The buzz in Toronto this past week is all about Facebook – as of 2pm this afternoon, Toronto has 573,355 people in the Toronto, ON network on Facebook – that’s 11% of the population of the greater Toronto metro area (GTA) and is the largest regional network on Facebook by a significant margin.
Ryan Feeley has created a comparative table of major metros on his blog. To put this into perspective, Toronto has more Facebook members than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined (the combined population of those cities is almost 9 times the size of Toronto). This phenomenon extends beyond Toronto to the rest of Canada too – both Calgary and Montreal have 8% of their population on Facebook. It also extends beyond the major metropolitan regions to small towns across the entire country.
So, why are Torontonians (and the rest of Canadians) so addicted to Facebook? As reported in the local press, the Ontario government, concerned that its employees were spending too much time on the site, banned it from its office computers last week. Thousands of civil servants came to work only to find that Facebook had been blocked like porn.
CTV reported on the phenomenon – they theorized that its because there are 100,000 students across the key universities in the city. Nice try CTV – that’s not the answer.
A recent post on Facebook’s blog entitled “Oh Canada…” says, “There may not be one single reason why Facebook is so popular in Canada, but rather a combination of tipping-point factors that continue to make networks like Toronto so unique in terms of growth.” Canada has 2 million Facebookers which represents 10% of the Facebook universe.
Any insightful points of view?
David Feldt
image: MontanaRaven
Comments
Connections
This is similar to an ongoing conversation I’ve been having with my friends. I’m constantly amazed by the people that have been contacting me as well as those that I’ve found b/c of facebook. I’m talking grade school, childhood friends that lived on my street, college friends, former co-workers etc.. Being from Newfoundland, I decided that my future wasn’t there and moved to Toronto in search of opportunities more suited to what I wanted. Newfoundland has long experienced their younger generations leaving for greener pastures and more times than naught those greener pastures end up being the larger Canadian urban areas.
Email, Instant messenger and the like have made keeping in touch easier but with Facebook you don’t have blinders on. By that I mean you’re not performing a single action – you’re writing an email to said friend or conversing with them on IM. With Facebook, it’s a much more immersive experience, you get a feel for the person and how they’ve been doing. You can catch up on their vacation photos, see how fast their children are growing up or can share a laugh about something they thought was funny enough to post. Because of this I’ve found that I’ve been more inclined to write on a wall, send a message or even contact them in the “real world”.
Toronto as we all know is very multicultural city with people from all corners of the world. I guess what I’m trying to say is that people living somewhere they are not originally from, or if they’ve moved about a lot – these people are more inclined to want to catch up with old friends.
-PD
Interesting stats! I learned something today..thanks.
Doesn’t surprise me in the least. My fiancee lives there and I go to a lot of the Photoblogger events in TO (btw, that’s the other thing TO seems to have more of than anyone: photobloggers). All they talk about is Facebook and Flickr, but mainly Facebook.
It probably won’t last as, if I’m not mistaken, facebook is a relatively new phenomenon in Canada.
I think the same thing happened in the major U.S. college cities before students realized that facebook addiction was unhealthy!
I ask the same: Why is orkut so popular in Brazil?
There was a lot of press recently by the TDSB regarding students using a FB page to criticize and “bully” a principal and the Vice principal. There was talk of banning it to minors, which as we know once you say “you can’t” it just increasing the desire. WHile not banned to students, all municipal workers are now blocked from using.
It is only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve actually ventured onto Facebook. I was expecting it to be another MySpace but have found it to be a much more “grown-up” social networking site. There are still the silly/fun groups but there also seems to a lot more serious debate going on which may be the reason for more people using it. I’m not sure that explains the Toronto effect but that’s my take on FB….
David,
You might have seen my post on this previously…so many magic Hogtown bullets on this one…
http://buzzcanuck.typepad.com/agentwildfire/2007/04/facebook_toront.html
One thing that I didn’t notice on the first go around is that there is also a fair degree of non-Toronto-ites who shack up in the Toronto network (i.e. live in Cambridge) – likely not a huge effect and perhaps similar in other places (people in Peoria I imagine join Chicago) – still an amazing Canadian juggernaut
It’s cold here, not much else to do!
I am one of the addicted Torontonians and I know that for myself and the majority of my friends the reason we have all migrated to it is the ease of staying connected with friends and family across this large country.
As is the case with most of my friends I have gone to school in 3 provinces and lived in 5 cities in the past 10 years. Facebook allows me to stay connected and avoid unreal long distance bills. Canada is a very large and spread-out country, Facebook brings everyone that I want in my world to one place. It allows me to communicate to them as well as share pictures and more importantly – share experiences with everyone I care about.
I agree that most of the people who use the Toronto network live no where near Toronto. It seems to be the default Ontario network.