Techno//Marketer - Matt Dickman on Digital Marketing and Social Technology

The cohesion of conversations; brands taking a #(pound)ing

The hashtag (aka the pound sign, #) is a ubiquitous part of social networking at this point. The purpose of the hashtag is to be able to track and lump a strong of asynchronous messages together for later review and analysis.

For example, a group of people coordinate and use the same keyword at the end of every tweet. You probably saw this at SXSW this year when people were ending their messages with #sxsw. You can use third party sites to aggregate those messages into a single string that is ordered by date to see how events unfold.

However, the hashtag is also being used to track the community's brand engagement. Situations like #motrinmoms, #dominos and #amazonfail now have a public timeline that will remain in place forever. The massive volume of similarly tagged content will make it very easy for anyone to find what happened and see how the company responded across search engines and social platforms.

An argument that people have used to avoid engagement in this space is that it's a relatively small sampling of people who engage in these networks. Regarding the Motrin Moms controversy, an Advertising Age article quoted a Lightspeed research study that stated 90% of women had not seen the Motrin ad that spawned the backlash online. Of the 10% who did, 8% said it negatively impacted their brand impression. While that is a small number, you cannot underestimate the power of small, passionate groups of people who use turbocharged platforms to connect with and influence other like minded people. Wildfires can start with a single match, right?

Internal listening is paramount

I can partially understand when companies have some hesitation in listening to the broad community and engaging. It's time consuming and you have to have a corporate culture to make it work. However, I do not understand companies that do not listen in the social space for employee engagement issues, brand perception problems and platform breakdowns. These types of issues are having an impact on Dominos and Amazon right now.

#dominos: This one is picking up steam now. For more info on what happened, go here.

#amazonfail: This ramped up a couple of days ago when a "glitch" in the Amazon system starting delisting GLBT titles. People responded to the "glitch" with the hashtag #glitchmyass. It seems to be trending down at the moment.

[Update] Here is page one of the Google search result for Dominos as of 10:30am on April 15, 2009. Notice entry #3 from YouTube, the top news story as well as the next three stories after the new results.

The bottom line is that these companies should have been listening and engaging all along, should have been prepared earlier with real, honest, personal responses and taken proactive steps to make things right with their community. Waiting a day to respond is WAY too long, waiting hours may even be too long.

Some things to think about:

• Listening is more important than ever
  
• Active listening can pick up issues before they become crises
  
• Community building is key (in advance of an issue)
  
• Events are being linked together by consumers for all to see
  
• The content of those interactions will live on forever
  
• The content also appears in search
  
• A few, passionate individuals can dramatically hurt or help a brand in its interactions online
  

Do you go back through hashtags to see conversations over time? Have you come across them in search results?

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Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, measurement, reputation, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends, hashtags

Visualizing the growth of Facebook around the world

Today at some point, Facebook passed the 200 million user mark. If you've been keeping up with my Face of Facebook global updates you know the details of this growth. If not, what are you waiting for?

As part of the momentous occasion, Facebook released a very cool heat map of the site's global growth from zero users through today. Below are the major milestones. Note the early US and european growth and how quickly it's moving throughout APAC, India, South America and parts of Africa.

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Technorati Tags:
Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends

The Face of Facebook Global Report - Q1 2009

Welcome to my Q1 2009 Global Trend report for Facebook. I prepare this quarterly look at Facebook to help you visualize patterns in the community and have a realistic view of the population free from marketing hyperbole.

As always, I use the data that Facebook provides directly from their advertising management system. Actual numbers may be larger, but we're marketers and these are the people who can be marketed to. Each country's data includes all age ranges. The data compares the populations at the end of Q4 2008 to the same population's numbers at the end of Q1 2009.

