Social networking sites are appealing to the hearts of Internet users in Southeast Asia, according to digital research firm comScore.
Facebook is proving especially popular in the Philippines, with 93.7% of the country’s Internet users signed up to the social network. According to Joe Nguyen, comScore’s VP for Southeast Asia,
Facebook is so rampantly used among the country’s Internet users that it effectively dethroned Google as the country’s most-surfed site.
According to the report, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are among the world’s top 15 countries for Facebook penetration.
Indonesia remained the country with the world’s largest number of Facebook users, said Nguyen, and its registered 87.4% penetration rate for Facebook in the study did not include access via the mobile channel.
Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines came out tops in the region for Twitter visits, coming in at fourth, eighth and ninth in global rankings.
While Indonesia’s 21% penetration rate for Twitter may not appear impressive, Nguyen said the figure would likely be higher if the study included Twitter access from Internet cafes and handsets.
Among the countries studied - Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam - Vietnam was shown to have the lowest penetration rate (66%) for social networking.
This figure was however a great improvement over the 49% reported for 2009. Nguyen said Vietnam’s lifting of its Facebook ban in 2010 probably contributed toward the increase.
Malaysia’s social networking penetration improved 10% last year to stand at 91%, while Hong Kong’s improved 8% last year to 76%. Singapore’s penetration rate stood relatively stable, up just 1% to 81%.