Five Friday Facts #81

News
laura.picard

There are 9M Facebook users in Pakistan
TechInAsia recently reported that the number of Facebook users in Pakistan has grown to 9 million earlier this month. The site noted that this milestone is particularly impressive given the fact that it came soon after the country’s user base hit 8 million earlier this year. The numbers are based on a report by Third World Strategy, whose infographic on the growth of the social platform has further insights on the market. Of the 9 million Facebook users, roughly 6.4 million are men, while 2.7 million are women. 70 percent of these users are under 25 years of age, and 44,000 new users join Facebook each week.

Over 92% of Chinese weibo users earn less than $813 per month
TechWeb recently reported on the demographics of Chinese microbloggers, and found that the majority of them are young people at a lower stage in education with lower salaries than the average netizen. Based on a study called the Blue Book of New Media 2013 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the report indicated that in 2012, about 29.2 percent of weibo users were between 20 to 29 years old. Around 26.5 percent of the weibo users were teenagers between 10-19 years old. Students also constituted the biggest user group on weibo, with nearly 93.9 million users.  Partly due to the large number of student weibo users, 7.8% of Chinese weibo users earn a monthly salary of over $813.

Ad spend up 95% on Twitter, 43% on YouTube
According to a recent MediaPost article, Twitter and YouTube have seen significant increases in ad spend on their respective platforms. The increases were based on figures from four holding companies (Aegis, Havas, Interpublic and Publicis) that represent a majority 60 percent share of the total agency spend. Twitter came out on top, with ad spend increasing by 95 percent. Meanwhile, YouTube saw increases of 43 percent since May of 2012 By contrast, Yahoo and Facebook saw slight decreases; while Facebook was only down by 1 percent, Yahoo was down by 4 percent on total ad spend. MediaPost noted that the digital category saw increases in ad spend overall this past month. Mobile ad spending was up by 122 percent in May, while online video saw increases of 92 percent. Social media collectively saw ad spend increases of 54 percent last month.

UK moms use Facebook, YouTube more than general population
An article from eMarketer this week indicated that young mom internet users are highly active on social media in the UK. Based on a March 2013 study by BabyCentre, the findings suggested that 79 percent of 18- to 34-year old mothers who used the internet were active Facebook users. This same percentage applies to YouTube users as well. This means that mom internet users overindexed by 7 percent on Facebook and 12 percent on YouTube compared to the general adult population of the UK. Twitter came in third with a considerably smaller share of 27 percent, while tumblr claimed 20 percent and Instagram had 17 percent. Interestingly, Pinterest ranked lowest in the study, with only 9 percent of the respondents admitting to using the platform.

“Flirting app” Momo has 40M users; monetise with VIP feature 
According to a recent report by TechInAsia, China-based “flirting app” Momo has an impressive user base of 40 million. While the popular app had previously stood on a simple and minimal interface, TechInAsia reports that the app has revamped its image with familiar, chat-like features (like stickers and virtual currency). These changes geared toward monetisation are also coupled with a new VIP option, whereby users are charged $2 per month (or $17 per year) for additional features.