Language preference of MENA Facebook users (as percentage)

As expected, the language bias for Saudi Arabia’s Facebook users has now switched from English to Arabic. During the past three months the percentage of Facebook Arabic users in Saudi Arabia has crossed the 50% mark and now stands at 53% of total users of the platform. It’s a change of a few percent, but it’s going to be increasingly important for marketers as Facebook reaches new demographics of users, perhaps previously put off by having to user its English language interface.

Numbers of Facebook users by country (in millions)

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco added the most new Facebook users during the past three months, with Egypt adding 641,000 new users. Egypt also added the most Arabic language users during the past three months, which accounted for 57% of its total new users added to Facebook. However, 81% of all new Saudi Facebook users were adopters of the Arabic platform. At this rate, we could well be looking at a 60:40 percent ratio of Arabic to English Facebook users in Saudi by the beginning of next year.

Overall, Facebook users in the Middle East and North Africa grew by 15% over the past three months adding some 2.2 million new Facebook users and bringing the total MENA Facebook population to 17.3 million.

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If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users (July 2010)

15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)

Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

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The figures in our new Media Consumption & Habits of MENA Internet Users Survey simply confirm what everyone involved in the Middle East’s growing digital marketing industry has already been talking about for the past year or two: Internet connectivity has become pervasive amongst many of our key target audiences and is now a significant part of their daily lives. The new research survey conducted by Effective Measure in conjunction with Spot On PR, underscores that the Internet opportunity is not just something that exists in the USA or Europe, its right here in the MENA region too. It’s not just a rich thing. It’s not just a youth thing. (And its not just a Facebook thing either). The Internet’s reach is now much broader than that and its influence in the Middle East and North Africa is now truly rivalling its traditional media counterparts and providing marketers with real (and highly measureable) alternatives.

Here are some of the survey’s key findings:

- MENA Internet users now spend more time browsing the Internet than they do watching TV.

- 88% of those surveyed stated that they access the Internet daily

- 71% of those surveyed stated that they watched television daily.

- Most traditional media have peaks and troughs in attention. Radio and newspapers achieve peak share of audience in the morning. Television audiences peak in the evening. However, the Internet holds audience attention fairly consistently throughout the day and well into the night.

- 28% more respondents watched TV during peak viewing hours than when viewership is at its lowest, at 7%),

- 20% of respondents stated that they use the Internet at any time-period surveyed, peaking at 33% in the evening (just 13% higher than the lowest period).

- Predictably, 73% of the survey’s respondents cited email as the activity they most often carried out online, ranking abover all other online activities.

- Social networking and search activities followed as the next highest ranking online activities for MENA Internet users, all coming it at about 40%.

- 54% of Internet users surveyed used mobile applications daily.

- 79% of Internet users surveyed spent up to three hours per day updating their social networks. 20% spent more than three hours updating their social networks.

- Internet users were more positive to companies and brands using “Internet marketing” than they were towards companies and brands using “social media marketing”.

- Most responses to our survey showed little variance between male and female respondents. However, there were a number of notable differences between the genders in their stated experiences with social media.

Survey Downloads

Download the full survey report (PDF)

Download the press release (English, Word doc)

Download the press release (Arabic, Word doc)

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Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users by Effective Measure and Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:

15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)

Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

Sign-up for more reports

If you would like to receive reports like this by email click here to join Spot On PR’s mailing list.

Summary

It’s now well publicised that the rapid growth Twitter experienced during 2008 and the first months of 2009 slowed dramatically towards the end of 2009, although ending the year with 75 million user accounts. Twitter activity, on the other hand, grew from 5,000 tweets per day in 2007 to 300,000 by 2008 and 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009. Figures released by Twitter in February 2010 registered 50 million tweets per day (or an average of 600 tweets per second). No such figures are available for the Middle East & North Africa, but activity on Twitter has visibly increased over the past year and overall user numbers have also grown. Spot On estimates that there are currently 35,000-40,000 registered Twitter users in the region compared with a mere 3,000 users in March 2009.