Key Takeaways:

• Large gains in western Europe and the Pacific Rim
• In total Facebook has 183,771,740 worldwide users as of the end of Q1 2009
• The U.S. only makes up 1/3 of the total Facebook population
• The Philippines and Indonesia has massive gains of over 160% from Q4
• The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ecuador, Macedonia and Oman all had greater than 100% gains from Q4
• Nearly 40% of the population of Iceland is on Facebook
• 30% of the total population of Canada, Denmark and Norway are on Facebook
• The U.S. (14.4), Italy (2.91), UK (2.85), France (2.47), Turkey (2.18), Spain (1.67), Indonesia (1.46), Argentina (1.15), Colombia (1.10) and Australia (1.08) had gains of over 1 million users in Q1 2009

Top 25 Countries by total users

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, UK, Canada, Turkey, France, Italy, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Hong Kong, Norway, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, India, Greece, Finland, South Africa, Indonesia, Israel

[Click image for larger version]

Top 25 countries by highest % of total population on Facebook

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, UK, Chile, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, USA, Switzerland, New Zealand, Bahamas, Malta, Puerto Rico, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, Israel, France, Ireland

[Click image for larger version]
*Note: This chart uses the total population of each country (not the online population)

Top 25 largest Q1 percentage gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Philippines, Indonesia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ecuador, Macedonia, Oman, Portugal, Romania, Brazil, Taiwan, Lithuania, Austria, Bulgaria, Paraguay, Kenya, Ghana, Hungary, Netherlands, China, Russia, Spain, Tunisia, Thailand, Vietnam

[Click image for larger version]

Top 25 largest total population gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, Italy, UK, France, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, Argentina, Colombia, Australia, Venezuela, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Philippines, India, South Africa, Belgium, Egypt, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile

[Click image for larger version]

Raw country population data for Q1 2009

Country	Q1 2009	Q4 2008
Argentina	3,406,520	2,254,200
Australia	5,412,300	4,327,920
Austria	462,540	258,780
Bahrain	66,340	50,660
Bangladesh	284,660	198,780
Belgium	2,150,920	1,666,340
Bolivia	251,820	184,920
Bosnia	288,880	198,660
Brazil	392,840	209,100
Bulgaria	244,480	136,980
Canada	11,552,120	10,851,420
Chile	4,441,640	4,152,060
China	375,200	220,620
Colombia	4,743,920	3,636,320
Costa Rica	116,140	73,100
Croatia	598,320	491,240
Cyprus	134,260	109,420
Czech Republic	433,700	176,660
Denmark	2,060,440	1,778,440
Dominican Republic	163,060	115,680
Ecuador	201,320	130,860
Egypt	1,270,520	821,760
El Salvador	90,580	67,360
Finland	1,032,140	920,960
France	9,072,360	6,595,300
Germany	1,970,740	1,255,480
Ghana	93,160	53,880
Greece	1,348,920	1,000,320
Guatemala	127,880	93,960
Honduras	72,780	54,180
Hong Kong	1,706,780	1,456,740
Hungary	154,840	90,260
Iceland	148,380	120,520
India	1,602,860	1,072,080
Indonesia	2,358,400	898,360
Ireland	594,640	401,280
Israel	1,028,140	895,520
Italy	8,499,940	5,582,980
Jamaica	91,960	64,780
Japan	314,700	213,420
Jordan	317,800	266,700
Kenya	227,160	130,920
Kuwait	142,620	105,160
Lebanon	441,380	414,240
Lithuania	75,280	41,800
Luxembourg	94,780	87,400
Macedonia	140,000	78,180
Malaysia	1,183,860	851,240
Maldives	41,320	33,880
Malta	65,040	45,820
Mauritius	81,280	57,060
Mexico	2,141,500	1,439,580
Morocco	487,000	369,660
Netherlands	602,280	351,540
New Zealand	738,620	534,320
Nicaragua	43,920	29,560
Nigeria	331,240	212,780
Norway	1,795,040	1,455,080
Oman	35,600	24,240
Pakistan	546,360	376,800
Palestine	89,320	69,660
Panama	279,180	236,200
Paraguay	33,960	19,200
Peru	455,700	295,620
Phiilippines	1,030,340	390,700
Poland	300,880	194,960
Portugal	168,900	84,760
Puerto Rico	636,660	541,640
Qatar	98,020	67,840
Romania	108,460	56,300
Russia	203,180	122,780
Saudi Arabia	448,240	325,860
Serbia	753,720	557,480
Singapore	1,038,620	740,220
Slovakia	290,560	138,120
Slovenia	271,440	184,120
South Africa	1,406,120	920,860
South Korea	161,100	113,940
Spain	4,266,660	2,591,640
Sri Lanka	210,820	154,780
Sweden	2,043,980	1,697,100
Switzerland	1,382,540	1,122,900
Taiwan	205,060	112,840
Thailand	273,780	168,840
The Bahamas	54,300	43,900
Trinidad and Tabago	177,980	136,080
Tunisia	392,220	239,600
Turkey	10,105,380	7,924,640
UAE	593,560	485,540
UK	17,781,800	14,922,560
Ukraine	65,440	41,400
Uraguay	292,360	198,160
USA	56,462,020	42,017,280
Venezuela	2,732,860	1,872,840
Vietnam	63,360	39,120

