A whopping nine out of ten Filipinos who are online are on social networking site Facebook, an online financial news site reported this week.
24/7 Wall St said that this catapulted the Philippines to the top of a list of nations where Facebook dominates people's use of the Internet.
"Social network penetration is incredibly high in the Philippines, reaching 95 percent. Facebook is the country’s most popular website, more so than Google, and has a penetration rate of 93.9 percent," it said.
It also noted that photo sharing surged by 46 percent in the Philippines in one year, largely due to Facebook.
On the other hand, it noted that the Philippines is also the eighth most popular country for Twitter use on a global scale, with a penetration rate of 16.1 percent.
"Social networking is so popular among Filipinos, the country has been nicknamed 'The Social Networking Capital of the World,'" it said.
In contrast, the penetration rate of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site, is only 1.9 percent.
Other top 10 countries where Facebook rules
Israel is second on the list of countries where Facebook is the dominant destination on the Internet, with a penetration rate of 91 percent.
Only five percent of Israeli users use Twitter; and 6.4 percent use LinkedIn.
However, the country has the highest Internet penetration rate among all others on the list, with 71.6 percent of Israel’s population being “plugged in."
"Besides having the second highest rate of Facebook usage among Internet users, Israelis spend the second most amount of time on social networking sites, behind only Russia. Israel’s social network users spend an average of 9.2 hours on social network sites a month," 24/7 Wall St. said.
Others on the list include:
Turkey, where 90.9 percent are on Facebook, 16.6 percent on Twitter, 3.4 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet use is at 45 percent. It has the highest Facebook penetration among all the Eurasian countries, the second highest being the UK, with 81.7 percent.
Chile, where 90.2 percent are on Facebook, 14.3 percent on Twitter, 5.9 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet use is at 50 percent. Chile has among the highest rates of Internet use among Latin American countries, with 50 percent of Chileans online.
Argentina, where 89.2 percent are on Facebook, 18 percent on Twitter, and 6.4 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet Use is at 64.4 percent.
Malaysia, where 88.4 percent are on Facebook, 10.8 percent on Twitter, and 2.9 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet Use is at 64.6 percent. Malaysia has the second-highest social network penetration in Southeast Asia, with 91 percent. Photo-sharing on sites such as Facebook shot up by 57 percent from 2009 to 2010.
Indonesia, where 87.5 percent are on Facebook, 22 percent on Twitter, and 1.3 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet Use is at 12.3 percent. Social network penetration in Indonesia is the third greatest in Southeast Asia as of the beginning of 2011, at 90 percent of those people online.
Peru, where 87.2 percent are on Facebook, 12.5 percent on Twitter, 4.6 percent on LinkedIn, and Internet Use is at 27 percent. However, Peru has a relatively small minority of people who use the Internet at all. As of January 2011, only 27% of Peruvians were online, one of the lowest rates among the Latin American countries.
Colombia, where 86.9 percent are on Facebook, 14.6 percent on Twitter and 3.3 percent on LinkedIn. Internet use is at 48.7 percent. Colombia is the fastest-growing Internet market in Latin America, growing 31 percent in the past year to reach 11.8 million unique visitors in September 2010, according to comScore.
Venezuela, where 86.2 percent are on Facebook, 21 percent on Twitter and 3.2 percent on LinkedIn. Internet use is at 37.7 percent. Venezuela has the third highest rate of Twitter use among Internet users.
24/7 used data from comScore, Inside Facebook, New Media Trend Watch, and ZDNet for its analysis.
