Why Mauritians Love Facebook

July 19th, 2010 10:31 am

Facebook is experiencing explosive growth among Mauritians. Every single friend of mine of Mauritian origin, anywhere in the world, is a Facebook user.

Total Number of Mauritians : 203,700 (110,520 people male 89,480 people female)
Relationship 59,840 single 6,920 engaged 23,700 in a relationship 23,960 married
Languages 176,360 English 26,520 French
Workplaces 340 works @ Air Mauritius 40 works @ The Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd

Of Facebook’s 500 million users, only 203,700 are in Mauritius. But consider the growth, and the context: There were only 57,330 users in 2009; this in a land where there’s little reliable Internet connection outside urban areas, and in which most computer users share a machine with several others. The number of Facebook users has more than doubled due largely to Facebook’s concentration on mobile phone applications.

But this story — and Facebook’s continued growth in Mauritius is not a prosaic one of devices, applications, and Internet penetration alone. It is about the Mauritian nature and temperament.

Facebook allows [Mauritians] to do two things they love:
Tell everyone what they are doing (fer palabes); and stick their noses into other people’s business (met néné dans zaffaire dimoune)

What accounts for its rapid success? We are not looking at how the social network works; we are trying to see why it strikes a chord with Mauritians, culturally.

Oh yes, it’s a youth thing. You won’t find too many of your parents’ generation posting pics here or changing a status message to talk about how the rose blooming in their garden has made them happy. Nope. They’ll still call you on the good old phone to tell you all that.

What perhaps triggers the younger Mauritians is the way in which it appeals to our strong sense of ‘staying connected’. We have been, since the days of yore, a gregarious community. Catching up with the neighbour for a cuppa, dropping in to say hi to a relative, and so on, come naturally to us. These are aspects we’ve never questioned, but always found comforting.

Over the years, we had other things fight for our time and mental space. Commuting hours between home and workplace, squeezing in an appointment at the dentist, planning the next holiday… and calling your friend was pushed to the next day.

Enter Facebook. And it appeals to this ‘keeping in touch’ streak in you. It’s easy, effortless. And it gives you a format to stay in touch. Newspapers in Mauritius are overwhelmingly heavily censored and mind-bogglingly dull. Facebook, whose censorship and limited free speech policies are the result of a profit-driven American internet startup rather than a repressive post-colonial dictatorship, is also turning into an unexpectedly fertile platform for free speech. Though these reasons are not specific to Mauritians, they certainly seem stronger here, thanks to our socio-cultural factors.

In a country where even chatting with a stranger on a bus happens spontaneously, it just takes a platform such as Facebook to tap into the need for staying connected online.

Girish says:

July 19, 2010 at 12:37 pm

With more than 200000 Mauritians on Facebook, how many on Twitter? And Foursquare? Only some figures to support the stated theory of Facebook penetration in Mauritius.
Adam Woozeer says:

July 19, 2010 at 1:06 pm

The title of the post is ‘Why Mauritians Love Facebook’ ; Facebook is by far the most popular site in Mauritius according to Alexa compared to location based services like Twitter and Foursquare.

Facebook : 203700
Twitter : 262
Foursquare : <25
Yashvin says:

July 19, 2010 at 4:59 pm

And what about hi5? Remember, it had its glory time too, until facebook overtook it, leaving it miles behind… Those days where you were required to write a testimonial to your friend or to “hi-five” him/her…

Facebook is on its way to become the internet itself… Photo albums, videos, contact list, events calendar, applications, games…. Name it, you will find it there, your favorite singer is there too, and perhaps your hair dresser too…

It is not only Mauritius, but the whole world is now addicted to Facebook…
Kevin Veerahoo says:

July 19, 2010 at 5:26 pm

Mauritians and Social Networks : Evolution

Mokamarade -> MySpace -> Hi5 -> KotZot -> Facebook

For me 200,000 mauritians are active internet users and will continue to grow as new facilities are being provided to enhance internet connectivity and buying laptops/pcs.
Fadil says:

July 20, 2010 at 9:09 am

Why Mauritians Love Facebook – Aside from the convenience factor, FB is very hip.

