Who else will it be but The Philippines! In a recent report from ComScore and 247wallst, the Philippines has been named as the Social Media Capital of the World, ranking the South-East Asian country as the top market for Facebook with 92.9 percent of its online population visiting Facebook.com in February 2011. Years ago, The Philippines was tagged as the “SMS capital of the world“.
At present, the Philippines continues to hold the top spot for Facebook penetration and also ranks highest in share of time spent on social networking properties across the world, making it the most social media-addicted market globally. Of the total time spent online in April 2011 by the Philippines’ online audience, 41.3 percent was spent on social networking sites. Russia and Venezuela followed closely, with a 39.7 percent and 33.2 percent share of time spent on social networking, respectively.
Here are data from ComScore:
Take note that the numbers were based on the number of online population. Currently, about 30% of the 95 million Filipinos are online. So roughly, there are 26.5 million Filipinos actively accessing Facebook. That number is huge!
What would this mean to us Filipinos? It means that we have this endless love affair with anything technology-related — be it using a mobile phone or a computer. The good thing about it is, we almost always, turn this craziness into something useful. How many new start-ups and online businesses have risen over the years because of our love for social media? Many. Maybe in the future this will result into more Filipinos turning tech savvies. And that will be good for the country, won’t it?
