Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Gothenburg and Facebook - what's up?

I just had a quick look at the regional/local statistics for Facebook in Sweden. To my surprise Gothenburg seems really underrepresented.And yes - I also used Gothenburg (and even Goteburg) as search terms - all gave a similar figure.

As a comparison - the same search for Stockholm returns more than 2.6 million people (far more than the official population in the region?) and for Malmö it returns 234 000 people.

The official population of Gothenburg is just above 500 000 individuals (Gothenburg is the 2nd largest city in Sweden).

How come? Any ideas? Could it be that:
  • People in Gothenburg doesn't use Facebook and social networking sites to a large extent?

  • Perhaps there's another social networking site which is large in Gothenburg?

  • People in Gothenburg would rather not state that they live in Gothenburg?

  • A slightly more technical possibility - Facebook uses, among other things, the user's IP address to decide the geographical location. Perhaps the Internet connections in Gothenburg are routed through Stockholm or some other place?
I'm stumped and surprised. What do you say? Do you have any Facebook friends from Gothenburg to ask..?

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4 Comments:

Blogger recruiting right said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

June 9, 2010 at 2:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting one. I did speak to Göteborgsvarvet about their Facebook fan page initiative and they noticed also that they had a strong Stockholm following on Facebook and that it was a great way to stay in touch with runners in the Stockholm area since they had other channels within which to meet the Gothenburg runners (runners evenings etc where people meet in person).
So, assuming Göteborgsvarvets research is accurate, then it doesn't sound like an IP address issue but something else.
Are people in Gothenburg more sociable in the real world that they don't see the need to socialize online?

Colm O'Callaghan, JG Communication

June 9, 2010 at 2:20 PM  
Blogger Johan Myrberger said...

Hi Colm,

interesting - but what did Göteborgsvarvet base their findings that they had "a strong Stockholm following" - if it was from the fan page stats it might be due to the same (strange) reason.

To me, at a 1st glance, it sounds more likely that their page should have a strong local (Gothenburgish) appeal.

I'm more and more leaning towards some IP mapping reason, but it would be interesting to find out...

June 10, 2010 at 11:14 PM  
Anonymous Andreas said...

If you search for users in "Göteborg", I'm sure you'll get much better user statistics.

January 15, 2011 at 12:04 AM  

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