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Facebook drives Southeast Asian social network usage

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By John Glenday, Reporter

November 25, 2015 | 2 min read

The first ever forecast of social media users in Southeast Asia to be compiled by eMarketer has shown that the region has amongst the highest penetration of usage in the world.

Stretching across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam the survey showed that Indonesia had the highest social network penetration amongst internet users with 77.4 per cent visiting a social platform at least once a month in 2015.

In addition Indonesia is also the largest social network market in absolute terms as well with 72.3m using social networks on a monthly basis - a figure which is set to rise to 109.8m or 82.2 per cent of internet users by 2018.

Second placed nation the Philippines by contrast could muster just 39.7m people representing 74 per cent of internet users, who logged in regularly over the course of 2015.

Haixia Wang, eMarketer's vice president of forecasting, said: "Social network penetration, while high among internet users in Southeast Asia, is somewhat low in more general terms because internet penetration is lower than average in the region. This means that Southeast Asia presents the greatest opportunities for social network usage growth in the next few years. With internet penetration still relatively low and mobile continuing to drive internet adoption in the key markets there, it will continue to be a hot spot for various digital activity growths in the next few years."

A key factor driving growth has been the rise of Facebook with two-thirds of internet users in both countries logging in regularly. Indonesia alone has 67.7m Facebook users representing 72.5 per cent of all users with this figure expected to grow to 105.1m.

Twitter was markedly less successful with penetration of just 10.5 per cent in Vietnam and Singapore and 15.4 per cent in Indonesia.

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