Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing Facebook markets in the world?  

As of 21 February 2013, 11.22 million (11,224,400) Vietnamese were on Facebook (FB).  That’s over a third of all Vietnamese online and 12% of the total population.  So while FB has been losing users worldwide as a result of “the ongoing cleanup of fake, spam, user-misclassified and duplicate accounts” (i.e., down from the 1 billion reached last October to 963,812,360 on the 21st), there has been spectacular user growth in some countries, including Vietnam.  Here are the top five (5) countries with the highest user growth rates: 

1. Brazil:  65,657,820   2.61%  (33% of the population.)
2. Philippines:  30,214,140  1.34%  (32%)
3. Vietnam: 10,965,880 3.62%  (12%)
4. Turkey:  32,260,920 1.16%  (44%)
5. Poland:  10,164,260 3.24%  (27%)

Over the past week alone, over a quarter of a million Vietnamese landed on planet Facebook (+2.33%), making Vietnam #2 after Egypt. 

Given the high and increasing level of Internet penetration, you can expect this growth to continue and everything that portends for communication, self-expression and commerce. 

Some Implications for Institutional Branding and Student Recruitment

1. Create fresh, appealing and up-to-date content for prospective international students (i.e., give them a reason to focus, if just for a moment). 
2. Create content in the target languages of your key markets.
3. Use FB for data mining purposes. 
4. Hire a social media staff member, full-time (expensive), part-time (less expensive) or as an intern (inexpensive or no expense). 
5. Ignore Facebook at your peril!   

MAA