By Doaa Farid
With 16 million users, Egypt is ranked first among the Arab region countries that use Facebook, and 17th worldwide in terms of audience size, according to a recently issued report. This represents 1.4% of global Facebook users.
According to the eMarketing Egypt Online Competitiveness Intelligence report, Egypt’s Facebook community witnessed about 41% growth compared to last year, the number of users in 21 July 2012 being 11.3 million. This means that the current number of users is 18.84% of Egypt’s population.
As of 21 July 2013, there are 61 million Facebook users in the Arab world, 26% of whom are Egyptian. The report read: “48.11% of internet users in Egypt are Facebook users.”
Saudi Arabia ranks second on the list of Arab countries with the largest number of Facebook users, who constitute 12% of the total number of users in the Arab world. The US ranks first on a global scale, with 180 million Facebook users, who represent 16% of global users.
The report, published in August 2013, stated that 12 million of Egyptian Facebook users are below 30 years-old. The gender distribution Facebook users in Egypt has showed that female users are of much younger ages, with females under 30 years-old representing 81% of total female users in Egypt. The number of male users is about 10 million, representing about 63% of total users.
“Analytics of top Facebook pages in Egypt indicate that Egyptian female users are more culture-oriented, while male users are more sports followers; this trend had been almost the same over the last four years,” the report read.
“Among those who reported their relationship status, single users represent more than 53%, which makes Egypt one of the top single countries worldwide,” the report said.
A official release from Facebook stated that the active monthly users of Facebook reached 1.15 billion by 30 June 2013, representing a 21% year-over-year increase. Also, Facebook mobile application users reached 819 million.
The social networking website was dominant in every world country by June 2013, except for China and Russia.