Facebook South Africa user numbers

Facebook is South Africa’s most popular social network, and is the first high-tech service platform in the country to see equal take up from men and women.

This is according to the World Wide Worx and Fuseware SA Social Media Landscape 2015 report, which ranks Facebook as the number one social platform in South Africa, with 11.8 million users.

Of the Facebook users whose gender is identifiable, 5.6 million males and 5.6 females use the platform.

“In a market where there is still a small male bias in the use of the Internet and e-commerce, the results underline the extent to which social media has become mainstream,” World Wide Worx said.

Arthur Goldstuck, managing director World Wide Worx, said that the figures are a “clear sign” of Facebook’s mainstream every day use in South Africa.

The research also notes that a sizeable chuck of Facebook users are accessing the platform via mobile devices – 8.8 million – though is down from the 9.2 million figure reported in September.

Five million people are still accessing Facebook through feature phones, while 5.6 million people use smartphones.

This includes the smartphone/feature phone hybrid Nokia Asha, which is most popular phone used to access the platform (1.78 million), and is counted as both types of handset in the data.

Android is the most popular operating system (3.2 million), followed by BlackBerry (2.4 million), iOS (580,000) and Windows Phone (260,000).

According to information announced World Wide Worx in September, after Facebook, Google’s YouTube is the second most popular social platform in the country, followed by Twitter, Mxit and LinkedIn.

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