) Australia, (18.48%)
2) Hong Kong, (15.44%)
3) Sri Lanka, (12.53%)
4) New Zealand, (10.94%)
5) Singapore, (10.59%)
Top 5 Users in Asia Pacific (% of Population)
1) Australia, (14.02%)
2) Hong Kong, (10.79%)
3) Singapore, (9.21%)
4) New Zealand, (8.19%)
5) Malaysia, (1.45%)
Top 5 Growth (%) In Asia Pacific (8 Jan 08 - 3 May 08)
1) Indonesia, (+36.82%)
2) Sri Lanka, (+31.70%)
3) Vietnam, (+28.15%)
4) Australia, (+27.59%)
5) Malaysia, (+26.33%)
Top 5 Growth (n) In Asia Pacific (8 Jan 08 - 3 May 08)
1) Australia, (+790 700)
2) Malaysia, (+94 900)
3) India, (+87 260)
4) New Zealand, (+79 760)
5) Indonesia, (+55 740)
Top 5 Negative/Slow Growth (%) In Asia Pacific (8 Jan 08 - 3 May 08)
1) Thailand, (-18.16%)
2) Taiwan, (-10.10%)
3) South Korea, (-8.71%)
4) China, (+1.78%)
5) Japan, (+2.72%)
Top 5 Negative/Slow Growth (n) In Asia Pacific (8 Jan 08 - 3 May 08)
1) Thailand, (- 17 660)
2) South Korea, (-6 200)
3) Taiwan, (-5 706)
4) China, (+2 940)
5) Japan, (+3 600)
Hong Kong may be missing from some rankings because I could not obtain its data on 8 Jan 2008. Nevertheless, you get the gist of Facebook in the Asia Pacific Market. Facebook is naturally more popular in more english speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. But other social networks still give Facebook a fight in these countries.
However, many other major markets in Asia Pacific have certainly not gotten on the Facebook fever. South Korea has a drop out rate of 8.71% because they probably found Cyworld much more interesting. Japan has only 132,440 users with a growth rate of only 2.72%. Comparing these figures to local social networks like MIXI and Mobagetown is equivalent to comparing the size of a mouse to an elephant. China with its 1.3 Billion people and 210 Million internet users could only garner 165 120 Facebook users with a 1.78% growth rate. I guess they’re still loving their BBS and QQ more than Facebook.
Though India ranks 3rd in terms of number of users in Asia Pacific, Orkut is still the main social network for Indian Internet users. But I guess 589 600 with a 14.80% growth is still pretty decent to market to the Indian folks.
More statistics and insights coming your way in the report 
If you have any queries about the report, you can email me at nicholas.guan@ogilvy.com.
Brian Koh 
Tania Chew 
July 29th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
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August 12th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
good job nick. thanks for the data update.
August 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
The stats for networks are actually pretty skewed. Networks used to be a good measure until Facebook opened up to all. After that networks as walled gardens did loose some of their impact and have now been officially dropped.
As such, lots of the new users, who have not had the benefit of experiencing the early years of Facebook actually do not add in their networks and hence just set up profiles.
Hence I personally believe the stats for Singapore to be much higher. But of course it would have the same impact on other countries hence percentages and ratios would be much better indications going forward until Facebook actually oublishes stats based on GeoIP activity.
Also Singapore is a very porous market with its large foreign population and hence many of the fastest early adopters were not necessarily from our relatively small college populations. Instead it was the kids from the international schools who adopted them faster and large swaths of foreign talents jumped onboard next as they had the most pressing need to network.
I think by now, Facebook has already achieved extremely high mindshare in the Singapore market and definitely marketers are drawn to it in droves. However organic Facebook marketing does seem very challenging with the recent slowdown in app growth and policies that clamp down on organic growth in the name of user experience.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Hey Justin, I think what you said all makes sense. But looking at it from an overall perspective, there just aren’t that many FB users in the older age range. So if you’re talking about the >35 year olds, penetration is likely to be pretty low, thereby contributing to the lower numbers. What do you think?
August 30th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
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