Twitter use in the Arab Countries
Following a recent Arabian Bytes post looking at Facebook use in the Arab world, we have come across this rather nice infographic by Shusmo looking at Twitter use in the region:
Image source: Mashable
Created in March 2012 using data from a Dubai School of Government report on Arab Social Media, the infographic shows that there is total of 1,311,882 active Twitter users in the Arab world. KSA is the country with the highest proportion of Twitter users with 393,000 marked as active, followed by Kuwait with 235,000 and Egypt with 215,000 users.
Whilst Egypt is high on the overall user scale, the infographic actually shows that it has a comparatively low population penetration at 0.26% compared to counterparts Kuwait at 8.13% and Bahrain at 4.28%. Egypt’s population penetration is quite surprising given the supposed role social media played in the 2011 uprisings. This is found similarly in Syria’s 0.04% active Twitter use, placing them 15th out of the 22 Arab countries accounted for.
Lastly, the infographic shows that KSA is changing the fastest, with a 208.34% increase in active users between September 2011 – March 2012. With Kuwait fast chasing KSA’s tail and the ever evolving social media trends in the region, we look forward to seeing how these figures shape up over the next six months!