News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Aug. 19, 2011: When it comes to social network site Facebook, more and more Caribbean nationals in the region are hopping on board, according to new data.
Internet World Statistics accessed by News Americas has revealed that almost 6 of the 11 million Caribbean nationals who are on the Internet are Facebook subscribers.
The latest data compiled by IWS from data tracked by Nielsen Online, and Facebook among other sources as of March 2011, reveal that there are 5,903,520 Caribbean nationals who are FB subscribers. Most are from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean with the Dominican Republic leading the way with a whopping 2.2 million while Puerto Rico was second with 1.4.
The third largest block or first for the English-speaking Caribbean was Jamaica with over 6000 thousand while Trinidad and Tobago came in fourth overall and second in the English-speaking region with over 400,000.
Haiti has over 200,000 nationals on FB while the Bahamas logged over 155,000; Guadeloupe, over 125,000; Martinique, almost 126,000 and Barbados just over 114,000.
Other English-speaking countries lagged way behind with St. Lucia showing over 48,000 people on FB while St. Vincent registered 40,000.
Research showed there are over 9,000 from the BVI; over 10,000 from the Turks & Caicos and almost 23,000 from Dominica.
St. Kitts showed just over 22,000 subscribers while Grenada has almost 30,000; Antigua a tad past 29,000 and the Cayman Islands’ inching to over 25,000.
But Anguilla took the record for the lowest number of users. There were only 6,100 FB users in Anguilla as of March, the lowest in the region, while only 8,340 are subscribed from the USVI, the second lowest tally.
Facebook was launched in February 2004 and today has more than 750 million active users. Facebook users must register before using the site. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. However, based on ConsumersReports.org on May 2011, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site’s terms.