Does anything surprise you on this? Anything else you would like to know?

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Technorati Tags: advertising, Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer

The age of Facebook vs. MySpace: February/March edition

So sorry for the delay in this report. MySpace seems to only update their ad targeting stats every other month (Facebook is done in real time). This is the latest edition of my look at social networks and their populations from a marketing perspective.

All numbers in this post are US-only and are collected using each site's advertising management systems so they are up to date and accurate from a marketer's perspective. (Who wants to talk about populations that can't be reached by marketing? Not me.)

What you need to know right now:

• For the first time, over half of the population of Facebook is over 25 (60% MySpace is still under 25)
• Overall Facebook is up 22% while MySpace is down .5%
• Facebook has now surpassed MySpace in 31-50 age ranges
• Facebook's 50+ group is the fastest growing followed closely by the 41-45 group
• MySpace's largest losses are ages 35 and under
• Facebook growth under age 25 is still slow (this group is maxing out)

MySpace down overall; Facebook over 50 booming; Facebook overtakes MySpace in the 31-50 populations

Total US populations of MySpace and Facebook:

Looking at Women on both sites:

Looking at Men on both sites:

Here are the actual Feb/March numbers:

AGE RANGE	Facebook	Δ last period	MySpace	Δ last period
13-17	6,051,940	+7.58%	17,072,104	-0.18%
18-21	11,572,420	+6.65%	19,840,744	-0.81%
22-25	8,715,060	+11.61%	12,346,236	-1.46%
26-30	7,703,320	+22.55%	10,949,876	-1.86%
31-35	5,859,840	+29.63%	5,778,080	-0.44%
36-40	4,941,180	+38.16%	3,744,776	+1.27%
41-45	3,000,860	+47.33%	2,226,476	+1.80%
46-50	1,950,220	+50.57%	1,510,488	+3.39%
51-65+	2,945,680	+51.90%	7,692,972	+0.91%

Other key takeaways:

• These numbers represent all total users who can be reached through each site's advertising systems (not all worldwide active users)
  
• MySpace's reporting system is not real time like Facebook's. Keep this in mind if you're planning a campaign.
  
• MySpace skews younger than Facebook, engaging more of the highschool population
  
• Facebook engages much more of the college population (inverse to MySpace)
  
• Women make up well over half of the Facebook population across all age ranges
  
• MySpace's 50+ population is over 70% female, Facebook is over 63% female
  

What do you think? What other networks are you investigating? The demographics and targeting options on both sites let you reach your audience in targeted/tailored ways and minimize waste. Knowing where your customers are is key.

Data sources: If you're curious, here is where the data comes from on both sites.

• Facebook - Go here http://www.facebook.com/ads/create and edit the audience settings as you wish. No need to even create an ad.
  
• MySpace - Go here https://advertise.myspace.com and then click "Click here to get started". Enter a test ad. Then you can filter by age/gender/geo/etc.
  

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Technorati Tags: advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Twitter

Facebook finally learns from its mistakes (or did they?)

After a few weeks of controversy over a change in their terms of service (TOS) agreement, Facebook today has announced it has apparently learned from its mistakes and will open this process up to the users. It is hard for me to fathom why this has taken such a long time given that this is what social media is all about. Why has it taken five years for the world's fastest growing social network to start listening and engaging its community?

