Latam Has Highest Social Media User Growth Rate
By Patricia Martínez, Expedition PR
Latin Americans flock to social networks. Even though the Internet penetration in Latin America is still not as high as in other regions, such as Europe and Asia, the region has the highest year-over-year growth rate in the world, according to the ComScore report “2013 Latin America Future in Focus”. Latin America had the fastest growing internet population, increasing 12 percent compared to the previous year to more than 147 million unique visitors in March 2013. Latin Americans also spend double the time on social media platforms (10 hours) than the global average (5.8 hours).
Let’s take a look at where and how people in Latin America spend their time on social media.
According to eMarketer, nine in ten Latin American social networking users have a Facebook account[1]. Facebook is the most adopted social media platform with over 131,000 unique visitors per month, followed by LinkedIn, with 37,813 unique visitors a month. Twitter occupies third place with almost 30,000 unique visits.
Not surprisingly, 94% of the time spent on social media happens on Facebook covers, followed by Twitter. While Facebook is the dominant network, others are becoming more popular.
Orkut is especially popular in Brazil. The site is operated by Google, and has over 33 million users worldwide. The ComScore report positioned Orkut as the fifth most popular social network in Latin America, with over 15,000 total unique visitors.
One of the rising networks is Ask.fm, a Latvia-based social networking website where users can ask questions, with the option of anonymity. Ask.fm has grown rapidly, and is available in languages such as Indonesian, Bosnian, Russian, Chinese and Spanish.
Local and global corporations have long recognized the opportunities presented by Latin America’s growing online population. Many organizations have social media programs in place to engage with Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking audiences.
It makes sense. By 2017 the Latam region will add nearly 100 million people to the social network audience[2]. Are you ready to engage with them?
[1] eMarketer. Nine in 10 Latin American Social Networkers Use Facebook.
Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Nine-10-Latin-American-Social-Networkers-Use-Facebook/1010404#x9WkIs4sTuGaVISr.99
[2] Idem