Bill Hanifin
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While most people focus on the churning geo-politics of the Arab states, we wanted to take a look at the social media penetration of the region. Here are a few quick facts:
- An estimated 82 million, or 22% of the total population in the Arab States are using Facebook
- Twitter captures an estimated 5.8 million users, representing 1.6% of the Arab States
- These same Twitter users are posting about 17 million times per day, equivalent to about 3 per person each day
Looking at individual countries, Facebook penetration in Egypt tracks with the region, with 19.6 million online representing 22.6% of the population. The total Facebook user group in Egypt represents 24% of total Facebook users in the Arab States.
Twitter is highly popular in Saudi Arabia, with 8.4% of the population, or 2.3 million persons online. This group is equivalent to 40% of all the Twitter users in the Arab Stages, taken as a whole.
Globally, there are an estimated 255 million Twitter users with the US accounting for 52 million or 21% as of June 2014. As of this date, there were a reported 180 million Facebook users in the US.
Contrasting social media penetration figures between the US and the Arab States, we not surprisingly found the US to be more highly engaged, with 56% of the population on Facebook compared to only 22% for the Arab States. The gap on Twitter penetration was similarly large, with 16.5% of the US population on Twitter while only 1.6% of Arab State residents using the service.
If you are interested to know, Canadians are the most active Facebook users in the world, while China has the most Twitter users online, totalling about 35.5 million people.
