{"id":35194,"date":"2013-04-09T15:38:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T13:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=35194"},"modified":"2013-04-10T17:25:34","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T15:25:34","slug":"the-truth-about-sa-facebook-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/35194\/the-truth-about-sa-facebook-stats\/","title":{"rendered":"The truth about SA Facebook stats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reports that Facebook<\/a> users in South Africa are in rapid decline are greatly exaggerated, according to Arthur Goldstuck<\/a>, the MD of local research firm World Wide Worx<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Citing data from SocialBakers<\/a>, it was reported that 922,940 users had left the popular social networking service in the past three months.<\/p>\n

Goldstuck explained that while the data from Facebook\u2019s ad planning tool does show a dramatic decrease in registered users over the last three months, it doesn\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n

Analysing statistical anomalies<\/h3>\n

Towards the end of December 2012, Facebook reported that there were 6.49-million registered users in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, starting on 4 January 2013 there appears to be a dramatic drop in registered users from 6.46-million registered, to 6.19-million registered on 13 January 2013.<\/p>\n

While some of the account closures reported by Facebook are users deciding to leave the service and deleting their accounts, the majority are not, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average user doesn\u2019t make an effort to close their account,\u201d he remarked. \u201cThey just leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anomaly occurred because Facebook was culling accounts that were duplicates, fake, or used for spamming, Goldstuck explained.<\/p>\n

Despite this sudden drop, however, Facebook\u2019s user uptake trend in South Africa is upwards, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/a>

Facebook SA stats April 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

Where are those user numbers?<\/h3>\n

The reason this growth isn\u2019t reflected in the data that is publicly available, Goldstuck explained, is because Facebook\u2019s mobile sign-up doesn\u2019t require users to specify a location for them to join.<\/p>\n

Asked whether there is an indication of how many users are on Facebook that have left their location unset, but still use the service, Goldstuck said that they can get that number for a specific moment in time.<\/p>\n

In August 2012, World Wide Worx and Fuseware<\/a> released a research report on South Africa\u2019s social media landscape in which they found that 5.1-million users in SA had given a location, but the total number of registered users were 6.8-million.<\/p>\n

Goldstuck said that while they don\u2019t have an official statistic, they have been given an indication that South Africa\u2019s registered Facebook userbase is at around 8-million currently.<\/p>\n

Facebook is able to use IP address data to get an idea of where users are signing on from, which they use internally, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

He added that they don\u2019t integrate the IP address data with user-provided data, however.<\/p>\n

If a user changes their location in Facebook later on they will be reflected in the ad planning tool, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

\"Arthur<\/a>

Arthur Goldstuck<\/p><\/div>\n

SocialBakers response<\/h3>\n

SocialBakers, the service whose data was used in many of the reports, confirmed Goldstuck\u2019s conclusion explaining that their data doesn\u2019t show the number of registered users.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely not true to say that our data shows that Facebook has \u2018lost users\u2019,\u201d a spokesperson for SocialBakers recently told MyBroadband.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is, however, true to say that a percentage of Facebook users were less active over a six month period.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to SocialBakers there are plenty of people who might not be regular users, such as those in an older age demographic who might only go online occasionally to look at photos of their grandkids.<\/p>\n

\u201cA fluctuation in [monthly average users] both positively and negatively is completely normal across most markets,\u201d SocialBakers explained. \u201cIt can, for example, be affected by holiday seasons or big news events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether they get their data from Facebook\u2019s ad planning tool, SocialBakers provided the following statement:<\/p>\n

We get data from the API\u2019s of all the vertical platforms we monitor. We publish the public data on our website and then for our paid tools such as Analytics Pro, we create our own formulas to sort and categorise it.<\/p>\n

Facebook shooting itself in the foot?<\/h3>\n

Asked whether the number of mobile sign-ons reflected by the data is an indication of a shift in the demographic of Facebook users in South Africa, Goldstuck said that it does appear to be entering the mass market.<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, this is a less trackable market at this stage,\u201d Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

He said that Facebook is probably aware of the issue, but rather than try to fix a disconnect between disparate systems, they\u2019re working on a new system where the cellphone becomes front-and-centre.<\/p>\n

This is only going to happen in the long term, however, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meantime they are definitely doing themselves a disservice,\u201d Goldstuck said<\/p>\n

\u201cFacebook has probably been blind-sided by Africa,\u201d he added. This is because the uptake of social networking operates so differently in developing nations, Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the same animal as it is in developed countries,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

More on Facebook<\/h3>\n

Facebook loses close to 1 million SA users<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

SA Facebook users in alarming decline<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

South Africans are bored with Facebook<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tech companies still fail at social media<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook unveils new search tool<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook and Internet addiction<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The decline of Facebook in SA is a myth, but the stats may point to a changing demographic that caught the company by surprise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[843,45,1687,26,4016,607],"class_list":["post-35194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-arthur-goldstuck","tag-facebook","tag-fuseware","tag-headline","tag-socialbakers","tag-world-wide-worx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35194"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35474,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35194\/revisions\/35474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}