Another look at Philippine Facebook Stats

The last time we did an analysis of PH Facebook stats, the results appeared to surprise some who still believed that Friendster occupied the top dog position in the Philippines, as it still did for the first part of 2009. A quick glance at this Google Trends screenshot shows where things went horribly wrong for Friendster:

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In the Philippines, it’s Facebook vs. Friendster and Twitter vs. Plurk. Guess who wins?

Conventional wisdom, at least as far as the local Internet is concerned, would have it that the Philippines is something of an oddball oasis where localized tastes have catapulted obscure web players to top status, while global top dogs trail far behind. We inhabit an alternate universe. In DC Comic book terms, we are Earth-23 in the multiverse of realities. Or the bottled city of Kandor in the Fortress of Solitude.

Thus, Friendster and Multiply were considered the top names in social networking, while the Canada-based Plurk.com lorded it over the microblogging category. This was typical for the ASEAN region, particularly in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – the so-called “SIMP” countries.

In other words, Friendster was widely known to be #1, trumping Facebook. And anecdotally, Plurk was considered more popular than Twitter. This constituted conventional wisdom, and that notion has been challenged by new data.

The latest Alexa rankings for the top websites in the Philippines now show the following results for these specific players:

1. Facebook
3. Friendster
9. Multiply
11. Twitter
39. Plurk

Note that Facebook is not just the #1 social network, it is now listed as the #1 website in the Philippines, period.