Did You Know: Kaypoh Singaporeans are Top Facebook Users in the World, Spend Most Yime on the Site, Nov 2011

Did You Know: Kaypoh Singaporeans are Top Facebook Users in the World, Spend Most Time on the Site, Nov 2011

BY LYDIA NG

Did you know? Singaporeans spend an average of 39 minutes tailing their friends, posting updates, viewing pictures on Facebook everyday. In fact, we are the nation that spends the most time on FB! This may also be due to a high smartphone penetration rate (>60%) in Singapore and the rise of mobile data usage.

What that means:

Basically, Singaporeans are super kaypoh 'lah'. How does spending so much time on Facebook benefit us besides forming virtual friendships and having gossip fodder on what your friends (and fake friends) are doing?

An interesting phenomenon -- we develop ‘facebook envy’. 

Facebook envy: Getting jealous of your friends’ wall posts and pictures as they showcase their near perfect lives of endless vacations, acquisitions, and high status, but still viewing picture after picture of their sun-filled holidays, perfect lives, being addicted to trailing them still, being subscribed to their stories, all the while muttering under your breath.

Marketers, it seems, are not taking enough advantage of this. Almost none of Facebook’s downstreams are to retail sites, according to an Experian study. Meaning most users who are on Facebook do not visit the company’s website after Facebook. This is unlike New Zealand, where 9% of site traffic comes from Social Networks.

Perhaps the incentive given by brands is not enough to entice users to visit the website. Or it could show a reluctance of users to be persuaded to navigate away from their favourite pastime – Facebook stalking.

Either way, this demonstrates that social marketing by brands in Singapore is nowhere near maturity, and there is much room to grow for brands to develop their social strategy.