Where half the population use Facebook every week

The growth of Facebook has been tremendous in Norway over the last couple of years. A new survey shows that more than 50 per cent of the population now use Facebook every week.

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Few countries have as high Internet penetration as Norway. 90 per cent of the population now has access to the web, as opposed to 74 per cent in North America and 50 per cent in the rest of Europe. Earlier I have described how  news sites in this country of 4,5 million enjoy a huge traffic.

TNS-Gallup now has released new data of how Norwegians use social networks. You can download a presentation in English here.

- It is no longer possible to ignore the power of social networks, says one of the researchers, Knut-Arne Futsæter (Twitter: @knutarnef) to the Norwegian media magazine Kampanje.

The survey shows that Facebook has a weekly reach of 50 per cent in the Norwegian population. This puts it at the same level as the top local language site: VG Nett.  Daily reach for Facebook is 34 per cent. No other social networks is even close to this number. Twitter only has a 2 per cent daily reach, while the biggest Norwegian social network, Nettby, has 3 per cent.

Here is a graph of the development:

This corresponds with data published elsewhere putting Norway on  the global top of Facebook penetration together with other cold countries like Canada and Iceland.

Now let us have a quick look at who the Norwegian Facebook users are. These data can be taken out from Facebook’s pages for advertisers.

Acording to Facebook there are:

• 2.111.600 Facebook users in Norway
• 997.140 – or 47,2 % – are women
• 447.980 – or 21,2 % – are 40 years or older

Tagged as: Facebook, Norway, social media, Twitter