A recent study has showed that 41% of Internet users in Saudi Arabia are on Twitter social network, thus the Gulf state tops the world list of Twitter penetration as proportionate to the area and population.
According to the survey conducted by BI Intelligence, Saudi Arabia came in the first place worldwide in terms of the ratio of Twitter use, followed closely by Indonesia in the second place and the Philippines, which came third.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the United Arab Emirates ranked second in terms of the number of Twitter users with 1.7 million accounts, followed by Kuwait and Qatar ranked third and fourth, respectively.
Information security expert Ammar Mardawi, Executive Director of Kindi Company, attributed the rapid spread of Twitter in Saudi Arabia to three main reasons, most notably the availability of high-speed Internet and smart mobile devices. Smart phone penetration in the kingdom exceeds 72%, he noted. Secondly, the hot climate makes the Internet in general, and social networking sites in particular, a real resort for the youth. Third, a large group of journalists, intellectuals and athletes, as well as foreigners residing in the Kingdom, use Twitter network to communicate with each other and discuss various social and local issues and developments in the Arab world.
Mardawi added: “These factors and others have contributed to the creation of more than a million new accounts on Twitter during the past year alone. Perhaps we will witness a similar increase next year that will keep Saudi Arabia among the top countries in terms of Internet penetration.”
It should be noted that similar studies have confirmed earlier the rapid growth of web-based social communication platforms, especially Twitter, in Saudi Arabia, home of more than half of the active users in the region.
Mardawi predicted the Saudi presence on various social networking sites to enrich the Arabic content and increase its industry, especially as more than 90% of Saudis prefer to read and watch content in Arabic than in foreign languages, pointing out that more than 90 million video clips are viewed daily on YouTube in Saudi Arabia alone.
The IB Intelligence study also found that one-third of Internet users in India, or more than 36 million, use Twitter, making India the third largest Twitter market worldwide after the United States and China. In China, the most populous country in the world, there are 84.4 million Twitter users on, a relatively high figure considering that the network is officially banned in that country. However, Twitter penetration does not constitute a large percentage compared to the total number of Internet users in China.
