Perhaps the most important question for 2008 is: How many Nigerians Are on Facebook? Personally, I’ve been puzzled with news reports about Facebook scams that link to Nigeria. While this is a critical issue (and equally debatable), my concern here is tracking Facebook’s statictics as it relates to Nigerians.

Acoording to recent Facebook statistics, Facebook has more than 140 million active users as at 17th December 2008 with a growth rate of over 600,000 daily. The site has grown more than 130% from January 2008 which makes it the world’s largest social networking website.

Update

Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook

Faizbash reports that as at when he joined Facebook in November 2007, “there were less than 40,000 Nigerians on the network.” In May 2008, the number of Nigerian users reached 68,260 and two months later in July, 99,720 was recorded - a 46% increase.

By 30th December, 2008, Facebook Demographic Statistics show that 199,335 of facebook users are from Nigera, an average of 17% monthly increase. Today there are approximately 212,980 (still growing) Nigerians as shown by the Facebook SocialAd utility, marking a 432% increase.”

My question is: Do these numbers represent “active users” (users who signed in over the last 30 days)?

Faizbash predicts that “with this growth rate we should expect almost half a million (500, 000) Facebook users by the middle of 2009. The number might skyrocket beyond what we expect as mobile browsing becomes more popular in Nigeria which in turn mean more Internet users.

(I predict approximately 600,000 Nigerian Facebook active users by June 2009).

It is also interesting to note that Facebook has added Nigeria to the SocialAd utility since February 2008, and currently Nigeria is one of the 95 countries on the list.

But the question is: what do Nigerians use Facebook for? Is it just a place to connect with friends? Would it eventually become a useful tool for business? for education? for politics?

I think that Facebook is more than a social network (a place to meet people and join groups), as most people think. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg confirmed this in an interview with TIME last year. Here’s an excerpt below:

TIME: Why do you describe Facebook as a “social utility” rather than a “social network?”

Zuckerberg: I think there’s confusion around what the point of social networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social networks have different goals — some serve the function of business networking, some are media portals. What we’re trying to do is just make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information and share information. We always try to emphasize the utility component.

What Does This Mean for Nigeria?

That we should critically analyse our activities on Facebook to see how that plays in the Nigeria web industry. What impact is your involvement with Facebook with its groups, applications, etc having on the image and reputation of Nigerians and the web industry?

What effect should the Facebook utility have on Nigerian developers both home and abroad? And what impact would a Facebook Developers Garage for Nigeria have on the web industry?

I’ll appreciate your comments…