Recruit using social networks: Facebook Focus

16. Feb, 2009 View Comments

In the next few posts we are going to focus on the social networking giant, Facebook – continuing our topic of recruiting using social networks.

Today we provide you with some very interesting official statistics regarding the network – from here we will start looking into the “to do’s” and “to do nots” of using the network from a recruitment perspective.

Like it or hate it, Facebook is here to stay.

The number of South Africans registered on facebook has now passed the 1 million mark, representing a total of more than 20% of SA’s online population and growing at an astonishing 33% every 6 months.

Big things are predicted for the social network in 2009, and this is one platform that you ignore at your own peril.

Facebook Statistics

General Growth

More than 175 million active users
More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
The fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older

User Engagement

Average user has 120 friends on the site
More than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 15 million users update their statuses at least once each day
More than 3.5 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications

More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 5 million videos uploaded each month
More than 24 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
More than 2 million events created each month
More than 20 million active user groups exist on the site

International Growth

More than 35 translations available on the site, with more than 60 in development
More than 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Platform

More than 660,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
More than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook Platform
140 new applications added per day
More than 95% of Facebook members have used at least one application built on Facebook Platform

Source – www.facebook.com

Next post we will delve deeper into the world of “Facebook Recruiting” – so stay tuned.