Professional contacts gain importance in social networks
Six out of ten Swiss internet users use social networks, which amounts to 3.7 million people aged 14 and older. About one million users use social networks for professional purposes, compared to only about 800,000 a year ago. These findings are based on the latest figures from the NET-Metrix-Base 2019-1 study on Internet usage in Switzerland.
The use of social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn by Swiss Internet users has increased from 58 percent to 60.6 percent compared to last year. Today, 3.7 million people in Switzerland use such platforms. The vast majority (69.7 percent) log on to social networks every day or almost every day, with some even doing so several times a day (42.2 percent).
Most social network users spend their time on these platforms for private purposes, reading and viewing other people's profiles and posts (74.3 percent) and sending and receiving personal messages (68.5 percent). Commenting on or liking posts is also very popular (62.8 percent).
However, social networks are also used for professional purposes by 27.9 percent of users. Although this is still a minority, this trend is steadily increasing. Professional use of social networks even boomed last year with a 25 percent increase from 836,000 to more than one million users. These users are mainly interested in profiles and posts from groups or organizations (61.8 percent), followed by profiles and posts from other people (57.3 percent).
The smartphone remains the preferred device for social networking
The vast majority of social network users access these platforms with a smartphone (78.7 percent), followed by laptops or desktops (57.5 percent) and tablets (34.2 percent). Internet-enabled TVs or smart TVs follow far behind, with only 2.5 percent of users occasionally using them to surf social networks.
