I’m back people and as I mentioned before, I would post on whether the facebook boycott went successful or at least according to what was planned. The main aim behind the boycott was the removal of those offensive pages, which went successful.

Other than that, the boycott was to come from a whole community rather than separated individuals. I’m not sure whether facebook was banned in other muslim countries or not but a big chunk of the muslim community took the initiative of not using facebook that day.

The biggest part of those who boycotted were pakistani muslims. The problem is that there isn’t really a way to check what happened to facebook in those 10 days (from 20th May to 30th May). Any inferences made from analytics programs like Alexa would be inaccurate.

However, considering that alexa is yet the only better check which can give us something on the least. As compared to compete or other open analytics programs. So, considering whatever proportion of muslims that use Alexa, below is the analysis.

Alexa has a small user  base as compared to the general internet population which would make the results extremely biased to the activities of that little ‘population’ of alexa toolbar users. When measuring things on a large scale, we do take random samples however this isn’t random either.

Most alexa users are avid internet users, people who are web 2.0 enthusiasts or webmasters and bloggers. If assumed that this is true, then we can directly deduce that  there are much (much) more webmasters and technology enthusiasts in the world west  (or east) of developing countries like Pakistan and other muslim countries.

Below is the demographic taken directly from alexa showing the distribution of it’s users over countries:

Hence, considering the data provided by alexa we cannot make a very justifiable conclusion. However, just for the sake of curiosity, we’ll put the data to use. So here it is:

• 0.9% of facebook’s users are pakistanis
• Facebook has over 400 million users *
• Therefore, there are 3.6 million pakistani facebook users (taking the minimum of total facebook users)
• 50% of facebook users login everyday (1.8 million users in pakistan’s case) *
• 1.8 million logins a day multiplied by 10 days, 18 million logins (the boycott lasted 10 days)
• Average pageviews per person on facebook are 13.46 (13.46 x 18 million = 242.28 million) **
• Assumed eCPM $1 (no data available on this)
• Therefore, $1 x 242,280,000 x 0.001 = $242,280

* = Source: Facebook statistics

** = Source: Alexa’s page about facebook

eCPM = Cost per a thousand impressions

So, according to the assumptions made and the available data, my approximate of the loss is near 0.24 million dollars for 10 days. Now, we’ll see whether this actually had a difference making impact on facebook overall.

Facebook’s revenue in 2008 was around $300 million, the most recent official data we have available would be of 2009. Facebook made around $550 million in 2009. So, we’ll take this figure into further calculation of the data. In this case:

• $550,000,000 in 365 days
• Average revenue of 10 days = (550000000 x 10 /365 = $15,068,493)
• Pakistan’s share of the revenue (242280 / 15068493 x 100 = 1.6%)

There you are, Pakistan has approximately 1.6% share of facebook’s revenue overall and resulted in a direct loss of $242,280 during the boycott according to our estimates. Please note, this is not the total loss that facebook beared during the boycott and only the loss resulting from the pakistani boycott not other muslim countries.

I’m uncertain as to how many other countries implemented a boycott on facebook nation-wide and how many muslims voluntarily joined the boycott. I’m sure, the overall figure would be more than the double of this because at least a million other muslims world-wide joined in the boycott and the eCPM in the western countries is much higher thus contributing to a bigger loss.

The following are the main variables which can alter the data if the assumptions made are invalid:

• eCPM: I assumed that the only revenue facebook has is that it get’s paid per a thousand impressions from it’s advertisers. They are also be operating a pay-per-click system, but we cannot be sure of the data for that, which is why I used the eCPM. Plus, I’ve assumed an eCPM of $1 which seems quite relevant to Pakistan’s case.
• Number of users: I’m 100% sure that the number of users does not include the facebook mobile users (which represnts 25% of facebook’s users). This would of course add to the total amount calculated, however, no data is available on that.

That’s it, if you’re a pakistani, now you can be a little sure that those days you spent without facebook were of some good. Resulting from the loss (or otherwise) facebook decided to take off the offensive pages.

