If a recent report shared by Facebook with advertisers is to go by, India has officially surpassed the US as Facebook’s largest market. The Next Web is reporting that Facebook now has 241 million users in India as against 240 million in the US even though percentage wise, the US still leads the pack with 72 percent of the US population being on the social media site as opposed to India’s meager 19 percent.
India is now Facebook’s largest market ahead of the United States
Facebook has been increasingly looking at India for further expansion now that its presence in its home market is more or less saturated. While not all its endeavors have been successful (such as internet.org), Facebook has certainly been making a splash. Growth in India has outpaced the US what with India having added 50 million more users in the last six months as against 12 million in the US. That’s a growth rate of 19 percent in India as against 12 percent in the US. The figures may be slightly off in that they are extrapolated values but there is not reason to see this result being true, if not now, at least in the next few weeks.
The reports also shed light on some other interesting stats. Brazil comes in third with 139 million users followed by Indonesia with 126 million users. Together, the top three countries constitute almost a quarter of Facebook’s user base. Among the cities with the most users, Bangkok leads the pack with 35 million users followed by Jakarta and Dhaka with 26 million and 25 million users. India’s New Delhi is at fifth with 15 million users. Also as expected, of the 241 million Indians on Facebook, a majority are in the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups with these two accounting for almost 173 million users by themselves – a whopping 72% of the Indian user base. Males continue to outnumber Females significantly, almost by 3 to 1.
The teenage-adult population continues to be the most active on Facebook
These stats by the social media management platform Hootsuite not withstanding, Facebook’s growth has been nothing short of impressive. The social media giant reported revenues of $2.5 billion in Q1 2017 and recently surpassed 2 billion monthly active users on the site, a mere weeks after announcing 1.94 billion users at F8. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg meanwhile has been touring the country, trying to understand what makes people tick in different states so he can better improve his product. He also recently held a community focused event in Chicago to empower Group Admins with more meaningful tools to manage the barrage of content posted in communities.
