Brunei: Third Largest Social Media User in World

Bruneians 3rd largest social media users in the world
on: January 28, 2017

| Azlan Othman |

BRUNEI Darussalam has the third highest social media penetration in the world with 370,000 users, or 86 per cent of the total population, according to the new Digital in 2017 Global Overview report from We Are Social and Hootsuite released this week.

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) topped the chart with 99 per cent social media use, said the report which also highlighted that more than half of the world’s population now use the Internet.

The latest data shows that eight countries around the world now have social media penetration levels in excess of 80 per cent, although it is possible that the penetration figures for both Qatar and the UAE are skewed by short-term fluctuations in migrant populations (for example, expatriates working in Qatar to help prepare the country for the FIFA World Cup in 2020).

Brunei Darussalam also fared very high in terms of penetration of mobile social media with 76 per cent using it, and is the sixth highest globally after Qatar, the UAE, South Korea, Aruba and Maldives.

In total, 10 countries have mobile social media penetration rates in excess of 70 per cent, but 43 countries have penetration rates of less than 10 per cent, the majority of which are in Africa.

This year’s report also highlighted that more than half the world now use a smartphone: almost two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone; more than half of the world’s web traffic now comes from mobile phones; more than half of all mobile connections around the world are now broadband; and that more than one in five of the world’s population shopped online in the past 30 days.

The digital world experienced spectacular growth in 2016, with the pace of change accelerating across almost all key indicators versus 2015, the report noted.

According to 2017 statistics, there are 3.77 billion global Internet users in 2017, equalling 50 per cent penetration; 2.80 billion global social media users, equalling 37 per cent penetration; 4.92 billion global mobile users, equalling 66 per cent penetration; 2.56 billion global mobile social media users, equalling 34 per cent penetration; and 1.61 billion global e-commerce users, equalling 22 per cent penetration.

The report also stated that Facebook accounted for the lion’s share of total social media user growth last year, increasing its global footprint by 363 million monthly active accounts in 2016, and delivering year-on-year growth of 24 per cent. More than one billion people now use Facebook every day.

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram – all reported strong growth over the year too, and while there is likely to be considerable user duplication across their platforms, Facebook Inc’s combined audiences now total more than 4.37 billion. Brunei has the highest social media penetration in Asean, more than double the global average, global digital media consultancy We Are Social’s Singapore office said in its report in October last year.

According to the report, Brunei Darussalam had 270,000 active social media users in the fourth quarter of 2015, representing 69 per cent of the population. The vast majority of these users – some 250,000 people – predominantly used mobile devices to access social media, representing an overall mobile social penetration rate of 64 per cent.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin