{facebook.com}

Internet World Stats has always been an excellent resource for global Internet use figures. For years, the site has routinely updated country-specific Internet penetration statistics when new ITU reports become available. However, in early September, Internet World Stats began tracking the number of Facebook users by both continent and country. A blog report explains the decision:

Well, on July 21, 2010 Facebook reached 500 million users in the world. It keeps on growing every day.  We at Internet World Stats have published the Facebook Statistics as of August 31, 2010. We have employed our same display method, including all the Facebook users by geographic world regions and have also calculated the penetration rate for each region. We have also introduced new concept called the Facebook Index. It represents the percentage number of Internet users who are also Facebook users. See the three graphs and the table with the Facebook Statistics, very interesting original research.

Indeed, the index is very interesting. Only 1.7% of Africans are on Facebook, but since there is only 10.9% Internet penetration, we see that 15.9% of African Internet users are on Facebook. Wonderfully, the African continent does not rank last when defined by the “Facebook Index”. In fact, fewer Asians with Internet access (11.3%) use Facebook. Although the data is prone to error (in this case, Facebook users are “the official number of Facebook users reported in each country or world region”) we can speculate that African Internet users (not Africans in general) are more excited about Facebook than Asia, but still lag behind all other regions of the world.

Unfortunately, the folks at IWS have not yet provided a table of Facebook users by nation, but I have taken the liberty below to aggregate their data. Have a look at the country-level, but again, note the “best-guess estimate” nature of the Facebook data. For example, Botswana and Sierra Leone have surprisingly high Facebook usage rates that are in the vicinity of South Africa’s 60%. Still, it seems fair to say that approximately 1-in-5 Kenyan Internet users visits Facebook.

{Data Source: Africa Internet Facebook Usage Population Statistics, InternetWorldStats.com}