Corporate activity in the MENA Twittersphere has grown too, with an estimated 400 brands represented on Twitter in the region including companies, government departments, NGOs and non-profit organizations (more than 300 can be tracked via Spot On’s Middle East Brands Twitter List). Spot On Public Relations conducted the first major MENA Twitter habits and demographics survey in August 2009. In light of the growing commercial interest in Twitter and social media in the MENA region, Spot On carried out a customer service and Twitter survey in February 2010. About 1,000 active Twitter users across the region were invited to take part in the survey and 174 users completed the survey in its entirety.

Key Findings

— 95% of respondents welcomed brand engagement via Twitter

— 87% of those surveyed said that Twitter had affected their perception of a brand or company (up from 61% in our August 2009 survey)

— 50% of those surveyed had received customer service via Twitter

— 50% of the survey had purchased a product or service as a result of Twitter

— 65% of respondents were interested in receiving special offers & coupons from brands on Twitter

— 82% admitted a preference for brands that they knew via Twitter that affected their purchasing

— 88% of those surveyed said that they would recommend a brand based on their experience on Twitter

All respondents were also asked to give one piece of advice to brands using Twitter. 101 Twitter users out of 174 contributed advice from their experience on Twitter. We highly recommend any brand that is using Twitter or considering using Twitter to read their advice in the survey report.

You can follow Spot On PR on Twitter via @spotonpr

Survey Downloads

The report: 101 things brands should know about Twitter (PDF)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (English, Word doc)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (Arabic, Word doc)

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101 things brands should know about Twitter by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

If you liked reading this post about Twitter, you might also like:

Tweets like grains of wheat

5 reasons Spot On PR uses Twitter

The uninvited guest at the party

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

Summary

2009 has been a big year for Twitter with the micro-blogging platform’s rate of growth rocketing up to more than 20% per month and now showing annual growth of 1,460 percent (June 2008 to June 2009) according to Comscore. Although it’s still early days for Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa, Twitter is now growing fast and the numbers of Twitter users in the Middle East and North Africa is now increasing at a rate of 17% per month. The MENA Twitter community overall has increased ten times over the first seven months of 2009.

Spot On Public Relations has been active on Twitter since August 2008,  has been tracking Twitter usage in the MENA region  and, in the absence of any data on the region’s Twitter growth or demographics, has been conducting its own research. This report is the result of the region’s first extensive Twitter usage survey which focuses on the demographics, Twitter habits and experiences of a sample of 216 registered Twitter users across the Middle East and North Africa.

Here are some of the MENA Twitter Survey’s key findings:

— 54% of respondents are following 100 – 499 other Twitter users

— 53% of users surveyed have 100 – 499 followers

— 35% of Twitter users tweet 2-5 times per day

— 64% typically tweet every day of the week

— Contrary to global trends, twice as many men in our Middle East and North Africa survey use Twitter than women (other surveys show a similar male bias on Facebook in MENA)

— 99% of those surveyed tweet in English, 26% tweet in Arabic

— Only 50% of Arabic speakers tweet in Arabic

— 39% tweet mainly with other Twitter users in the Middle East

— 61% of MENA Twitter users surveyed say that Twitter has affected their perceptions of a brand

— 70% of MENA Twitter users say they have formed a more positive perception of a brand due to Twitter and 52% say that they have formed a more negative perception of a brand due to Twitter

— 48% of users surveyed say that they have often been alerted to a major story via Twitter, 54% say that Twitter has lead them to a blog or website and 21% say that they have tuned into a TV program as a result of Twitter

— 32% of users say that they have bought a product or service as a result of recommendations on Twitter

— 96% of users expect to continue to use Twitter as much as they do today or even more in the future

Survey Downloads

Middle East & North Africa Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (PDF)

MENA Twitter Survey Press Release (English, Word doc)

MENA Twitter Survey Press Release (Arabic)

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Middle East & North Africa Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.spotonpr.com/menatwittersurvey/.