All is good now, facebook has been open in pakistan for almost 2 weeks now and I’ve been using it ever since it opened. I just hope that facebook continues to co-operate with all portions of it’s user population and respects the interests of all.

I would love to hear to hear your comments on this, and please bear in mind that these figures are an approximate as well as an estimate. Any constructive criticism is most welcome and please consider to share this with your friends.

As you might be knowing that today we, the facebook muslim community have arranged an organised protest / boycott of facebook for not removing pages that we find offensive. This move has been taken on the page ‘Everybody draw Muhammad (S.A.W) on 20th May’.

This page was reported as abuse classified under hate speech on the first sight by almost any practising muslim who has respect for Islam, including me. We have been reporting this page since 2 weeks to be removed from facebook.

Despite thousands of reports from muslims and even some non-muslims who believed that this was hate speech against Islam, facebook took no action on this matter. That is when we, the facebook muslim community decided to boycott facebook on 20th May to show our strength and our disapproval of the highly offensive act of facebook by not removing those pages.

I am very grateful to the government of Pakistan and the high court who took this a step forward. Instead of us facebook users reminding each other to not use facebook on 20th May. The lahore high court decided to pass a ban on facebook following this incident till the date of 31st May pending action from facebook regarding all of those pages.

All internet service providers in Pakistan were notified on this and day before yesterday, facebook was completely blocked by all ISPs. This is the email I received from my ISP:

Dear Valued Customer,

Micronet has blocked access to www.facebook.com
in compliance with orders of Lahore High Court passed today.
Facebook has been holding a competition to draw caricatures
of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and has not removed the
objectionable hate materials despite thousands of emails
from Pakistani facebook community.

This access would remain block till 31 May 2010 or further
orders by the Lahore High Court.

Best Regards

I hold high gratitude for the high court for taking this step. Muslims have been representing a high proportion of the internet users since it’s very start contributing to almost more than 45% of facebook’s users. We are definitely a majority and we cannot have our interests and beliefs insulted like that.

Muslims have been contributing to the internet in all forms (me and my blog is an example) and we are a main reason why facebook is making a lot of money. Losing all the muslim users means losing approximately 45% of your revenue (considering the average revenue per facebook user.

Moreover, facebook is a large business corporation. Any rational business would create about even the slightest change in their revenues while 45% is big enough to bring it down from the peak to the bottom.

I will prove this when I write another post about this in a few days where I will show the loss of facebook’s internet users and possibly revenue generation for them. It will definitely teach facebook a big lesson.

Where this started?

This is the first thing that I researched when I took a notice of this highly offensive page and the event.

A cartoonist, molly norris, did not like the censorship given to a scene in an episode of south park which depicted Prohpet Muhammad (PBUH). She believed that this provided a wrong image to the people of USA.

She decided to give birth to the idea of this day be as a call to freedom of speech and protest against the censorship that was given. This led to the facebook page being created and the whole thing going viral.

It was further ignited from a youtube video by a user by the name of ‘thunderf00t’. This user posted a video by the name of ‘Islam Fail’. This was deemed as extremely offensive by all of the muslim community on youtube. The responses were obvious to be harsh. Then this user went on to support 20th May as a ‘Everybody draw Muhammad (S.A.W) day’. (Nauzubillah)

This originated the whole thing and has resulted in a complete ban on youtube in Pakistan as well as that video had also been reported as offensive on no subsequent action was taken on that matter.

I have also removed the link to my blog’s fan page on facebook. I wouldn’t want to use facebook again until facebook takes some kind of an action on this matter, because if we use facebook, we want our interests to be protected.

I was much busy with my studies, but this is a post that I just had to put on the blog because I couldn’t really keep this inside. This is a thing that everyone should know, whether they’re a muslim or a non-muslim.

If you’re a christian, jew, hindu or even an atheist. Think about this with an open mind and think for yourself whether or not this is a massacre on the name of humanity. Better classified as ‘genocide’ by many. If highly offending the believers of a religion and insulting it is classified as ‘freedom of speech’ by the big internet websites, then we refuse to ever use them again.