Why has it taken five years for the world's fastest growing social network to start listening and engaging its community?

Facebook is opening up two documents for discussion. The first is basically a user's bill or rights called the Facebook Principles. The second document is a replacement to the TOS called the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Both documents are housed in separate groups that invite conversation and engagement. Once that dialogue happens, the community will vote for and against changes a la Wikipedia.

They're still keeping a nice big loophole open.

All of this is great, but the wording in Mark Zuckerberg's post about this topic is very interesting. He talks about innovation and "disruptive technologies" that "will not be subject to the notice and comment or voting requirement". So they're still keeping a nice big loophole open.

The overall management of the operation is what I see being the largest problem. Facebook's Groups are not good at handling a large conversation. It's a glorified message board. When 10,000 people respond, how do you ensure people are heard? How do you filter down the hot items? Who does that filtering? Sounds like a big hurdle that could backfire.

A couple of thoughts and questions on this move:

• The command and control approach Facebook has taken in the past seems to be dying off
  
• Still unclear what happens if something is enacted that impacts Facebook's business if they will adopt it
  
• In Facebook's five year existence, it's hard to imagine why this hasn't happened sooner
  
• How can they effectively manage thousands of points of feedback and narrow it down? Who does the narrowing?
  
• Does the loophole I note above make this futile?
  
• What are the legal implications of the community dictating policy? What if there is a conflict?
  
• Should businesses look at adopting this approach to their online engagement?
  

So, what are your thoughts on this? Are you satisfied with the new process? Do you feel they've learned from their mistakes? Let me know!

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Technorati Tags: conversations, Facebook, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, trends, trust, Legal

The two hour minumum

I am sure that if you are in an agency, on the client side or an individual in the social media space, the following question has popped up.

How much time do I need to spend in social media each day?

I hear this being asked in meetings, presentations and see it pop up across the web. To be truthful, there is no set rule here. However, I have come up with the guideline that I'll talk about in this post for engaging clients in new work, managing existing campaigns, talking to up-and-coming bloggers, etc.

It's the two hour minimum per day.

Why two hours?

The two hour minimum comes from my experience here on the blog as well as in the agency environment. I've given this a lot of thought, but at the end of the day, I've tried different formulas to arrive here.

To give you an example, I spend around 5 hours a day personally on this blog and in my networks. This is on top of my workload and personal commitments. I've found that if I spend around two hours I can stay above water. As soon as I dip below that, my community suffers. That's what I am trying to avoid. I've backed this up through client work where that number seems to fit with our internal teams as well as client-side teams.

Two hours is the absolute minimum amount of time that a company/individual needs to spend EVERY DAY in this space.

What do you do with two hours?

Oh, trust me. Once you start engaging, two hours goes by like a speeding bullet. The following items are a good foundation on how to spend the time each day.

Listen - Check your feed reader, check your Google alerts, monitor Tweetdeck, do a Twitter search (unless you've added them into your reader), check Technorati (you never know), look at your commenting service (co.Comment/Backtype/etc.) to see who has replied to you. This isn't a one-time thing, set a schedule through the day and check back for 5 minutes.

Engage - Monitor those conversations through the day and reply as close to realtime as you can. Overnight delays are common and (I think) accepted in most cases. During the workday, however, you can make more impact by replying within 2-4 hours. If you have a blog, write a post or at least brainstorm new ideas based on what you're seeing.

Discover - Another part of the day should spawn from the listening and engagement phases. You should constantly look for new blogs, people on Twitter to follow, new relevant posts to comment on, etc.

This sounds like a lot to do in two hours, eh? It is. Remember I said this is a minimum starting point for entry into the space. The commitment will grow over time.

*Variables: Note that the complexity of your business/industry will weigh on this minimum requirement. If you have 5-10 brands, you may need to spend an hour each. This is not set in stone, just a guideline to get you thinking and talking.

What next?

Scale is important to be aware of in social media. The more success you have, the more time it will take to grow to new successes. The more you monitor, the more conversations, the more people you meet, the more time you spend.

