Global social networks mostly share same user data & behaviour

98% of survey respondents use social networks; 28% have over five accounts

BASMA Media has revealed the results of the latest public survey conducted via its state-of-the-art digital media and communications platform “OMNESmedia.com", in cooperation with the Social Media Summit Middle East.

More than 5,500 participants from different Arab countries responded to the survey which focused on measuring user behaviour on social networking sites in the Arab world. Up to 32% of the participants came from the United Arab Emirates, 26% from Saudi Arabia, 8% from Lebanon, 6% from Jordan, and 6% from Egypt, with the remaining from Kuwait, Palestine, Tunisia, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Oman and Yemen.

The survey asked users about their behaviour for social networking sites in terms of number of accounts, total time spent online, and favourite networks. The resultant statistics confirmed the dominance of certain social networks over others and the prevalence they have among different segments of Arab society in various countries.

The results showed that 98% of the respondents have personal social media accounts, 31% with one or two accounts, 39% with three to four accounts, while those with more than five accounts comprise 28% of total participants. This purports the fact that these networks share data and behaviour of same users or the majority of them. They also revealed the strong competition between key global networks which vie for maintaining and building userships and testify to their success in sustaining a continuous market presence in a way that enables them to share same users.

The results revealed that 66% of the respondents prefer to use Facebook, 49% opt for Instagram, 48% for Twitter, 29% for LinkedIn, 28% for Snapshot, while Google Plus accounted for 8% of total users. These ratios intersect because the same user has more than one preference over these networks. Thus, Facebook can be considered the most powerful Arab social media platform in terms of number of users, which is also consistent with global statistics.

The results also drove home the amount of time spent on social networks, which proved to be varying from one user to another, however, indicating an overall rise in the space of time allocated by Arab users to the Internet in general, and to social media in particular, a fact which is attributed to the growingly sophisticated IT infrastructure available at a low cost as a result of the heated competition existing between service providers across Arab countries.

Users who spend less than one hour per day on social networks account for around 17% of total respondents, according to the survey, while 32% spend less than 3 hours, 24% less than 5 hours, 11% less than 8 hours, with 14% of the respondents saying they spend more than 8 hours a day.

These results provide a reasonable justification for the rapidly-growing phenomenon of "influencers" within different sectors and fields. Those influencers represent a true competitor to the traditional and digital advertising market, and rather make up their own hidden market whose dimensions cannot be measured accurately or in a scientific manner.

The results also confirmed the rapid transformation witnessed across various production and service sectors which depend on social networks to promote their products and services at an affordable marketing cost that is much less than that required by traditional advertising.

The Social Media Summit Middle East is the oldest and largest such gathering in the Arab region. It has already held eight different editions in the UAE and Jordan, in addition to several workshops, training courses, and consulting and strategy-building events, and recently announced its expansion to Saudi Arabia and North Africa.

For more details, please contact us on; info@omnesmedia.com