890 thousand Belarusians use both Facebook and VKontakte
The number of FB users has decreased by 30 thousands in six months and the number of VK users has increased by almost 400 thousands.
A bit more than half of Belarusians use the Internet nowadays. Only 30% out of the 4.3 millions are not registered in social networks. 62% use one of the two social media: the older people prefer Facebook and the younger ones – VK.
As Euroradio has found out, 890 thousand Belarusians are registered in both networks! The Russian social network has been ahead of its American prototype for half a year:
“The number of VK users has increased by almost 400 thousands in half a year. Compare it with FB that had 1 million 145 thousand Belarusian users in October and 1 million 115 thousands in February”, - says head of the project Gemius Belarus Mіhaіl Darashevіch.
According to www.socialbakers.com, 62% of Egyptian Internet users prefer Facebook. The number of FB and VK users in Belarus is the same! Nevertheless, Belarusians have not managed to achieve any social changes with the help of social networks. Mihail Darashevich agrees that the role of the Internet in colour revolutions is being exaggerated.
Twitter is one of the most dynamically developing new Belarusian media. According to experts, there were 17 thousand users on #twiby a year ago. And now...
“There are 339 thousand Twitter users in Belarus. It is 8% of Belarusian Internet users”, - continues Mihail Darashevich.
Every 27th Belarusian is registered on Twitter. And 57% of Belarusian Twitter users are women!
Almost half of #twiby users (49%) live in families of two. As soon as a child is born – Twitter gets abandoned. The number of users decreases to 18%. The situation on Facebook is very different! 29% of Facebook users are young families and 32% have one child.
However, the Belarusian social network “bSeti.by” that planned to have 1 million users by the New Year’s Day has failed:
“There was an artificial slowdown. People used to be able to register without any confirmation. I could simply enter any e-mail and a password and I got an account and I could work wonders! There were a lot of fakes and we cleaned them up. The registration started requiring confirmation by phone or e-mail. The rate slowed down a bit. We have 980 thousand users now. I think we will have 1 million in summer”, - says one of the co-founders of “vSeti.by” – Alyaksei Savik.
Livejournal is another Bynet outsider. It does resemble an abandoned island where people used to live not so long ago.
Mihail Darashevich: “In my opinion, it is dying slowly. I used to read my friend list 3 or 4 times a day and now I do it only once a day. At the same time, the number of Livejournal users has not changed much. 16-18% of Belarusian Internet users are still using it”.
The phenomenon of Bynet is the interweaving of social media. Almost 90% of Twitter users also use VKontakte and almost ¾ of them also have active Facebook accounts. Links to interesting videos shared by Belarusians on Twitter appear in others social networks. By the way, Mihail Darashevich advises not focusing only on BF or VK and paying attention to new growing media.
“The Latvian network ask.fm is growing. It reminds me of children’s diaries. Someone writes a question and gives the sheet to classmates who answer it. This is a youth network and there are many provincial Belarusian users on it. It has a good trend of development”.
Photo by: sanya-sim.
