Facebook adds 1 million more Arabic users

Technology news site Arab Crunch posted some interesting Facebook statistics yesterday from InsideFacebook’s most recent Gold Report (read the ArabCrunch story here). According to InsideFacebook, Facebook’s Arabic language interface is now the fastest growing language version inthe world, growing by 18% per month. According to Spot On’s research, Facebook’s Arabic platform in the Middle East & North Africa added about 1 million new users during the past three months (accounting for about half of all new users in the region) and the momentum that the Arabic platform has is changing the Facebook demographics for countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt for ever.

Language preference of MENA Facebook users (as percentage)

As expected, the language bias for Saudi Arabia’s Facebook users has now switched from English to Arabic. During the past three months the percentage of Facebook Arabic users in Saudi Arabia has crossed the 50% mark and now stands at 53% of total users of the platform. It’s a change of a few percent, but it’s going to be increasingly important for marketers as Facebook reaches new demographics of users, perhaps previously put off by having to user its English language interface.

Numbers of Facebook users by country (in millions)

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco added the most new Facebook users during the past three months, with Egypt adding 641,000 new users. Egypt also added the most Arabic language users during the past three months, which accounted for 57% of its total new users added to Facebook. However, 81% of all new Saudi Facebook users were adopters of the Arabic platform. At this rate, we could well be looking at a 60:40 percent ratio of Arabic to English Facebook users in Saudi by the beginning of next year.

Overall, Facebook users in the Middle East and North Africa grew by 15% over the past three months adding some 2.2 million new Facebook users and bringing the total MENA Facebook population to 17.3 million.

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If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:

Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users (July 2010)

15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)

Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)

Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)

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