Video: Five facts about e-commerce in the Middle East.
Adoption of social media is growing rapidly around the world. There are now 3.2 billion active social-media users, akin to 43 percent of the world's population, according to new data[1] from We Are Social. That's up from 30 percent just 12 months ago.
In the Middle East, nations such as Saudi Arabia and UAE are among the world's leading nations in terms of social-media growth and use, driven by smartphone ownership, high levels of internet penetration and a large, digitally-savvy youth population [2].
However, other nations in the region, especially those in North Africa, remain behind the global curve for social-media adoption; reflecting the diversity of digital experiences in this far-from homogeneous part of the world.
There are four Middle East countries in the top 5 nations globally for internet take-up. Image: Hootesuite/We Are Social
Messaging apps
As we've previously noted[3] on ZDNet, the Middle East has an uneasy relationship with many messaging services, like WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram.
The closed, encrypted nature of these networks, coupled with their video and text messaging functionality, has provoked a range of regulatory responses. In UAE, for example, video calls on WhatsApp, Snapchat, and FaceTime have historically been blocked[4], a move replicated, sometimes only temporarily[5], in other Middle East nations.
Despite this situation, research[6] from Northwestern University in Qatar shows that, for Arab nationals, WhatsApp is the region's most used social-media channel.
Notably, use of the app's group messaging [7] function has grown substantially in recent years, becoming a popular source[8]