The average Malaysian Internet user has 233 friends on social networks, which is the most in the world, according to interviews with nearly 50,000 online users in 46 countries by the research firm TNS in September. By contrast, the least social web users appear to be the Japanese, who count only 29 friends each.
The TNS study says that 69 percent of Malaysians and only 18 percent of Japanese online consumers use social networks on computers, which seems like quite a spread. (Compare that to 50 percent in the U.S.) The relatively small Japanese usage isn’t because everyone is accessing social networks on phones instead of PCs; TNS measures Japanese mobile social networking use at 15 percent.
TNS also finds that 52 percent of Chinese Internet users access social networks on computers (and 39 percent of them on mobile), with an average of 68 friends each. That high degree of usage but relatively low number of friends indicates “a culture that embraces fewer but closer friendships,” according to the study.
| Most popular | Least popular | |||
| Country | Number of friends on social networking | Country | Number of friends on social networking | |
| Malaysia | 233 | Japan | 29 | |
| Brazil | 231 | Tanzania | 38 | |
| Norway | 217 | South Korea | 50 |
TNS also quantifies some of the difference in usage between growing online markets and more developed online markets:
- 88 percent of online users in China have written a blog entry
- 92 percent of online users in Thailand have shared photos online
- In Latin America, the Middle East and China, users spend 5.2 hours on social networking per week, compared to 4 hours on email, while in “mature markets,” users spend 3.8 hours social networking and 5.1 hours on email. Users in Malaysia spend the most time on social networks, at 9 hours per week.
Some of the data indicates that developing market trends are in alignment with mobile usage. For instance, TNS says mobile users spend more time on social networking (3.1 hours per week) than email (2.2 hours per week). If you want to play with some of the data yourself, check out the visualizations here. (Note: The screenshot of the visualization I embedded above says Japanese users have 28 friends each, instead of 29 as stated in the rest of the materials. I don’t know why there is a discrepancy.)
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
- Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015
- With Ping, Apple Builds a Social Network Inside a Walled Garden
- Lessons From Google: How Facebook Can Reach One Billion Users