Be aware of this and scale your two hours up to 3, 4, 5 to a full time person to a team of people. Richard Binhammer at Dell (@richardatdell) could probably teach a class on this.

Advancing from two hours

As you grow, it's crucial to maintain your level of engagement. This is a financial commitment for your client/company and needs to have accountability.

Some situations that can tell you when to scale:

• When your response time is slipping due to volume
  
• When your discovery portion of the time you're spending is limited due to listening and engaging
  
• When your customers ask you to ramp up
  

These are good problems to have by the way. It means your community is starting to embrace you and your team. The goal is to grow steadily over time for maximum results. Quick wins are few and far between. It takes real effort and dedication.

How much time do you spend each day? Please weigh in on the poll below.

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Technorati Tags: branding, conversations, listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, research, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer

Executing a listening plan

Last week I wrote a post on the lack of listening that is taking place among top marketing executives. In my opinion, most of the problem with listening stems a lack of the right tools and a lack of an action plan for what to do with the information.

Two of my top key takeaways from that post got me thinking.

1. You have to have humans involved
   
2. You have to have an escalation plan
   

I'm a visual person, so I wanted to come up with a construct that could frame this challenge in the enterprise for further discussion. Here is what I cam up with, let me know what you think:

[Click to enlarge image.]

The data layer

The data layer has been getting a lot of attention lately. Many companies are very active in this space and provide great solutions. However, data without human filtering is useless. The key to the data layer is that you're listening to the spaces that matter and that it spans media types.

Data alone without human filtering is useless.

Aggregating news, TV, radio, blogs, micromedia, message boards, etc into a single location is becoming a necessity. People are doing this now, but the information is rarely synchronized and shared in a coordinated manner. Good filtering in the data layer can help to eliminate work in the human layer, but it's a fine line to make sure that emerging trends aren't excluded. The solutions that exist in this space at the current time are not adequate for major global brands.

The human layer

This, in my mind, is the key to success. No matter how good the data layer, you still need a human looking at it who knows the business, challenges and processes. You need to spot trends across media, uncover new innovations, and listen to what is happening with internal department responsibilities in mind.

The humans in this layer should span media formats, look for trends and spot emerging issues to flag for appropriate follow up. Within a company, these flags will need to be communicated to the right department at the right level. That's where the action level takes over.

The action layer

Listening without action is a waste of money and is one of the reasons I think more companies are not engaging. Companies are huge, siloed beasts that eat disorganization for lunch. Rolling out a listening plan is a challenge, but not one that can't be overcome.

The humans who review data need to know the structure of the organization and the people involved. In other words, these people need to be 100% integrated in the company's culture/process. They need to know the legalities of the business, HR issues, communications opportunities, brand/product feedback, how employees are engaging and representing the company and what is being said about the companies media properties.

In a company that is fully engaged in social media, this structure is VERY flat and responsive to even the smallest issues/opportunities.

Within each layer there needs to be an escalation plan. I didn't show that in this diagram, because each department will be different. You need to think about how the business operates and look at the possible issues that could arise. For each possible issue, determine who needs to know what and how fast they need to know it.

Here is an example for a consumer product company:

1. Issue is detected. What is the issue?
   
2. It's a product safety problem. How serious is it?
   
3. Lives could potentially be threatened.
   
4. Alert all heads of departments by SMS/email as well as key contacts within each department
   
5. Schedule call as soon as possible
   

A cross-functional team needs to sit across all related departments to bind this process together and ensure success. They determine alerting protocol and responses. In a company that is fully engaged in social media, this structure is VERY flat and responsive to even the smallest issues/opportunities.

Listening as step one

If you remember my post from late September "Should your company blog?" (it applies to your company/CEO/VP/or yourself), the first step in the process is listening. The more companies that take this first step and listen are on their way to a solid foundation in customer engagement. You can't start truly engaging with a strategic insight until you listen. What's stopping you?

How would you improve this? What am I missing? I'd love to have your feedback.

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Technorati Tags: brands, listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, reputation, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, trends

You suck at listening!

