The FINANCIAL — The search for information is the primary reason for internet usage in Georgia, so revealed a recent survey by ACT Research based in Tbilisi.
Social networking was the clear leader a year ago – this was the reason for internet consumption of 41% of citizens while 20% were choosing to visit entertainment sites. However, today the major contingent of Tbilisi residents, namely 64%, uses the internet for the purpose of finding information. The number of respondents who use the internet for communication via social networks is 51%. By comparison, just 9% of the population uses the internet for work-related purposes.
ACT, the public opinion research and strategic consulting company, questioned 426 adult residents of Tbilisi on the basis of representative selection.
Giorgi Datukishvili, Dean at Caucasus School of Technologies (CST), said that the transfer of people’s internet activity from social networking to information surfing is a result of the fact that they have started differentiating between useful data and that which is less valuable. “Acquaintanceship was the main motivator of social network users; now less people are doing this. Many Georgian information portals have appeared on the internet in recent times. This has caused more users to become interested in this direction,” he said.
“New products are always interesting. As social networks were new and therefore more attractive last year than they are at present this explains the reduction in users today. We frequently see restrictions in the business environment that make users cancel their profiles on social networks. Social networks are used by a large number of people for finding out information. The location of a friend or acquaintance for example, their mood, what they are doing, and with whom, is also information. However, this sort of information is not particularly valuable. It is neither news nor cognitive,” Datukishvili said.
About a quarter (24%) of Georgia’s adult population is online every day; another 8% of the population are online at least once a week. In absolute numbers, this means that about 1.1 to 1.2 million Georgian adults are using the internet at least once a week; 2% – about 100,000 people – say that they access the internet at least once a month, according to the CRRC Caucasus Barometer survey, conducted in late 2012.
According to quintly.com, the number of active Facebook users in Georgia is 1,060,000. Quintly is the professional social media benchmarking and analytics solution to track and compare the performance of social media marketing activities.
The number of the world’s population that are active Facebook users is 992,192,000. This number is a little bit less than the population of India, the world’s second most populated country.
“It is popular to follow trends in Georgia. These fashionable trends extend to technologies too. Apple technologies are very trendy at the moment in Georgia. However, not all of its users use nor appreciate its many functions. For example, if we were to enquire about what the number of iphone 5 owners is that use the Siri application, the result would be less than 10%. Facebook is still trendy in Georgia and I think that it will remain at the peak of this popularity for a long time yet,” said Datukishvili.
The change in the internet consumption trend can been explained by Jaba Shavishvili, PR Consultant at PR and Marketing Communications company GEPRA, as due to the fact that in recent days the public has been inundated with coverage on political events and social activities.
“The country’s citizens have become more and more interested in these issues of late. At the same time, we can say that the information received via the internet has become increasingly more reliable to them than that which they might receive from the TV or other media sources. A common occurrence is people crosschecking information they have heard on the TV on their favourite websites,” said Shavishvili.
However, Shavishvili added that the level of social network usage has not decreased, despite the fact that it has not increased.
“The Facebook platform is very different from the other hitherto existing social networks. By offering a variety of additional functions or improving the existing ones on a monthly basis, its owners try to attract new customers and make existing customers spend more time on the site. Adding the hashtag function is a good example of this. It makes it easier for users to search for the topics of their interest, and communicate with like-minded people. Facebook is trying to master the functions of social networking and microblogging systems such as Twitter, Tumblr etc,” said Shavishvili, GEPRA.
Since 2013 has been reported largely from a socio-political point of view (considering it is election year), Shavishvili predicts that the existing trend is likely to continue. According to him, the main purposes of internet usage will remain searching for information and using social networking sites.
“It can be said that the Georgian web space is gradually improving and offering an alternative to political content. This is expressed from time to time in various internet projects. Unfortunately, due to a lack of funding these projects are mainly only short term ones. However, several of them have been in operation for a year now and are offering customers interesting materials of high quality. We hope that Georgian business will become more interested in investing in such projects and that the Georgian virtual space will gradually be updated with better quality content,” he added.
“Step by step users will move to internet usage for more cognitive reasons. At the same time the use of household plumbing facilities will increase in Georgia. Over the past few years many technologies have been introduced in Georgia, especially in Tbilisi. Electronic boards on bus stops are one such example,” Datukishvili, CST, told The FINANCIAL.
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