In the recent weeks, for good or for bad, Facebook has been the focal point in major news and blogs – DDoS Attack, FriendFeed Acquisition, Real Time Searches and most recently, Facebook Lite.
With 250 million users, Facebook is definitely the most widely used Social Media site.
Out of all its users, 80 million are from the U.S, making up 32% of the entire Facebook population. Great statistic on the U.S market. But is Asia left out?
Based on Facebook’s social ads data, there are approximately 29.2 million Asians using Facebook. Considering Asia is the largest continent in the world, the number is pathetic.
Zooming into the heavy populated countries like India and China, only a mere 4.1 million people are on Facebook. And don’t forget that the number of Chinese online users are more than the entire U.S population!
If Facebook wishes to cement its leadership in the social media horizon, it should try to appeal more to the Asians.
Reason?
Social media is slowly but surely rising in Asia. More businesses are also targeting the Asian market and social media would be the most convenient platform to gain reach. If Facebook wants to capture this opportunity, it has to start winning the hearts of Asian online users, especially the massive Chinese market.
Failure to gain access to the internet and restrictive law on social media usage are definitely reasons to explain Asia’s low count but if Friendster’s claim of having 62 million users in Asia is true, Facebook still has a long way to go.
We shall see if Facebook Lite can help extend its reach to the Far East.
