Social Media in Suriname 2019

December 14, 2020

This article is part of Jean-luc van Charante’s annual research on the state of Social Media in Suriname. Research includes data from multiple publicly available sources and the advertising platforms of multiple Social Media platforms. Additional industry related comments are included to provide context and are based on observations in the field of Social Media in Suriname.

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The State of the Internet (Worldwide)

Internet is part of daily life. If you are under the age of 25, the World Wide Web has existed for as long as you live. Just a couple of quick facts about the current state of the internet:

We closed off 2018 with a total of 4.1 billion Internet users in the world*. That’s number has already grown to 4.4 billion*, which is well over half of the world population.
The internet penetration is the highest in North America (89%) and Europe (87%) and lowest in Africa, where only 37% of the population has access to the internet. While virtually everyone in Norway (99.2%) and Iceland (99%) has internet access, wheres only 1.3% of the population in Eritrea is connected.
When it comes to total users, China is the biggest internet user with over 800 million Internet users, of which 98% of its users are mobile users*.
With an estimation of close to 2 billion people expected to purchase something online in 2019, it is interesting to note that organizations and brands already spend more money on Internet Ads than on TV Ads.
With over 40% of the market, .com is currently the leading domain extension, with a free domain (.tk) taking the second spot with around 6.65%*.

Social Media in the world in 2019

When we look at the top 20 Social Networks as of April 2019 based on active users, a couple of things become immediately apparent:

Facebook Inc. rules the Social Media landscape. With 4 out of the top 6 platforms being owned by Facebook, we can say that are extremely dominant, which of course also partly explains the heat the have been getting concerning the privacy of their users.

YouTube remains Facebook biggest rival. Where Google has failed to find a way to create a new unique platform to compete with Facebook (their main Social brand, Google+, failed and was recently shut down), YouTube (acquired by Google back in 2006) has not only survived multiple attacks by Facebook to become the video platform of the Internet, it has sustained growth even though it had its own share of backlash in the past year.

With China having the most internet users in the world, Tencent is not to be underestimated. The Social Media giant owns WeChat, Qzone and QQ, all top 10 platforms which have more users than any none Facebook/Google owned platform.

Douyin (more widely known as TikTok) is the only dual app on the list, having a version of the app inside and outside of China. The developing company ByteDance, purchased Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with TikTok a year later, to reach a broader audience outside of China, especially in the US. With almost 40% of its users under the age of 20, TikTok has been one of the most downloaded Social apps in 2018 and has taken a large share of the Teenage users of Facebook, Tencent and not surprisingly Snapchat, whose employees have been actively approached to work for TikTok.

While still with hundreds of Millions active users, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest are no longer near the top 10 Social Networks when it come to active monthly users, taking seat in the lower part of the top 20.

Also interesting to note is the 40% of the top 20 Social Networks are actually messenger or Voip services, which are networks where the focus is more on a private connection and communication with 2 or more users.

*Social Media World Wide Active Users. (Source: Statista – www.statista.com)*

Social Media in Suriname

Now that you are up to date on how Social Media flows through the world, what is the current state of Social Media in Suriname?

Have we reached the end of Facebook’s and Instagram’s Growth in Suriname?

When looking at the numbers it is easy to suggest that the growth of both Facebook and Instagram has finally come to an end in Suriname. When comparing to statistics from June 2019 with previous years, we see our first drops in users since we started keeping track of Facebook’s growth in 2013. The drop can be explained partially by Facebook latest effort to delete many fake accounts on their platforms.

*Facebook Instagram Stats Suriname 2019*

As Facebook has deleted millions (or even billions) of Facebook accounts in the past 6 months, at least 20.000 Surinamese Facebook accounts were deleted in the past couple of months. The drop also brings the total amount of Instagram (officially a Facebook platform) accounts in Suriname under the 100.000 accounts, where it hadn’t been since 2017.However, the fake accounts isn’t the only thing keeping these two Social Media platforms from growing. For the past two years, we’ve also seen a drop in teenage Surinamese Facebook and Instagram accounts. Trying to reach the youngsters (aged 13-17) on Facebook and Instagram will continue to become more difficult as they belong to a generation that knows how to block advertisers from reaching their profile with ads, like changing their location on their profiles for fun (or on purpose) and has moved towards more private Social Media platforms. Surinamese teens could very well be following international trends, sometimes meaning they’ve decided to log off completely. Previous local research suggested that many Surinamese teens still use Snapchat and both TikTok and Youtube get a lot of young viewers and users.

The rise of Video and Influencers

Remember how every child in the 90s wanted to become the next Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington or Julia Roberts? Many youngsters now are looking to become the next PewDiePie, David Dobrik or Ryan ToysReview, just to name a few. Just like sponsor deals for actors in the past, online influencers are slowly getting more mainstream publicity and are being recognized as ambassadors for social savvy companies that use YouTubers and other online celebrities to reach their audience.In the past year, several Surinamese companies have acknowledged that Instagram and YouTube are being ruled by influencers, leading to Influencers promoting products on Facebook and Instagram, Branded Music Videos and even viral posts resulting to TV Commercials. Make Up Artist and Vlogger Thirza King landed an influencer deal with KLM and has grown her YouTube following by over 10.000 subscribers in the past 12 months. Online Comedian Fewiejj has even grown quicker, growing his audience to over 25.000 subscribers of which over 15.000 coming in the past year. Together with Psikovich, Fewiejj hosts ‘De leukste school van Su’, currently the most popular Surinamese show on YouTube, which albeit being a TV show, has over 500.000 combined views on all episodes on YouTube in the past 4 months. Several other Surinamese YouTubers have grown with over 10.000 subscribers on YouTube and have joined the 20.000+ YouTube Subscribers club, a subscriber total that would make many corporate brands in Suriname jealous.

The growth of professional Social Media

While Facebook and Instagram has reached their peak in Suriname when it comes to total users, LinkedIn has been steadily growing and has emerged as Social Media channel that no longer gets ignored among most professionals in Suriname.

LinkedIn, that passed the 60.000 users mark in Suriname last year, currently lists 67.000 Surinamese accounts to be reached through advertising on their platform, which equals a growth of around 10% since May 2018. While several Surinamese companies have been successful in creating engagement within the local community and through job listings, LinkedIn’s use in Suriname has shown the strength of personal accounts representing their companies, which leads to exposure and interaction with both the Surinamese community on LinkedIn and industry connections outside of the country as well.

*The response to Staatsolie CEO Rudolf Elias’ near-shore announcement.*

Additional Research

To get a better feel of Social Media, Ineffable has started taking several random samples of different target audiences throughout the year to get a better feel of the use of platforms that don’t provide data for Suriname. The main reason being that Social Media platforms like Pinterest and Snapchat don’t provide data for Suriname. In June 2018, during a guest lecture at FHR School of Business 47 student were asked about their Social Media use.

FHR Research 2018 — Social Media use by FHR Students (IB-CM-MM). Google+ data has been redacted.

Keeping in mind that this was a very selective group of students, this data can’t be used to represent all different audiences, but gives some insights to the use of ages 21-35. The research also focuses mainly on having an account and daily usage, with no data on monthly use, the category most researches use for comparison. Most notable conclusions were that these students are rather active on Social Media (at least 40% of the students had an account on all major platforms) and both YouTube and Whatsapp are being used by all respondents.

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