Well, not you personally (I hope). A recent CMO Council study, however showed that only 16% of 400 executives they surveyed have an online listening plan in place. 56% have no plan to track of drive word-of-mouth and only 30% thought they had the ability to resolve complaints quickly. Why such a low percentage? What is stopping these CMOs from implementing a plan?

Personally, I think that creating a listening plan is pretty easy. It's what you do with the information that you are collecting that is the hard part. This is where these marketing executives are falling down.

What you do with that information once you have it? How do you get all of the other departments to commit to the initiative? How do you execute on it without losing productivity? It really comes down to creating a customer service culture, where the customer is the priority. This is not how a lot of companies operate, however.

From my post earlier in January, here are three keys to listening online:

1. Find your customer and spend your time there. While Twitter is great for some brands, you will find that message boards, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, etc. may hold the majority of your customers. If you're listening in the wrong place you're not doing any good.

2. Use technology to speed the process. Instead of watching Twitter for 12 hours a day, subscribe to the RSS feed for your keywords on Twitter Search. Do the same with keywords on Google and your Technorati page. Check this a couple of times a day. On top of that, you can overlay that information on top of the monitoring tools.

   Big tip, I've seen monitoring companies sell their services as the end-all of this area and they are not. This requires a human being who knows the industry and company to make it worth while.

3. Create your active listening plan. Listening is a good first step, but a lifetime of listening without action is not going to move the needles that you need to move for your business. Creating an plan for what to do with the information you learn is key.

   I wrote this post in February of 2007 on active listening and it still holds true today. This quote sums it up:
   

   "Agile marketing companies are leveraging new technology to create real, one-to-many and many-to-many conversations. They are using the outcome from that interaction to make meaningful, remarkable, relationship-enhancing changes that impact their clients in a positive manner. Are you listening?"

   
   

Key Takeaways

• You have to have humans involved. This is often overlooked with all of the technology that we have out there, but humans can spot trends, flag issues that matter and ignore ones that don't. Whatever automation you employ, make sure you have a smart person reviewing it.
• Have an escalation plan. Don't just listen for listening's sake. You need to know what to do when you hear something. Set action alerts when a certain criteria is met, set a clear path for issues to be escalated through and assign a person to follow up and make sure they're resolved.
• Use the community to improve your ideas. Just like the examples I mentioned in this post listening can give you insights into your customers that would otherwise cost you millions in testing and research. Listen hard and act on what you hear.

At the end of the day, listening is easy. Setting up the systems and processes that take what you hear and turn it into a business resource is the hard part. What steps would you take if you were in their shoes?

2/3/09 - IMPORTANT UPDATE: I think that it's important to note that 75% of journalists get story ideas from blogs. How can you not be monitoring the space that has this much influence over the editors who cover you? This single reason alone should be enough to get people off of their butts and starting to plan their strategy.

Also, check out Jon Burg's great follow up post "10 reasons CEOs need social insights and 6 steps to setting this up".

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Technorati Tags: listening, marketing, Matt Dickman, PR, reputation management, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, trends

The Face of Facebook Global Report - Q4 2008

First off, let me apologize to you for not publishing this monthly as promised. It was taking me around 15 hours to compile and edit the PDF each month and it was just overwhelming. I'll keep publishing it on a quarterly basis as a blog post moving forward. Thank you for understanding!

As always, I use the data that Facebook provides from their advertising management system. The actual numbers may be larger, but we're marketers and these are the people who can be marketed to.

Key Takeaways:

• The fourth quarter of 2008 saw a 27.55% increase in the total population of Facebook going from 100 million users to 138.6 million. That's a larger increase compared to past months on this report.
• The US is still the largest segment of Facebook at around 42 million users. This is 282% greater than the next closest country (the UK)
• Italy and Romania had over 400% gains on Facebook leading the pack while the US led by total population gain at 9 million new users
• Norway and Canada have the largest percentage of their total populations on Facebook (over 25% each)
• South Africa was the only country to lose population in Q4
• Macedonia and Oman were the only new additions in Q4 2008

