UK Trails Asian Markets In First-Ever Social Media League

PR Newswire | 24 Oct, 2012
LONDON: The UK has come 27th in a new global league table that measures how often and how much consumers use social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Created by GlobalWebIndex, which has been tracking social media usage among internet users around the world since 2009, the Social Engagement Benchmark finds that the UK has been overtaken by fast-growing economies such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil.

The results means that consumers in these markets are more likely to use a social network or a microblog, upload a photo or video or review a product or brand than those in the UK.

The most active group in the UK are single people who live with friends, while the least active are unsurprisingly users aged 55-64. The most active are in the south-east and London and the least active in the north-east.

The league table has been calculated using GlobalWebIndex's data from 31 countries detailing how much consumers participate in social media, whether they create or upload content and whether they get engage with brands via these platforms either to review products, like a brand or upload content to brand sites.

Each area - participation, creation and brand involvement - is scored out of 400 and the marks are added together and then converted to a percentage of the maximum 1200 score.

The UK had a SEB score of 41, compared to China, which topped the poll at 91, Indonesia scored 81 and India scored 79. Vietnam at 79 and the Philippines at 78 complete the top five. The top-ranking European market is Turkey at 75, followed by Russia at 61.

"Millions of new consumers in emerging markets are coming online every year and the vast majority are adopting social media as a natural part of their online experience. In more mature markets like the UK, most consumers went online before social media became mass market and hence many have never engaged in the same way," said GWI founder Tom Smith.

About GlobalWebIndex

The GlobalWebIndex is the most detailed on-going global study into the internet consumer's attitudes, motivation and multi-platform internet behaviour, enabling clients to understand how their target audience is behaving across PC, mobile and tablets.

The study was initiated in July 2009 and has since delivered seven waves of research, covering more than 152,000 internet users in 31 countries.

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