Malaysians are leading the world in social media and mobile

More and more people are getting connected these days. The amount of time people spend on social media is also increasing exponentially. Social sites like Facebook and Twitter used to be for people, but now we’re finding pages for pets, cartoon characters and video game icons.

Social media is taking over human lives and Malaysians are at the forefront of this revolution.

Facebook recently set up shop here in Malaysia but the fact that they did isn’t that important. What is important is why, and the why is that Malaysians spend more time on Facebook than almost any other country in the world.

By percentage alone, Facebook reveals that 80% of all Malaysians who have access to the internet are also on Facebook. That brings the number to 18 million users — that’s more than half of our entire population. What’s more, Malaysians also have 1.6 times more friends than the global average.

We also spend a whole lot of time consuming video content on Facebook as their statistics reveal that we spend on average 159 minutes watching videos on the social media site. That’s 55% more than the global average of 102 minutes. We also spend more time watching videos on our smartphones (66 minutes) than we do watching live television (59 minutes)

This places our tiny country in the top 10 in the world for video consumption (time spent watching) on Facebook. That is higher than any other country in the Southeast Asian region — a region that has more than 241 million Facebook users!

We also find out about most of our stuff from Facebook. According to statistics provided by Facebook, 94% of Malaysians discover products and brands on Facebook and 62% of them makes a purchase after the discovery.

Like it or not, Malaysians love their Facebook and the big blue giant has taken notice. I wonder what they’ll do next?