Top 25 Countries by total users

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, UK, Canada, Turkey, France, Italy, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Hong Kong, Norway, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, India, Greece, Finland, South Africa [Click image for larger version]

Top 25 countries by highest % of total population on Facebook

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Norway, Canada, Denmark, UK, Chile, Iceland, Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, Finland, Singapore, Puerto Rico, US, Luxembourg, Maldives, New Zealand, Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel, Malta, UAE, Switzerland, Belgium, The Bahamas, Colombia [Click image for larger version] *Note: This chart uses the total population of each country (not the online population)

Top 25 largest Q4 % gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): Italy, Romania, tunisia, Slovakia, Indonesia, Spain, Argentina, Czech Republic, Uruguay, Bosnia, Slovenia, Serbia, Iceland, Ecuador, Macedonia, Oman, Belgium, France, Turkey, Switzerland, The Bahamas, Austria, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Morocco [Click image for larger version]

Top 25 largest total gains

Top countries (in order greatest to lowest): US, Italy, turkey, France, UK, Spain, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Venezuela, Colombia, Greece, Hong Kong, Serbia, India, Mexico, Finland, Malaysia [Click image for larger version]

Raw country population data for Q4 2008

*Note that Macedonia and Oman are new additions to Facebook for segmenting purposes and don't have Q3 data.

Country	Q4 2008	Q3 2008
Argentina	2,254,200	936,540
Australia	4,327,920	3,650,260
Austria	258,780	144,800
Bahrain	50,660	42,360
Bangladesh	198,780	135,220
Belgium	1,666,340	833,600
Bolivia	184,920	150,480
Bosnia	198,660	90,720
Brazil	209,100	155,600
Bulgaria	136,980	79,300
Canada	10,851,420	10,025,320
Chile	4,152,060	3,477,540
China	220,620	196,200
Colombia	3,636,320	3,226,980
Costa Rica	73,100	55,080
Croatia	491,240	300,500
Cyprus	109,420	78,660
Czech Republic	176,660	75,900
Denmark	1,778,440	1,174,500
Dominican Republic	115,680	91,800
Ecuador	130,860	105,700
Egypt	821,760	838,480
El Salvador	67,360	51,540
Finland	920,960	656,780
France	6,595,300	3,382,840
Germany	1,255,480	817,620
Ghana	53,880	36,780
Greece	1,000,320	639,340
Guatemala	93,960	76,980
Honduras	54,180	41,660
Hong Kong	1,456,740	1,111,580
Hungary	90,260	63,700
Iceland	120,520	57,700
India	1,072,080	807,040
Indonesia	898,360	321,980
Ireland	401,280	308,100
Israel	895,520	663,240
Italy	5,582,980	1,035,900
Jamaica	64,780	49,560
Japan	213,420	170,080
Jordan	266,700	211,700
Kenya	130,920	105,120
Kuwait	105,160	91,520
Lebanon	414,240	378,580
Lithuania	41,800	29,880
Luxembourg	87,400	49,480
Macedonia	78,180	0
Malaysia	851,240	591,880
Maldives	33,880	31,220
Malta	45,820	36,160
Mauritius	57,060	40,620
Mexico	1,439,580	1,174,600
Morocco	369,660	214,180
Netherlands	351,540	283,700
New Zealand	534,320	433,360
Nicaragua	29,560	23,740
Nigeria	212,780	145,000
Norway	1,455,080	1,315,880
Oman	24,240	0
Pakistan	376,800	286,340
Palestine	69,660	55,660
Panama	236,200	219,760
Paraguay	19,200	11,440
Peru	295,620	208,560
Phiilippines	390,700	233,300
Poland	194,960	113,900
Portugal	84,760	61,860
Puerto Rico	541,640	455,160
Qatar	67,840	54,820
Romania	56,300	10,760
Russia	122,780	94,100
Saudi Arabia	325,860	265,740
Serbia	557,480	266,120
Singapore	740,220	539,660
Slovakia	138,120	46,060
Slovenia	184,120	86,640
South Africa	920,860	1,022,240
South Korea	113,940	86,500
Spain	2,591,640	1,031,780
Sri Lanka	154,780	96,500
Sweden	1,697,100	1,242,240
Switzerland	1,122,900	609,640
Taiwan	112,840	84,780
Thailand	168,840	109,980
The Bahamas	43,900	24,280
Trinidad and Tabago	136,080	94,300
Tunisia	239,600	66,440
Turkey	7,924,640	4,087,640
Ukraine	41,400	26,860
UAE	485,540	358,560
USA	42,017,280	32,923,620
UK	14,922,560	12,662,320
Uraguay	198,160	89,320
Venezuela	1,872,840	1,456,420
Vietnam	39,120	26,580

