So far, we are always proud of the fact that Indonesia is a “social media country” — so active in Facebook pages and Twitter. There are many countless times that Twitter users from Indonesia “lift” the topics to be trending globally for days. Indonesia is the county with second most populous Facebook users in the world after the United States, tally at 41.7 million users according to statistics recorded by social media agency SocialBakers.
However, seeing the trend that occurred in recent months, Indonesia seems should be ready to let go of this title. Over the last six months, the increase of Facebook users in Indonesia is “only” about 7.5%. Two countries behind Indonesia which also has a massive population such as India and Brazil have recorded a fantastic growth.
In India, within the last 6 months they managed to increase the population of “Facebook resident” by 40%. The number goes 65% for Brazil. No wonder that today India has 41.4 million of Facebook users and 35 million for Brazil. Not to mention the fact that the percentage of Facebook users in India is still around 3.5% from the total population. Both Indonesia and Brazil, the number of Facebook users has reached 17% from the total population. On the other hand, the number of Facebook users in Indonesia is almost the same as the number of Internet users in Indonesia.
In 2012, if the trend is not much different than today, surely it’s not difficult to say that Indonesia would soon lose the crown of the social media champion. It’s fairly safe to predict that Indonesia will descend into the 4th position by the end of 2012. The bigger increment of Facebook users in Indonesia seems to have to wait for a drastic increase of Internet users.
I think we should no longer need to boast the position of Indonesia and our massive number of users. It’s a time for us to think, what can be achieved with these facebook populations? What positive things can be produced, apart from making Facebook Page support if there are cases relating to the law and injustice. Have the brand and the community has succeeded in effectively using social media as a tool of communication and marketing? What else can be done with a large number of populations in this virtual world? Let’s study it together.
Syukurlah, segeralah sadar dari ketergantungan FB…