Want to see an atlas of Facebook mobile usage across the world? Browser maker Opera has released its 2012 State of the Mobile Web report which measures social networking popularity by looking at the number of Opera Mini users who visit them. Data is aggregated from the servers powering the browser’s data compression — enabling the company to build up an (anonymous) picture of the mobile social web across more than 190 countries.
Here’s how Facebook mobile usage looks when mapped — with darker coloured regions denoting a higher percentage of Opera Mini visitors
From a glance at the graphic it appears that North America should claim the Facebook usage crown but the top-ranking Facebook territory, in terms of percentage of Opera Mini users who visit per month, is actually Macau — where more than 90 percent of all Opera Mini users visit Facebook at least once per month, according to Opera’s data. In the US, the figure is a more modest 49.54 percent.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook tops the list of most popular social networks globally — with 50.6 percent of Opera Mini’s 194 million users visiting it on their phone at least once during the month of October. In terms of total user numbers — not only percentage of users — Opera says Asian countries are on top of the list for Facebook: namely Indonesia and India, followed by Nigeria, Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia and Turkey.
Here’s the corresponding map for Twitter mobile usage
The top countries for total usage for Twitter are remarkably similar to Facebook, according to Opera’s data: with Indonesia on top, followed by India, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Kenya and the Philippines. When it comes to highest number of visits to Twitter on mobile per month, Paraguay takes the lead ahead of Japan.
Opera notes that most countries have “one extremely dominant social network” but its data also shows certain countries have a more diverse spread of social-networking activity. It singles out European high-tech hub Estonia as having “remarkable” diversity compared to most other nations — as well as high Facebook and Twitter usage, regional networks such as Odnoklassniki and VKontakte also do well there, it says.
Other countries who avoid a social networking mono-diet include Israel and Latvia, according to the data.