世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently, Macromill Research took a close look at the usage patterns of 500 Facebook users, a survey that revealed a number of interesting trends. As it’s quite a large survey, I’ll split it into two parts.

Demographics

Over the 16th and 17th of February 2012 500 members of the Macromill monitor group who were current users of Facebook completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.8% of the sample were male, 2.2% in their teens, 21.2% in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, 25.0% in their forties, and 21.0% aged fifty or older.

It’s funny, but true overall, I think, that food is the top subject for posts and likes! I recently witnessed on Google+ (I’m not active at all on Facebook) a naturalised Japanese friend of mine post what I thought looked like quite an ordinary meal, but it managed about 12 +1s (likes), and every single one of these was from a Japanese name!

Research results

Q1: How do you have fun on Facebook? (Sample size=500, multiple answer)

	All	Male N=309	Female N=191
Checking what friends are doing	65.2%	59.5%	74.3%
Looking up old friends	54.8%	54.7%	55.0%
Posting what I’d doing myself	41.4%	36.9%	48.7%
Uploading photos	32.2%	28.5%	38.2%
Chatting to friends on Facebook	30.6%	26.5%	37.2%
Looking at famous people’s corporate fan pages	19.2%	19.7%	18.3%
Making my own information public	17.2%	16.5%	18.3%
Looking up overseas friends	16.4%	12.9%	22.0%
Looking for people with similar interests	16.0%	18.8%	11.5%
Increasing my circle of professional contacts	8.6%	12.3%	2.6%
Playing games	4.8%	5.2%	4.2%
Checking in my current location	3.8%	4.2%	3.1%
Making my own fan pages	2.0%	2.3%	1.6%
Other	5.4%	7.8%	1.6%

Compared with last year, activities in most categories have increased, except, curiously, looking for foreign friends, dropping from 30.0% last year to 16.4% this year.

There was also a breakdown by frequency of use for each category. One number that stood out was that under 1% of those who logged in once a day or less checked in with their physical location, but 13.4% of those logging on at least twice a day did.

Q2: When did you first register on Facebook? (Sample size=500)

2006 or earlier	1.6%
2007	1.8%
2008	4.2%
2009	6.6%
2010	15.2%
2011	56.0%
2012	14.6%

Q3: About how often do you log onto Facebook? (Sample size=500)

Twice a day or more	25.4%
Once a day	27.4%
Once every two or three days	14.2%
Once every four or five days	6.0%
Once a week	10.8%
Twice or thrice a month	7.8%
Once a month	5.2%
Less than that	3.2%

Since last year, the numbers logging in twice a day or more has tripled from 8.6%.

Q4: About how long do you spend on average on each session on Facebook? (Sample size=500)

Less than five minutes	12.8%
Five to ten minutes	19.0%
Ten to twenty minutes	32.2%
Twenty to thirty minutes	8.0%
Thirty minutes to one hour	20.0%
More than one hour	8.0%

That made for an average session on 19 minutes. Those in their twenties spend 23.6 minutes online, versus 14.1 minutes for those over fifty.

Q5: How many Facebook friends do you have? (Sample size=500)

None at all	12.4%
One to four	19.6%
Five to nine	12.8%
Ten to nineteen	14.6%
Twenty to twenty-nine	11.2%
Thirty to forty-nine	10.2%
Fifty to ninety-nine	10.2%
One hundred or more	9.0%

The average user had 34.3 friends; those in their twenties had 68.2, and the over fifties just 12.0. The average is up just under 10 friends since last year.

Q6: What sorts of emotions do you want to share on Facebook? (Sample size=500, multiple answer, top 10)

Rank		Percentage
1	Fun	43.8%
2	Sympathy, empathy	36.6%
3	Interesting	36.2%
4	Moving	35.8%
5	Joyful	33.8%
6	Surprising	19.6%
7	Lovely	16.2%
8	Regretful	12.4%
9	Failure	11.6%
10	Sadness	9.6%

Q7: What sorts of emotions in your friends’ posts make you want to press the ‘Like’ button? (Sample size=500, multiple answer, top 10)

Rank		Percentage
1	Sympathy, empathy	65.8%
2	Fun	50.6%
3	Interesting	47.2%
4	Moving	45.4%
5	Joyful	41.2%
6	Lovely	31.2%
7	Surprising	21.6%
8	Regretful	9.4%
9	Failure	7.4%
10	Sadness	7.2%

Q8: What sorts of contents do you share on Facebook? (Sample size=500, multiple answer, top 10)

Rank		Percentage
1	Food (cooking, restaurants, etc)	49.3%
2	Travel	46.6%
3	Random everyday stuff	44.2%
4	Street scenes, scenery	30.1%
5	Friends	27.2%
6	Music	24.8%
7	Pets	21.8%
8	Sports	21.2%
9	Family	20.6%
10	Children	19.7%

Q9: What sorts of contents in your friends’ make you want to press the ‘Like’ button? (Sample size=500, multiple answer, top 10)

Rank		Percentage
1	Food (cooking, restaurants, etc)	51.6%
2	Travel	49.9%
3	Random everyday stuff	45.3%
4	Children	38.8%
5	Friends	37.8%
6	Family	37.5%
7	Street scenes, scenery	36.0%
8	Pets	33.0
9	Sports	25.9%
10	Music	23.7%