With around 82 million Facebook users and 5.8 mn active Twitter users in the Arab world today producing over 17 mn tweets/day, there is no doubt that Arabs do take social media seriously. Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG) conducted a research on the influence of social media on reforming and reshaping the delivery of government services, which revealed interesting information on the volume of social media participation in the Arab world.
Compared to the number of social media users in May 2013, the number of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn users have increased by 49%, 54% and 79% in 2014. With 22.4%, UAE tops the list in terms of LinkedIn penetration. Whereas Qatar seized first place in Facebook penetration with 61% of its population using Facebook, following by UAE with 58%, the research adds. Saudi Arabia on the other hand has 40% of Arab active Twitter users, Moreover, Kuwait is ranked first in terms of penetration rate with 11.4% of its population active on the microblogging platform.
The research adds that in March 2014, more than 533 mn tweets have been generated by users in the Arab region. Furthermore, the number of LinkedIn users in Arab countries increased from 4.7 mn to 8.4 mn during the past year. As for the fastest growing language on social media platform, Arabic language is second to none with 75% of total tweets generated in the region in March 2014 are in Arabic language.
