Net Savvy

When my nephew got engaged, I knew it via his Facebook (I like the phrase 'I heard it on the grapevine' better, come to think of it). Of course we barraged his mother for not inviting, not calling, not.. not.. not.. Turned out she had very good reasons. Anyway.

I do not have an account on Facebook. But my 50-something year old sister has one and is so proud of it (she never lets us forget that). I told her she only signed up so that she can snoop on her daughter who is studying abroad (whom of course, is on Facebook).

Eirfan has an account. I occasionally would poke around the space looking at the list of his friends. What he writes (I am a concerned mother). I worry he might make friends with you-dont-know-who on the net. Or innocently reveals more information than he should. I never want to underestimate the harm that the net could wreak from crafty evil minds.

According to stats, Facebook is probably the most popular social networking site of all (58% of all social networking visits), next is MySpace (with 31%) (http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com/all_social_networking_statistics/).

Rank	Country	Number of Facebook users	%growth Jan 09 - Sep 09
1	USA	84,596,240	101.04%
2	UK	20,228,480	35.42%
3	Turkey	13,996,380	76.4%
4	Canada	12,667,220	16.62%
5	France	12,032,020	82.66%
6	Italy	10,903,620	95.21%
7	Indonesia	8,786,920	879.55%
8	Australia	6,591,640	52.23%
9	Colombia	6,488,200	78.60%
10	Spain	6,314,220	143.22%
11	Argentina	6,036,060	167.64%
12	Chile	5,465,740	31.61%
13	Philippines	4,832,040	1136.76%
14	Mexico	4,731,700	228.44%
15	Venezuela	4,223,740	125.36%
16	India	3,980,260	271.54%
17	Germany	3,875,800	208.71%
18	Malaysia	2,619,040	207.97%
19	Sweden	2,587,300	52.49%
20	Belgium	2,557,000	54.41%
21	Hong Kong	2,350,460	61.15%
22	Taiwan	2,257,340	1899.42%
23	Norway	2,193,820	50.66%
24	Denmark	2,100,840	18.27%
25	South Africa	1,899,600	106.43%
26	Egypt	1,896,120	130.51%
27	Greece	1,858,620	85.94%
28	Israel	1,782,700	106.95%
29	Singapore	1,650,660	123%
30	Switzerland	1,634,260	45.54%

Facebook usage statistics by country - top 30 countries - 10th Sep 09 (http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/09/facebook-usage-statistics-sep-09-huge.html)

Malaysia is 18th for Facebook although in terms of total population we are at the 46th place with a total of 25,869,719 people in the country. (My, we are ahead in social networking.)

So. Be careful.

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