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.

Related Articles:

• My take on the Facebook Boycott
• Hey You, Join My Facebook Fan Page!
• Alexa Widget does not help Alexa Ranking – Proven

Filed Under: Internet, The Net - Comments: 20 Comments to Read


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