(Photo by Essam Sharaf)
By Doaa Farid
With 16 million users, Egypt is ranked first among the Arab region countries that use Facebook, and 17th worldwide in terms of audience size, according to a recently issued report. This represents 1.4% of global Facebook users.
According to the eMarketing Egypt Online Competitiveness Intelligence report, Egypt’s Facebook community witnessed about 41% growth compared to last year, the number of users in 21 July 2012 being 11.3 million. This means that the current number of users is 18.84% of Egypt’s population.
As of 21 July 2013, there are 61 million Facebook users in the Arab world, 26% of whom are Egyptian. The report read: “48.11% of internet users in Egypt are Facebook users.”
Saudi Arabia ranks second on the list of Arab countries with the largest number of Facebook users, who constitute 12% of the total number of users in the Arab world. The US ranks first on a global scale, with 180 million Facebook users, who represent 16% of global users.
The report, published in August 2013, stated that 12 million of Egyptian Facebook users are below 30 years-old. The gender distribution Facebook users in Egypt has showed that female users are of much younger ages, with females under 30 years-old representing 81% of total female users in Egypt. The number of male users is about 10 million, representing about 63% of total users.
“Analytics of top Facebook pages in Egypt indicate that Egyptian female users are more culture-oriented, while male users are more sports followers; this trend had been almost the same over the last four years,” the report read.
“Among those who reported their relationship status, single users represent more than 53%, which makes Egypt one of the top single countries worldwide,” the report said.
A official release from Facebook stated that the active monthly users of Facebook reached 1.15 billion by 30 June 2013, representing a 21% year-over-year increase. Also, Facebook mobile application users reached 819 million.
The social networking website was dominant in every world country by June 2013, except for China and Russia.