The Top 5 users of Facebook have stayed the same since Dec 08: US, UK, Canada, Turkey and France.

Spanish Facebook users have grown at 147% over the last 6 months, to be the 8th largest country of Facebook users in the world. Spain has grown the fastest, almost increasing their user base 1.5 times that of 6 months ago, from 2.2m to 5.5m users. Australia’s growth rate is low, 37%, compared to the Top 10 countries, and less than half that of the Italy – 88%, US – 85% and France 80%.

Sources:

1 – Facebook | Advertising, Estimates taken on 17th of July 2009 of Facebook users, identified as 18+

So far I have only been able to find 5 feeds: Status, Friends Status, Notifications , Friends Links and Friend List.

Thanks for the tip, Bill

Find your Facebook Information

To generate these links, it seems you need three ids: your facebook id, your_internal_key and your_friend_key.

1. To find your_facebook_id and your_internal_key, go to > Facebook > Inbox > Notifications.

Right click on “Your Notifications” and copy the short cut. This is your notifications feed.

The structure of the feed is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=your_facebook_id&viewer=your_facebook_id&key=your_internal_key&format=rss20

The first two identical numbers are =your_facebook_id, the third number is =your_internal_key. Copy these numbers.

2. To find your your_friends_key, go to Facebook > Friends .

Right click on “Friends Status’ Feed” on the left hand side and copy the short cut. This is your Friends Status feed.

The structure of the feed is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=your_facebook_id&key=your_friends_key&format=rss20

The first numbers is again =your_facebook_id, the second number is =your_internal_key. Copy the second number.

You now have all the information needed to construct the feeds below! Let me know if you know about any additional feeds, or if you have any problems.

Status Feed

The feed URL is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=your_facebook_id&viewer=your_facebook_id&key=your_internal_key&format=rss20

Notifications Feed

The feed URL is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=your_facebook_id&viewer=your_facebook_id&key=your_internal_key&format=rss20

Friends Status Feed

The feed URL is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=your_facebook_id&key=your_friends_key&format=rss20

Friends Links Feed

The feed URL is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=your_facebook_id&key=your_friend_key&format=rss20

Friends List Feed

The feed URL is:

http://www.new.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=your_facebook_id&key=your_friend_key&format=rss20

How to update Twitter with your Facebook Status

Thanks to a tip from Chris Kettle, who runs  Australia’s leading online dining and entertianment guide, I did some investigating on Facebook users.

 Top 10 World Facebook Users

Top 10 World Facebook Users by country in 2008

The US leads by far in the number of Facebook users, but that’s to be expected given their huge population.  Myspace had 70m users in the US  in Dec 07, but I am still trying to get a more recent figure.  The surprise for me was Turkey, who knew Facebook was so popular there!  Australia currently sits in seventh place with almost 4million users (1).

Australian Facebook Users

Top Australian City Facebook Users in 2008

% of Facebook users by city population in Australia, 2008

Using ABS statistics, I worked out a rough estimate of Facebook users as a % of population.  It seems Brisbane is a Facebook town, with the highest % of users at 32%.  Interesting Darwin’s usage was very low at only 3%.  Perhaps it’s just that no one in Darwin wants to admit it!

Sources:

1 – Facebook | Advertising, Estimates taken on 19th of December 2008.

2 – 3218.0 – Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2006-07″. Australian Bureau of Statistics, via Wikipedia: List of cities in Australia by population

Disclaimer

All numbers are estimates only.  All statistics from Facebook were taken on the 19th of December 2008.  Facebook users as a % of population calculated by:

total number of Facebook users listed in the city  (Source 1)

city population estimate (Source 2)

Following on from my post on the Are Social Networks the new Portals? Friendster vs MySpace vs Bebo,  I wanted to find out more about Facebook, the obvious omission from the recent Online social networking and business collaboration conference.  Facebook is now the biggest social network in Australia*.  Currently Facebook has almost 2.5million users in the Australia network:

Facebook Australia Network Users in Dec 17, 2008

Not everyone is a member of the Australia network (I jump in and out myself) so you can safely say there are more members than this.  I was unable to find out the current membership of Myspace, Bebo and Friendster, however I asked my friends at Hitwise for some stats on the Social Networks in the APAC region.  They make interesting food for thought.

Facebook was number 2 in most countries in January 2008*

Hitwise Social Network Market Share Statistics, January 2008

Facebook now leads in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore*

Hitwise Social Network Market Share Statistics, September 2008

Facebook has gained market share in all markets, and at the expense of all their closest rivals.  It will be interesting to see if Facebook can maintain or even increase their lead, given their competitors have all shrunk over the last 9 months. 

Also, Facebook is now hiring for a sales team on the ground in Australia.  I wonder if  this will help or hinder their Aussie domination of the Social Networking space?

