Social networking booms for online Thais

Social networking is booming here with hi5, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace and MyFriend the top five such websites.

Thais are spending more time online. Internet users on average now stay online more than 25 hours a week, up from 20 hours last year, according to the Internet User Profile of Thailand 2008 survey conducted by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre.

Significantly, 70 per cent of the respondents are members of social networks, with their own Web pages or Web logs.

The top five activities of social networking users are data and knowledge sharing, photo and video-clip sharing, online learning, finding new friends, and promoting hobbies or music.

Most of the people who tried social networking (79.3 per cent) thought that participating would bring them benefits such as accessing knowledge sources, enjoying freedom of expression, making friends and being able to do advertising and promotions.

High-speed Internet is the major channel, with 43.5 per cent using an ADSL service, and most having been broadband Internet users for at least one year.

The survey showed that almost half (46 per cent) had bought products from websites, a sharp increase from only 29 per cent in the survey last year.

The top five online products are books, reservations, films, clothes and accessories, and computer devices. The ranking is unchanged from last year.

And the same top five reasons this year and last year for avoiding e-commerce are: don't trust merchandisers, can't touch products, can't trust payment systems, find them too complicated, and don't want to reveal credit-card numbers.

Of the 14,809 responses received in August and September, most (90.8 per cent) had a computer at home, 57.6 per cent were women and 64.4 per cent were aged 20-39.

Most respondents (93 per cent) had been using the Internet for at least two years. Over half had a bachelor's or higher degree and more than half were working and living in greater Bangkok.