District of Columbia Facebook statistics mystery solved!

District of Columbia Facebook statistics mystery solved! - article content

As we informed on our Facebakers.com Facebook page yesterday, District of Columbia on Facebook has about 1.67 million active users, but the population of DC is about 592 000 people. Where does the 277 % penetration of population appear? We've reached out to Facebook for comments, and here they are:

“The estimated figure is based on IP addresses and that the majority of people who may physically be in Washington D.C. may not actually be residents. They may be tourists, visiting politicians, students, working commuters from other cities, etc.”

Looking deeper into the fact and Googling some official and unofficial numbers:

“It's generally said that the population of DC doubles during a work day. There are about 500,000 residents of DC so that means somewhere in the neighborhood of a million people working in Washington, DC.”

“15 million people visit Washington, DC annually, generating $ 5.24 billion dollar in revenues.”
Source: Washington, DC Convention & Tourism Center website, www.washington.org 

Link: Wiki Answers

This means that any given month on Facebook, an additional 500 000 people every day viit DC to work there, and over 1 million users a month visit DC. Now considering that around 80% of them used Facebook, and that the statistics are counted as say an “Active 30” (monthly active users), which most Facebook statistics are, then of course, it is very well justified.

Well, the only thing that leaves us wondering a bit the wording in the Facebook Advertising tool, which says who live in DC, maybe in this case it should say live, work & travel.