02 Oct 14
Kosovars are the keenest internet users in the Balkans, in national percentage terms, a global survey of internet and Facebook penetration shows.

Sinisa Jakov Marusic
Skopje
BIRN

The Internet World Stat, a comprehensive survey of internet use, says that 76.6 per cent of the 1.8 million people in Kosovo used the net in 2013.

Kosovo is one of the few countries that is lacking data on Facebook usage, however.

Second in the Balkans in terms of internet use was Croatia, where 70.9 per cent of the population went online. This means 3.1 million people out of a population of 4.4 million. However, Croats do not seem that interested in Facebook, as "only" 1.6 million of them use it.

The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked third in the chart, as 67.9 per cent of them used the internet last year. In terms of numbers, that means 2.6 million citizens out of a population of 3.8 million. The number of Facebook users was 1.3 million which was again, half the total number of internet users.

Macedonia, where 62.2 per cent used the internet, was fourth on the list. About 1.3 million people out of 2.1 million used the net. A high proportion of them, 962,000, also used Facebook.

In Albania, internet usage reached 60.1 per cent. Some 1.8 million in the country of about 3 million people used the internet in 2013.  The number of Facebook users was almost 1.1 million.

The level of internet use in Serbia was 57 per cent, which meant 4.1 out of 7.2 million Serbs went online. The number of Facebook users was also relatively high in relation to all internet users, standing at 3.3 million.

In Montenegro, the rate of internet use was 56.8 per cent. Some 365,000 people out of a population of 650,000 people used the net and most of them, 306,000, also used Facebook.

Bulgaria, with a population of 6.9 million had an internet penetration rate of 53.2 per cent. This meant 3.6 million people used the net, while 2.5 million also had Facebook profiles.

Last on the list was Romania where the rate of internet penetration was 49.8 per cent. This meant that 10.8 million of a population of 21.7 million people used the net. Roughly half of them, 5.3 million, used Facebook.

Compared with European rates generally, where the rate of internet penetration in December 2013 was 68.8 per cent, Balkan countries ranked average to below average. The world average was considerably lower, standing at 39 per cent.

Leaders on the list of European countries were Iceland, where 96.5 per cent of the population went online, followed by Norway, with 95 per cent, and Sweden, with 94.8.

The European Union’s biggest countries, Germany, Britain and France, have internet usage rates of 86.2, 89.8 and 83.3 per cent respectively.

At the bottom of the European countries were Ukraine, where 41.8 per cent used the internet penetration and Turkey, where the figure was 46.3 per cent.