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how to find out how many facebook users each country has

Jill13 Comments

I’d been wondering how journalists find out how many Facebook users there are in Norway – well, turns out it’s really simple.

screenshot from facebook

  1. Log in to Facebook.
  2. Wait till you see a Flyer in the left column. Click “Create” underneath it.
  3. Down where it says “Who should see this Flyer?” you choose Norway – or whatever country you’re interested in – and it tells you how many people you’ll be targeting.
  4. Play with it to find out how many Conservative, Single, Norwegian women between 40 and 50 who are Students have Facebook profiles , for instance. Or select another country for new fun – did you know, for instance, that Facebook-users in Chicago are considerably more likely to be female than male? That 5000 Google employees and 10000 Microsoft employees are on Facebook? That 113,000 US Facebookers are majoring in English?

Dagbladet has done the not really very hard work of figuring out how large a proportion of the population is a member in various countries – and reports that Norway is the clear winner. About a fifth of the population is on Facebook. Good grief. Also, Alexa reports that Facebook is now the most popular site in Norway. Yep, more popular than Google or YouTube or any of the Norwegian sites.

Oh, I think Dagbladet got the idea from Kuttisme.no.
Update: Facebook changed their advertising system a little; now you click the link called “Advertisers” at the bottom of any Facebook page to get to this. Just pretend you’re creating an ad, same as described above.

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13 thoughts on “how to find out how many facebook users each country has”

  1. Luca Rossi

    thanks to @jill discovers how to investigate FB (http://tinyurl.com/yrmyac)

  2. arneolav

    Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but don’t you have to accept the membership in a network, such as the network you’re referring to called “Norway?” If this is true, the number of members does not say accurately how many Facebook members there are in Norway, just in the network called “Norway.” I vaguely remember choosing to enter this network when I created my account…

  3. Jill Walker Rettberg

    No, this appears to be measuring actual users in Norway (either by IP number or based on where you said you live, I don’t know) rather than members in the Norway network, which you do have to sign up for. There are only 412,476 members of the Norway network, which you have to sign up for explicitly.

  4. arneolav

    Oh, my bad. I guess I’ll stop responding to the invitations to groups that ask you to “join, so we can count how many Norwegian Facebook members there are,” then 🙂

  5. Luca

    I don’t know why but I can hardly trust those numbers. I’ve tried looking how many users like are are in FB (Italy, male, older than 27, university degree) and I get “less than 20″… well if that’s true half of these are in my office 🙂

  6. Jill Walker Rettberg

    Maybe they’re all lying about their age?

  7. jill/txt »

    […] Minnesota-based Viking Magazine is doing a short piece about Facebook’s popularity in Norway, and emailed to ask if I could answer some brief questions – of course I can. And so I had to go re-check how many Norwegians are currently on Facebook. Using the trusty old method of pretending I’m making an ad targeted to all Norwegians, I found that there are 1,042,240 Norwegians on Facebook. Or at least, there are 1,042,240 Facebook profiles claiming to be Norwegians – a few are probably fake. There are 4 721 600 people living in Norway, according to Statistics Norway. Some are temporary residents who might not brand themselves “Norwegian” on Facebook. Accepting these inaccuracies, that means that about 22% of the Norwegian population is on Facebook. Not a drastic rise since October, but still growing significantly. Filed under:General — Jill @ 18:10 [ ] […]

  8. 300.000 single nordmenn p?• Facebook « Colt Kommunikasjon

    […] Lurer du p?• hvordan man kan finne ut dette, f??lg Jill’s enkle Facebook-oppskrift. […]

  9. In Romania, Facebook creste ca Fat-Frumos : jurnalismonline.ro

    […] >> Iar de aici am aflat cum sa fac sa vad cati utilizatori de Facebook sunt la aceasta ora in Romania si in alte tari. […]

  10. 56k local FB users in Estonia? | www.argoideon.eu

    […] Burcher oma blogis ei kirjelda t?§pselt meetodit, kuidas kasutajate arvu riigiti m?µ?µdetakse, ent see k?§ib l?§bi FB reklaamitellimise liidese. Tundub, et tegu v?µib olla sama meetodiga, mida kirjeldatakse ?ºhes teises blogis siin. […]

  11. cmarine

    @ahiequeprende Aqui hay una forma de averiguar usuarios de Facebook, por si acaso necesitas el dato. http://jilltxt.net/?p=2146

  12. Michel Verwijmeren

    @MissduPon Is de volgende link misschien iets? http://jilltxt.net/?p=2146

  13. Andreas Beining

    @jilltxt takk for Facebook tipset! 2,401,140 mill nordmenn på Face er sykt mange! http://bit.ly/98aXIB

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