Israelis Can’t Get Enough Facebook

By Renee Ghert-Zand June 9, 2011

We all know that Israelis spend more time than the rest of us on certain things, like defending their country, starting cool hi-tech start-ups, and eating really good hummus. What we might not have guessed is that they also spend more time on social networking websites than we do.

According to a global survey conducted and released earlier this week by comScore, Inc., a source of digital market intelligence, Israel ranked highest in time spent per visitor on social networking sites, averaging 10.7 hours per person for the month of April. The average Israeli apparently socializes online far more than his American or Canadian counterpart, who logs only 5.2 and 6.4 hours per month, respectively. Russia came in second with 10.3 hours of social networking per visitor, followed by Argentina with 8.4 hours, Philippines with 7.9 hours and Turkey with 7.8 hours.

The Israeli business site Globes reported on the survey and postulated that had the study focused on users of specific social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, results would have shown even more activity on the part of Israelis (the comScore survey looked at all Internet subscribers in Israel).

Globes cited another survey from April that showed that weekly exposure of Facebook use in Israel grew 5.1%, bringing it up to 73% (second after Google’s 89%.) According to comScore, 3.4 million Israelis are on Facebook, the biggest social networking site in the world. In this regard, tiny Israel isn’t #1, but rather ranks 37th in the world. However, these 3.4 million constitute 46% of the Israeli population, a percentage not far behind that of Facebook users in the U.S. (48%).

Whether spending so much time on social networking is a good or a bad thing is debatable. But you can’t argue with the survey results, given that Israelis like to stay connected and always have something to say.

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