Flavio about Business 2.0

Yes it’s true. Just recently I posted that Facebook Switzerland had reached 10% of the population, and now we’ve already reached another milestone: 1 million Swiss residents are on Facebook! (Actually already 1′071′000)

That is the equivalent of 14.2% of the population(!). This is a 42% increase in less than two months.

If you look at the graph, you can see that the growth is still accelerating.

At what level is the market saturated?

As the data in the facebook ad manager tool suggests, there are now 395′020 people on facebook within Switzerland. Given our current population of 7′554′661 we can deduct that 5.22% of the Swiss Population are now officially on facebook. From 18-25 year olds this number accrues to 187′480 people out of 714′000 people, so 26% of this generation are on facebook.

What does this mean?

• In other words, every 20th person in Switzerland is on facebook.
• Facebook is probably the most successful Social Network in Switzerland ever
• If you are young and live in an urban center like Zurich or Geneva you’re totally disconnected from what’s going on if you’re not on facebook.
• If you want to reach a large amount of young people in a very targed way (age, sex, relationship status etc), facebook provides an excellent opportunity.

I’ve been blogging about facebook growth within Switzerland for the past year and now I’ve taken these data points to see how facebook has grown within this time:

As visible on the graph above, we have seen rapid growth throughout the last 1.5 years and don’t seem to be done yet. And when you see what numbers Norway and Canada show there is good reason to believe this trend is continuing.

• Canada: 28.7 %
• Norway: 26.1 %

Soon every third Canadian is going to be on facebook. So if I were in Canada I’d better make sure my profile doesn’t show too much unnecessary information about myself, because you can be sure that your teacher and your future employer is on the site as well.

Let’s compare to our neighbors (numbers in parentheses show growth in one(!) month)

• France 3.71% (+ 14%)
• Italy 0.78% (+ 24%)
• Germany 0.75% (+11%)
• Austria 1.33% (+14%)

Certainly France has a strong adoption due to it’s strong economic and social relations with both the UK and the USA and the lack of a domestic competitor. Germany’s growth clearly lacks behind others because of Studivz that apparently still has a strong lead over facebook within Germany (all their expansion projects to France, Italy, Poland etc have been abondoned, as I’ve been told from an inside source). Austria is probably just not as international and globally connected as Switzerland and is probably still stronger attached to Studivz. I don’t know why Italy lacks that far behind, perhaps they just prefer to meet up in person than hang out online (not a bad reason, if you ask me).

With the new pages and social ad system that facebook has created it is now possible to see how many people of a certain country are members of facebook. This number differs significantly from the number of people having joined the Switzerland network. Currently, there are 152′900 people from Switzerland that are members while only 106′000 have joined the Switzerland network. The ratio of joining the social network is thus 69% (my estimate earlier was 50%).

If you divide this number by the total population of Switzerland the ratio is 152′900 / 7′507′300 =  2%! In other words every 50th person in Switzerland is on facebook. It’s pretty amazin at which rate facebook has grown in Switzerland. In the beginning of the year when I joined, there were a mere 3′000 users in the Switzerland network and this number has now multiplied itsself by 30. And the number can still multiply by 14, as shown by the facebook demographics of canada and norway.

Interestingly there are more women who use facebook in almost every country (except the arab world). This is also the case in Switzerland where 51.7 % of the users are female.

When will we use facebook as a tool to vote in elections? Which other platform can boast as many members from Switzerland?

robwebb2k did a manual calculation of facebook penetration in different countries using the facebook flyer pro tool, which nicely indicates how many people you are reaching with certain demographic selection, like male/female - single/in a relationship or even favorite band or movie.

Here are the results:

As you can see, the penetration in Canada has reached an absolutely unbelievable 22%. More than every 5th Canadian is on Facebook - more than any political party for example has voters.

Extremely high penetration is also reached in Norway, where about 19% of the population is already on facebook.

If you look at other European numbers, Switzerland has a quite high penetration of 1.32 %, much higher than it’s neighbors France, Germany or Italy. Probably due to the internationality of our country.

How much longer until we reach 20% in Switzerland?

When are votes going to be cast over facebook or official government decisions broadcast? I bet you can reach more people than through traditional media.