A Large-Scale Analysis of Facebook's User-Base and User Engagement Growth
A Large-Scale Analysis of Facebook's User-Base and User Engagement Growth
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DOI：
10.1109/access.2018.2885458
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发表时间：
2018-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Cuevas, Angel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mitike Kassa, Yonas;Cuevas, Ruben;Cuevas, Angel
了解用户群的演变以及在线服务的用户参与度不仅对服务运营商至关重要，而且对客户、投资者和用户也至关重要。虽然我们可以在 Twitter、MySpace 或 Google+ 等在线服务中找到解决此问题的研究成果，但目前最大的在线社交网络 Facebook 却缺少此类详细分析。本文首次对 Facebook 三年内的人口统计和地理构成、用户群演变以及用户参与度进行了详细研究。为此，我们实施了一种测量方法，利用 Facebook 的营销 API 来检索有关 230 个国家/地区 13 至 65 岁以上年龄组的总用户数和每日活跃用户数的实际信息。进行的分析表明，Facebook 仍在增长并在地域上扩张。此外，不同年龄组、性别和地理区域的增长模式也存在差异。特别是，从人口统计学的角度来看，Facebook 在青少年中的增长模式是最低的。基于性别的分析显示，男性的增长仍然高于女性的增长。我们的地理分析显示，虽然Facebook在西方国家增长较慢，但在主要位于非洲和中亚的发展中国家增长最快；分析这些国家的渗透率还表明，这些国家正处于 Facebook 渗透率的早期阶段。利用外部社会经济数据集，我们还表明，这种异质性增长可以通过互联网的可用性和访问、Facebook 的受欢迎程度以及与人口增长和性别不平等相关的因素等指标来表征。
Understanding the evolution of the user base as well as the user engagement of online services is critical not only for the service operators but also for customers, investors, and users. While we can find research works addressing this issue in online services, such as Twitter, MySpace, or Google+, such detailed analysis is missing for Facebook, which is currently the largest online social network. This paper presents the first detailed study on the demographic and geographic composition and evolution of the user base and user engagement in Facebook over a period of three years. To this end, we have implemented a measurement methodology that leverages the marketing API of Facebook to retrieve actual information about the number of total users and the number of daily active users across 230 countries and age groups ranging between 13 and 65+. The conducted analysis reveals that Facebook is still growing and geographically expanding. Moreover, the growth pattern is heterogeneous across age groups, genders, and geographical regions. In particular, from a demography perspective, Facebook shows the lowest growth pattern among adolescents. Gender-based analysis showed that growth among men is still higher than the growth in women. Our geographical analysis reveals that while Facebook growth is slower in western countries, it has the fastest growth in the developing countries mainly located in Africa and Central Asia; analyzing the penetration of these countries also shows that these countries are at earlier stages of Facebook penetration. Leveraging external socioeconomic datasets, we also showed that this heterogeneous growth can be characterized by indicators, such as availability and access to Internet, Facebook popularity, and factors related with population growth and gender inequality.