(blog issue: Why don’t you justify your text? it’s awful to read.)
Neelam says:

July 20, 2010 at 10:44 am

Hello adam ,
I am a student at the university of mauritius and my project is about social networks. Can you please provide me the source of the stats? and do you have a higher resolution for the picture?
Girish says:

July 20, 2010 at 11:35 am

@Adam You didn’t get my point. By comparing to other social media tools which are running successfully worldwide, to the Mauritian case, we can only conclude that though we have 13.8% of Mauritians on Facebook we are far from being a tech-savvy society where online facilities will complement of our daily life routines. Whats driving Mauritians on Facebook is indeed the fact that it is feeding a cultural necessity.
Adam Woozeer says:

July 21, 2010 at 12:21 am

@Fadil : ok ton

@Neelam : source for the infographic
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/04/23/africa-sent-more-new-users-to-facebook-in-march/
Found one with updated stats prior to post
http://www.facebakers.com/countries-with-facebook/MU/chart-interval-4

@Girish
Yes indeed. Makes perfectly sense to highlight we are NOT a tech-savvy society – Unless Mauritians are made aware of how they can access and use information in their daily lives, the significant proportion who are failing to realise the benefits of information technology will persist.
Vicky says:

July 23, 2010 at 6:39 pm

First of all excellent job on the generated stats but I do not understand why local start ups don’t have the same success compared to foreign sites. The Alexa stats reflects what I am on about.

How many mauritians social websites do you know that made it out there? Well the answer is 0
I believe we mauritians are bias when it comes to supporting our own kind. Nous content seki dehors , a cose li plis bon. this one of the reason i think start ups dont make it locally.

Coming back to Facebook , with growing concerns over privacy Issue, it wouldn’t be surprising to see, why people don’t trust the system they use daily. Moreover, Facebook appears to be more controlling over user’s profile and less sympathetic over its concerns. Even many Facebook users complain about too many Spam invitations in their Inbox as main reason for their enmity towards social media giant. We all dislike monopoly. So be it Microsoft or Google or nowadays Facebook, we don’t want to see them growing at cost of losing our own freedom of choosing. The similar analogy could be applied to Microsoft in earlier years. Although more than 95% of desktop computer users prefer MS Windows, they hardly trust the organization & its policy overall. Facebook is no exception!

About time we have our own twitter , own facebook , own EVERYTHING , I am not the one branding mauritius as a cyber island.

Vicky
Ismael Aboobakar says:

July 27, 2010 at 2:57 am

Facebook has half a billion users. That’s huge for a planet of less than 7 billion people. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous nation after China and India.

And people share a lot. Whole lives play out on Facebook. Births. Graduations. Marriage. Even divorce (seriously) !
Facebook is so popular that public figures have taken notice. President Barack Obama is credited with using the power of Facebook during his 2008 campaign. Even Pope Benedict has a profile — sharing updates in eight languages. For the Mauritian Election 2010 , one could not fail to see the effort and time political parties took to create groups and multiple profiles and it paid off for a certain political party. Overall apart from the privacy concerns even cool Mauritian has a facebook account and the numbers will keep growing.
Nussaibah says:

November 8, 2010 at 8:43 pm

The Facebook community amounts to 7.3+ %, so I’d say that 13.8% is a fine number. Human nature amounts to two things: self-worth and curiosity, and I’d say that we, Mauritians, definitely have both of them. Mauritians love Facebook for the same reason the rest of the world does; it allows a form of modern voyeurism which is legal.
Sandra in Mauritius says:

April 12, 2011 at 2:12 pm

Is this because there are so many Mauritians living abroad? I can’t imagine this need to stay connected on such a small island. I enjoyed FB very much a few years back but now it’s almost a chore. Most of my contacts do not post anything new these days and many have deactivated their accts.