Beantin

How many Twitter users in Sweden 2011?

At the beginning of this year, Itellecta Corporate presented the results of their Twitter Census, based on data collected in December 2010.

This week Aitellu has presented their research, based on data from the last week of November 2011.

Swedish internet usage 2011

.SE (Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur) has released their yearly report (in Swedish) about Swedish internet use. It covers a wide spectrum of internet use, from file-sharing through to social networks.

Are Facebook pages half as effective as before?

Here in Sweden, we’re getting close to semlor season again, so I made my first post of the new season to my Facebook semlor page. This page is not just an outlet for my love of these tasty seasonal Swedish delights, but also my test-bed for Facebook.

Huge fall in impressions

Towards the end of last season each status update I made was receiving around about 60,000 impressions (the page had about 12,000 fans at the time).

The first post of this season earlier this week received just 23,000 impressions and the page had 13,000 fans. What’s happened? Did everyone suddenly stop using Facebook at some point during the summer?

Well, perhaps. Around a third of semlor fans though are active on Facebook at the moment, but looking at the old Facebook Page insights I can see that page views almost halved after august the 25th. This is when Facebook (apparently) made a change to their algorithm that calculates what appears in people’s news stream. Apparently, Facebook Pages were knocked down a notch, and it appears to be true.

Admittedly, the number of impressions could be affected by the page being “dormant” for half a year (the “off season”), but nothing I’ve read indicates that the frequency of status updates are part of Facebook’s ranking algorithm.

Less than half as effective?

So basically, what we can say is that Facebook pages seem to be about a third as effective as they were pre-august 2010, half at best. If you have maintained the same level of page activity this means that, in monetary terms, Facebook as a marketing channel has become three times more expensive per customer reached.

What to do?

EdgeRank is the name of Facebook’s ranking algorithm. It’s based on the affinity between you and the content creator (interactions over time), weight (the total number of likes and comments for the update, likes and comments by your friends will push this higher), and recency (the time elapsed since the update was posted).

The best thing to do in order to maximise the chances of your page’s update making it into people’s news feeds (top news) is to publish updates that actively encourage interaction. The more fans that like or comment on your update, the more chance that your next update will be shown amongst their top news items.

No interaction; no visibility.

Internet usage and young Swedes in Sweden

A new report Unga svenskar och Internet (Swedish) from World Internet Institute, .SE och Medierådet shows that in Sweden social economic background is associated with large differences in how early children learn to use the Internet. It also shows how wide-spread blogging, online communities, and instant messaging is amongst young Swedes.

Here follows a taste of some of the 50-page Swedish report’s findings.

Children learn earlier than ever

The age that Swedish children begin using the Internet has fallen from thirteen in the year 2000 to just four in 2009. This age, according to the report, is derived from when 50% of the age group have familiarised themselves with the Internet. So in 2009 we can say that every other Swedish four year-old has used the Internet. That usage is often watching short video and film clips as well as playing simple games.

Pre-school children who have well-educated parents are more likely to be both familiar with the internet as well as regular users of the Internet. This is significantly less for pre-school children of less well educated parents. In other words the report claims a direct correlation between education level of the parents and internet usage of pre-school kids (but not for older children).

4 in 10 young women have blogged

Blogging is very common in Sweden, more so amongst girls than boys (Boys, especially teenage ones, spend more time playing games). Already by 12-13 years old 20% of Swedish girls have a blog and the majority of those blog at least weekly. The level of blogging increases until we get to the 20 year-olds where more than 50% of those that blog do so on a daily basis. In total 40% of young women have blogged or blog and 69% read other’s blogs.

Internet in Schools but not well used

One of the many interesting facts highlighted in the report is that although the Internet is available to almost all school children, only the 18-19 age group contains a majority who use it daily at school (excluding during breaks). For the 12-17 age group it is a weekly rather than daily occurrence. Use of the Internet has yet to make a significant appearance in school assignments. 75% of School children themselves say that the Internet is not important for their school-work, whereas a majority claim that it is important or very important in their leisure-time.

A selection of facts…

• Half of 16-25 year-olds visit an online community daily
• Amongst 12-15 year-old girls Bilddagboken is the most popular social network
• Instant messaging is used by almost all Swedish teenagers
• Those who play games play on average 5.5 hour a week
• 16 year-old boys who play online games play for 11 hours a week
• 72% of 16-25 year-olds are members of social networks
• 82% of all Swedish bloggers are under 35 years old, 65% are under 25.