* Source: Hitwise, Period January 2008, September 2008: Hitwise Customer Categories of leading 40 Social Networking websites.  You can download  Asia Pacific Social Networking Report 2008 from the Hitwise website.

Interesting Related Posts:

• Banning Facebook in the Office – does it impact productivity?
• Facebook looks to hire Sydney ad sales team
• Australia OKs Facebook for serving lien notice

Update

I have done some research on Facebook users in the world, and in Australia.  Read about the Top 10 Facebook Countries | Top Australian Facebook Users 2008.

Friendster

Richard Kimber, CEO of Friendster kicked the morning off with some background on Friendster:

• Friendster is the biggest across Asia/SE Asia with over 62m registered users (Aug 08) and over 85m users worldwide (Aug 08).
• Friendster adds over 150,000 users every day.

He believes that  “social networks are the new portals” and ran through the following trends.

• 1 – Social Network are Media Platforms
• 2 – Further opening of social networks encourages more  developer programs
• 3 – Social networks as portals
• 4 – Mobile is a natural for social networking
• 5 – Advertising evolution on social networks
• 6 – Race is on for monetization

Richard  stressed the emotional links between people (friends and family)  as the success to social networks and that they are the ultimate UGC sites.

MySpace

This was a little disappointing as it appeared to be one big sales pitch.  Myspace makes lots of money ($850m in revenue last year) and this was to become the most important point of the whole presentation.  Rebecca Horne ran through how Myspace works,  how successful they have been and some demo and user info:

Age Demographics:

• 14-17 26%
• 18-24 39%
• 25-34 19%
• 35-49 11%
• 50+ 5%

Rush Hour

• Biggest usage is between 5-7pm, 68 % of usuage occurs in the evening.  This starts to alter the traditional media mx of everyone sitting down in front of the TV.

Myspaces’ biggest advantage was their ability to target users with advertising at a very granular level, age, interests, lifestyle etc,  and they believe “Hyper Targeting” will be the next big thing in advertising.

Surprisingly a swipe was taken at Facebook for their open user applications policy that supposedly began to annoy people.  Myspace didn’t.   I find it slightly amusing that Myspace try to claim the higher ground here, Pimp my Myspace profile anyone?

Bebo

Another sales pitch presentation, but full marks to Bebo General Manager,  Francisco Cordero for some great quotes:

• “Bebo is the Evolution of social networks”
• …in Ireland “Bebo is the closest thing to God”

Bebo focuses on the 13-24 market and Francisco ran through a few of their success stories, including Kate Modern (which I am finding myself strangely drawn to!).  Sponsors and advertisers are written into the script, so they become part of the contents, as opposed to sitting beside the content (eg Myspace).

Summary

Overall I was a little disappointed in the speakers because I don’t think they really catered to the audience.  Everyone there wanted to learn and exchange information on how to use social networks to help their business or to aid business collaboration.  Unfortunately all we really got were 3 sales pitches.

I do agree with Richard Kimber that social networks are the new portals.  So far I have never found a portal that I really stuck to (I’ve tried them all – Ninemsn, Yahoo, iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes etc.), but I find myself going back to Facebook all the time.  (Facebook has been my SN of choice in 2008).

Do you think social networks are the new portals?

Other blogs from the event

Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World - Ross Dawson (Chair of the event)

Social Networking and Business Collaboration World – Day One - Jonathan Crossfield

I never really understood the point of twitter. Until I started using Facebook came addicted to updating my status. And then…. I final understood the meaning of Twitter! One of the great geek epiphanies.

But since I am not going to update both,  I set up a feed to automatically update Twitter from my Facebook status using Twitterfeed. It was very straightforward to set it up:

Edit: Updated with screen shots to help you find your way around

How to update Twitter with your Facebook Status

1. Set up an account on Twitterfeed. It uses the OpenID system so you can use an existing login from sites like Flickr, Blogger,Technorati and more, or just set up a new one.

2. Click “go to my twitter feeds (or create a new one)”.

3. Click “Create a new twitter feed”.

4. Grab your Facebook Status RSS feed location. The easiest way to do this on the new facebook is to login and go to this link – http://www.new.facebook.com/minifeed.php?filter=11 and then right click on My Status from the Subscribe to these Stories: menu and click copy link location.

Edit – this no longer seems to work for anyone anymore. To find your facebook status RSS URL, read Facebook RSS feeds – what is available?

5. Go back to Twitterfeed and enter your twitter username and password. Paste you RSS URL you just copied from facebook. Uncheck “Include item link (if unchecked, sends tweet without the link)”. There are a few other options you can play with.

6. Finally click “Create” and you are done! Twitterfeed will check for updates every hour (you can change to 30mins if you want). Be patient, I did find it took over an hour for the first tweet to happen. Your Twitterfeed page should look like this.

Twitter Followers

Download some great Twitter follow me badges here by Limeshot, just like the ones below: