Five Friday Facts #39
News
News
8.7% Facebook accounts are fake, but that’s still 872 million genuine users
Facebook reported this week that 8.7% of its 955 million active accounts are illegitimate, which is about 83 million accounts. The company filings reported that 4.8% of its membership figure were duplicate profiles, 2.4% were misclassified accounts, and the remaining 1.5% of users were categorised as “undesirable”. Facebook has also acknowledged that its figures are based on an internal review of a limited sample of accounts and hence they may not be entirely accurate. But assuming that the numbers are correct, brands have very little to worry about because Facebook still has 872 million bona fide users who are actively interacting with each other, ensuring it is still the largest social network in the world.
Weibo records huge volume of chatter about London Olympics*
Sina Weibo recorded a massive 119 million messages about the London Olympics up to noon on July 28th. The paltform’s 300 million registered users shared their thoughts on a wide variety of different Olympics-related topics, with Tech in Asia reporting 5.5 million mentions of the spectacular Olympics cauldron, while Queen Elizabeth’s appearance prompted 230,000 posts. Interestingly, a significant number of Weibo conversations came from overseas users, particularly those in the UK and US:
Japan active on Twitter, but slow in growth
A recent report by Semiocast showed that Twitter has surpassed half a billion users. It also reported the top countries and cities where Twitter users came from. The US alone accounts for over 140 million Twitter profiles, or 27% of the overall user base. While Japan is most active on Twitter, Brazil overtook Japan in terms of growth. Other Asian countries like Indonesia and India are seeing strong growth, and ranked fifth and sixth respectively.
Tuding, China’s Instagram, hosts brands
China’s biggest Instagram-like photo sharing app, TuDing has declared that it has acquired more than 5 million users. 48% of TuDing’s users are synched to Sina Weibo, firing up their photos on the nationwide microblog. In its efforts to monetise, the social sharing app has now started to host brands, partnering with their social media campaigns. Three huge brands have already joined forces with TuDing: Starbucks, Nike, and North Face. Climbing and sportswear brand North Face has already seen success, attracting 100,000 followers to its account. Meanwhile, data indicate that 58% of TuDing’s users are female, so there is a distinct opportunity for female-oriented brands. Aside from the hundreds of millions of people on Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Renren, TuDing provides a niche service like that of location-based social network, Jiepang. Jiepang has similarly partnered with Starbucks and Louis Vuitton to run some interesting campaigns in recent weeks. Luxury and leisure brands are sure to see a leverage in connecting with well-heeled audiences in this category.
Facebook sees growth in its mobile-only users
More than half of Facebook users, a good 543 million people, now access the social network via mobile devices, with 102 million users accessing the network via mobile only. In March, the mobile-only users were 83 million, which goes to show that Facebook has added 20 million users in this category over the last four months. This represents 23% of all mobile Facebook users, highlighting the continuous growth in emerging markets, where many users access Facebook from their feature phones. Last year, Facebook introduced its ‘Facebook for every phone’ initiative and continued to enhance its capabilities to cater to feature phone users. With growth in the US and other developed markets stagnating, these emerging market users are contributing the lion’s share of Facebook’s user growth.
* A previous version of this post re-shared data suggesting that London 2012 opening ceremony mentions on Sina Weibo had outnumbered those on Twitter by a factor of more than 10, but we have amended the post due to insufficient clarity on the specifics of the kinds of mention included in this comparison.