While one might argue that not everyone uses Facebook and not all beauty related talks take place in Facebook, it is still an interesting source of data with over 1.4 billion active users. As a data geek myself, I couldn’t wait to feast my eyes to the possibilities of what this information might be useful for. For a start, do you ever wonder what is the most popular beauty brands? Or what are the things people care about? Read on!
Earlier today I came across this article in the Verge magazine, about The Definitive List of What Everyone Likes on Facebook. They are also very kind to share the exhaustive list 282.001 interest items through the link you can find at their article.
The story is, just recently (Jan 2016) Facebook released their huge data of its users’ interests as part of their Audience Optimization. The idea is to help publishers target audience on Facebook based on their interests.
So the numbers displayed here in the article here is the total audience number for a certain word. I quote The Verge on Facebook’s explanation on how they get the data:
A Facebook spokesperson explained that interests are formulated algorithmically from popular Facebook open graph pages (the articles, music, and videos being shared), Facebook Ads tags, and other Facebook data sets.
This means that the numbers are not exclusive (a person could have multiple interests and talked about the same interests several times). But just let’s say people on Facebook are most likely to be interested in Facebook (the no. 1 item on the list) than “Citrus hybrids – food and drink” which has 0 audience on the list. (PS: Actually I was hoping twindly will make it in the list, well someday (and in the millions)!)
As a comparison, Facebook is number one in the interest list with 1.466.365.990 audience. This number is similar to Facebook’s monthly active users.
As Categories
Because Facebook is not really a category, I would say the first item here to compare beauty with is then the 2nd and 3rd interest list, which are technology and entertainment, respectively. Beauty comes at place 30. With the amount of interest are slightly more than half of that in Technology.
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Also an interesting fact: more people are interested in the “Rings of Saturn” (303.277.860 audience) than “Fragrance” (300.878.675 audience). Not sure if it’s the band or the actual ring.
Type of Items
This one certainly made me re-think our decision to postpone putting hair products in twindly. Again, a humbling reminder of just because I’m low maintenance for my hair, doesn’t mean everyone is. Heck, hair products came up as the items with the most audience. And 7 times more than lipsticks! Phew.
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Beauty Brands
I chose to include brands that’s only specific to beauty. Chanel and Dior, for example, have a lot of audience, but it’s then including both their fashion brands and beauty brands.
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It’s the top 20 list, and as you could see, the interest MAC Cosmetics is having, compared to other brands is twice from Estee Lauder Companies, and 3.5 times more than Benefit Cosmetics. MAC has really done a good job with their audience on Facebook for sure.
Another point I’d like to make is the brands from all over the world. Esmalte Colorama is a Brazilian brand, Arabian Oud is an exclusive fragrance brand. Maybelline seemed to have more localization strategy with its own local interests. On the graph you could see International and Brazil. There’s more on the list (Argentina, India, and so on).
Beauty Tutorials
I compared this with the size of interests of beauty salons, because that’s one of the place where you’re looking for professionals in the area. The audience size is really small in comparison. Either people are not as interested to tutorials or Facebook just is not a place to share that with all of your friends.
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I have to put in that interest about the dishwasher because it’s almost the similar size of “Beauty Tips”. Does people really talk as often about dishwashers than beauty tips? Come to think of it, maybe you bitch more about your malfunctioning dishwasher on Facebook rather than your crooked eyeliner beauty tips :D.
Bonus Fact
It’s quite random but I’ve heard so many quotes on “if trees have wifi, we’ll have so many more trees”. Let me say, that people are still more interested of tree than wifi!
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That’s all I could say for now! If this interests you or you’d like to know more about this, let me know! Write a comment here, ping me on twitter @astridparamita. I might do an infographic ;).
neat!
Thanks Joi!