Are There Really 200,000 Israelis on Facebook?

Like I've said before (in fact, even before a crowd of thousands, see photo), Jews love Facebook. I mean, it makes sense; it's Jewish geography writ large and global. And this month's news indicates that the number of Israelis on Facebook has doubled since October (not even a complete month ago). Is this possible? (See here for an interesting report on Israel-Facebook by the numbers.)

On November 25, VC/tech guru (and PICZ speaker) Jacob Ner-David noted on his blog that he was suspicious of the numbers:

As of yesterday (last I checked) there were over 200,000 Facebook members who identified themselves as originating in Israel, i.e. self-identifying as Israelis. That is a lot, especially given the fact that there are only 7.2 million citizens of Israel, according the Israel census bureau. If we take the numbers on face value, 2.7% of Israelis are members of Facebook. Remember, this in a country where a good 10% are ideologically opposed to the Internet. Are a lot of Israelis using Facebook? Yes. 200,000? No.

So where's the number coming from?

In a very interesting and thought-provoking post, Ner-David takes the discussion further, into issues of identity theft and being "friended" by Yasir Arafat, and why this might not be so good. In his conclusion, he also (I believe) becomes one of the first (if not the first) to call Jews "People of the [Face]Book," which you can likely rely on to pop up as a headline in every Jewish publication over the next millennium or so:

Because while the above examples are humorous, and we love to brag about the intense interest of Israelis in social networking (after all, we are the "people of the  [Face]Book"), very soon, if not already, we will see some bad stories, criminal uses of false Facebook identities, and worse. Lets hope that Mark and friends over at Facebook central will start to develop some controls in the system. Because if not pretty soon Facebook will become faceless.

Thoughts? I had some, and posted them as a comment on Ner-David's blog, reprinted here for your convenience:

 

"friending you" was likely the smartest thing that Yasir Arafat ever did, alive or not.

 

At least your "famous friends" are (or were at one point) real people. I keep getting "friended" by characters from Sex and the City.

 

But you raise some good points about the fluid nature of self-identified identity. Are we ever who we say we are? Or do other people determine the objective characteristics of our state of being? Is our self-perception ever objectively accurate? If we see ourselves as identified in some dual way with Israel and another country, is that misrepresentation our fault, or the fault of the stats gatherers who don't weed out people who self-identify with more than one modifier?

 

These sound like theoretical questions, but they're actually very practical in this day and age. And in online dating. Just saying.

Comments

[inhistwenties]

Israelis LOVE (and hate) the Facebbook.

Last week there was a huge spread in the newspaper about how to sign up, and it gave all kinds of rules about what to do, what apps to add, what to avoid, etc.

I personally have noticed the number of Israelis growing each time I'm on.

[Maya Norton]

Hi Esther,

Thanks for quoting me.

I think we also need to keep in mind that for many non-mainstream Facebook countries, many of its national networked users are expats or those living abroad.

For instance, when researching and reading articles from the blogosphere about Syria and Turkey, I found many people commenting that they used the said network to stay connected with home and connect with people from within their origin culture.

If we take into consideration Israelis living abroad (I don't have an exact number, do you?) and then add in Jews who have spent part of their lives in Israel and want to be connected, we see huge growth potential and at least a partial explanation for Facebook Israel's rapid advance beyond the number of Israel-based netizens.

A similar phenomenon is also evident on Palestinian networks where you see anyone who identifies as a Palestinian joining the hub. Because the technology integration of social networks in Muslim countries is lower, the numbers are smaller, but the principle of what is happening still closely parallels Jews joining Israel on Facebook.

Maya Norton

The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy

[Esther Kustanowitz]

I think that one of the interesting trends in today's modern, hyper-technological world, is that people identify with more than one cause or identity or nationality; it's the evolution of what we saw in the 80s and 90s with Zionists declaring things like "I live in NYC, but Israel is home." The neo-Zionist manifestation of this sentiment is--"I attend events in [any town I live in], but my home network is Israel."

This issue of multiple identities was discussed at the GA in one of the smaller sessions I was lucky enough to have been a part on, a salon on Jewish peoplehood, which I'll be writing up soon.