Does anything surprise you on this? Anything else you would like to know?

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Technorati Tags: advertising, Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Twitter

The age of Facebook vs. MySpace: January edition

What does the real population of Facebook look like? How does it compare to MySpace? This is the latest edition of my look at social networks and their populations from a marketing perspective.

All numbers in this post are US-only and are collected using each site's advertising management systems so they are up to date and accurate from a marketer's perspective. (Who wants to talk about populations that can't be reached by marketing? Not me.)

What you need to know right now:

• MySpace's total population is down 4% in the US
• Facebook now for the first time has more people ages 36-45 than MySpace, soon will overtake 46-50 as well as 31-35
• Facebook's over 30 growth is still booming at around 24% per category
• Facebook's under 30 growth was stagnant
• MySpace still dominant in HS and college age groups

Facebook Overview:

Facebookhad fairly consistent gains across most age groups, however for the first time I see slowdowns in the under 35 population. Surprises include:

• Less than 2% growth in the 18-21 and 22-25 year old groups (down from approx. 22% gains over past 4 months)
• 13-17 year old growth is under 8% and the 26-30 year old group gained just over 11%
• Facebook is 56.89% female and 43.11% male

MySpace Overview:

There were some surprising shifts in the population of MySpace this month. Of note:

• Overall, the US population on MySpace dropped by 4.16%
• 26.87% drop in the 36-40 age group from November's numbers
• 32.93% drop in the 41-45 age group from November's numbers
• 40.65% drop in the 46-65+ age group from November's numbers
• MySpace is 52.71% female and 47.29% male

MySpace down 4%; Facebook under 30 stagnant; Facebook finally overtakes MySpace in 36-45 populations

January's look at the real age of MySpace vs. Facebook (US)

Click to enlarge image.

Here are the actual December-January numbers:

AGE RANGE	Facebook	Δ last month	MySpace	Δ last month	overall variance
13-17	5,593,200	+7.21%	17,072,104	-2.94%	305%
18-21	10,802,300	+1.24%	20,326,180	+1.89%	188%
22-25	7,703,340	+1.87%	13,029,345	+3.32%	169%
26-30	5,966,040	+11.19%	10,528,581	-5.70%	176%
31-35	4,123,740	+18.27%	4,958,016	-15.37%	120%
36-40	3,055,720	+23.90%	2,843,813	-26.87%	93%
41-45	1,580,460	+26.74%	1,577,310	-32.93%	100%
46-50	963,900	+23.88%	981,911	-40.65%	102%
51-65+	1,416,820	+23.41%	7,030,912	-7.51%	697%

Other key takeaways and burning questions:

• These numbers represent all total users who can be reached through each site's advertising systems (not all active users)
  
• I'm continually interested in the Boomer audiences on these sites and how they engage
  
• MySpace's reporting system has been on the fritz, we'll have to see next month's numbers to get a real sense of the space
  
• MySpace skews younger than Facebook, engaging more of the highschool population
  
• Will need to look at Facebook under 30 numbers next month to see if the growth remains slow
  

What do you think? What other networks are you investigating? The demographics and targeting options on both sites let you reach your audience in targeted/tailored ways.

UPDATE: Data sources: If you're curious, here is where the data comes from on both sites.

• Facebook - Go here http://www.facebook.com/ads/create and edit the audience settings as you wish. No need to even create an ad.
  
• MySpace - Go here https://advertise.myspace.com and then click "Click here to get started". Enter a test ad. Then you can filter by age/gender/geo/etc.
  

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