Facebook users in Japan increasing, as does their addiction to the network

Despite Facebook’s overwhelming popularity in the rest of the world, its growth in Asia has been much slower. But things are definitely picking up now with Japan’s rate of adoption, only behind that of South Korea, expanding rapidly each year. From 2010 to 2011, the number of users jumped by 61.6%, up to 7.6 million, and by the end of 2012, estimates are at a 51.5% growth, with just under 12 million users in the country.

While the rate of growth continues to impress, Facebook users are expected to represent only 12% of internet users, and 9% of the total population in Japan by the end of the year. But there is one thing that the social network’s users in Japan can match with other countries, and that’s their addiction to the website. In February of this year, a Macromill survey of Facebook users in Japan worked out that 52.8% access the site every day, while more than 25% logged in at least twice or more a day. Last year’s survey showed that only 8.6% of the country’s users were signing in at least twice a day. 28% of users said they spend 30 minutes or more on Facebook each time use the network.

This is good news for Zuckerberg and his company, as Facebook has made worldwide expansion an important part of the network’s future, especially focusing on improvement in Japan. With Facebook’s recent IPO seeing lackluster results, cracking Japan’s market could prove to be very valuable. As Japan is very mobile-oriented, the main competition Facebook has is with mobile game networks like Gree and DeNA.