14 DAY TRIAL // Opera Mini is a very popular browser with feature phones and in places where connections are slow. Because all the data first passes through Opera's servers, where it's pre-processed and compressed, Opera Mini performs much better than a standard web browser on these devices.
It's precisely because all the data passes through Opera's servers that the company is able to offer a very accurate, albeit limited, view of the mobile web.
Opera focused on social networking usage and picked five top social networks that are very popular in some places or popular all over the world.
It's no surprise that the most popular is Facebook, the social network has a big presence virtually everywhere in the world, except China where it's blocked altogether.
That makes the fact that the top country to use Facebook in the world is Macau, technically a part of China, even more ironic. In Macau, 90.59 percent of Opera Mini users visited the site in October.
Note though that this percentage by itself doesn't mean much as it depends on the total number of users in that place and how representative it is for the entire population.
Other places with very high usage are Samoa, Monaco, Greenland and several African countries. In the US, the country with the most Facebook users in the world, just 49.54 percent of Opera Mini users visited the site.
More interesting are Twitter's numbers, the site was most popular in Paraguay where 15.75 percent of users visited at least once a month. Japan, a country where Twitter is very popular, came in second place with 14.94 percent of users visiting the site.
Again, there are some big caveats here. A lot more people have smartphones in Japan so a lot more people are using the Twitter mobile apps than in Paraguay. Opera's numbers are only representative for Opera Mini users.
