Social media in Iran, Instagram, Telegram and Twitter
Iran’s population is 80 million. According to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology of Iran statistics, cellphone penetration rate was 110% by the end of 2017. There are over 53 million people connected to the internet via cell phone. Also, there are another 11 million users of the internet through cable connections. Statistics suggest that the number of internet users in 2017 increased by 53% in comparison with 2016. The internet is now an inevitable part of each and every Iranian individual and many big start-ups are run within this space (more).
What absorbs Iranians’ attention the most amongst all these, is social networks. For instance, in 2017, the number of Instagram users in Iran grew by 135% compared to the last year. We will introduce you to the most popular social networks in Iran, in what follows. This article helps you to get to know commercial and marketing features of social networks in Iran.
Instagram is the most popular social media in Iran. According to “Digital 2018“, published by We Are Social and Hootsuite, there are over 24 million Iranian users of Instagram. Iran takes the 7th place in the list of active users of Instagram in the world. Instagram penetration rate is 29% in Iran.
The main reason for Instagram’s popularity, probably is that people can watch a much better lifestyle in it. Radio and TV in Iran are owned and managed by the government, therefore, there is no private TV channel. Radio and TV put all their effort to advertise a religious lifestyle that is close to the government’s will. This approach has led to single-minded programs leading to a huge proportion of society not being interested. That’s why this media has lost its audience in the last decade.
After Instagram appeared, people could watch their uncensored interests. For example, people can share their videos of parties where men and women dance and interested viewers can watch such content while this is highly forbidden on Iranian national television. Therefore, the more national TV ignored people’s interests, the more Instagram produced such content and attracted more and more users. The rate of Iranian users of Instagram was so remarkable that “Digital 2018” reported it was 135%.
Most Instagram followers belong to celebrities like actors, singers, and soccer players. Mahnaz Afshar, Iranian actress, with 7.5 million followers has the most followers among Iranian Instagram accounts. From the top 20 popular Iranian pages, 12 go to actors and actresses, 5 go to singers and 2 go to soccer players.
Most of Instagram content is produced by influencers. Iranian influencers are categorized into several groups, the most important of which is Iranian comedians. Iranian comedians are mostly young boys who produce creative or comic videos. Comedians produce the most content on Instagram. Some most famous comedians are as follows:
@mohamadaminkarimpor @erfanalirezai @iz.mohsen
What attracts attention the most on Instagram in Iran is a tendency to the luxury lifestyle. This makes Instagram a suitable space to advertise businesses and brands. Instagram ads are significantly more inexpensive compared to TV commercials and environmental advertisement. Another advantage to the Instagram advertisement is that target society is more easily accessible.
Is Instagram effective? To answer this question, I say yes! The massive number of offers sent to influencers shows that different companies are happy with their activity on Instagram. Moreover, there are companies that were born in the last 2 years tending to administrate Instagram. This means Instagram advertisement is greatly needed and different businesses find this social media a suitable means of communicating with their clients.
Many businesses were born within Instagram in Iran. A lot of people making handicrafts, organic agricultural products (in small scale), etc. sell their products through Instagram. Also, due to the absence Iranian well-known brands on Instagram, some dealers buy a product from their foreign peers and deliver the purchases to their original buyers inside Iran.
Instagram users in Iran don’t welcome political or religious debates. People mainly talk about travel or luxury lifestyle. This theme has always been on Instagram in Iran. For example, during the January 2018 protests in Iran, Instagram dominating contents remained the same items mentioned above, not political protests.
Almost all foreign companies and sports clubs do not have Persian page on Instagram. But there are tons of fake pages in their names. For example, there is no Persian account for Real Madrid but there are 30 Persian pages on Instagram in its name. The number of people following only 5 of them is 1.5 million. This shows that the official presence of foreign clubs on Instagram with Persian pages will be greatly welcomed. This is an eye-catching opportunity for every business.
Telegram
According to telegram-region.com the number of telegram users in Iran exceeds 40 million. Telegram is a messaging application. But after they added “Groups” and “Channels” feature, it turned to be one of the most popular social networks between Iranians. Before Telegram, the messaging application Viber was common between Iranians. But after Telegram came to play, all Viber users moved to Telegram, all of a sudden. The migration of users to Telegram was weird. The main reason could be censorship and banning common messaging and social networks. At the time when Telegram was launched, applications Viber, WhatsApp, WeChat and also Facebook and Facebook messenger were banned. This led users to Telegram.
First, governmental organizations did not ban Telegram. On the contrary, they use that as their official public relation messenger. This made Telegram even more well-known in Iran. But after January 2018 protest in Iran, rumors on banning Telegram went around. Eventually, in May 2018, Telegram was banned on the conservative-led judiciary orders. The main reason for banning Telegram that was mentioned by the government was that the Telegram database is not in Iran and this facilitates spies’ job against Iran.
After banning Telegram, people kept using it (through anti-censor apps). A national-scale survey carried out by ISPA[1] in June 2018 demonstrated that over 80% of Telegram users kept using it after it had been banned. In other words, statistics on Telegram tell that banning this application in Iran met failure. But this is the question, “Why Iranians stick to Telegram”?
The main reason why Telegram is so common in Iran is its user-friendly interface. All age ranges from teenagers to the elderly use it. Different-scale businesses, public relations, governmental and non-governmental organizations use it. This provides accessibility to whatever is needed by users.
Another reason for its popularity is Telegram features. Telegram works as a messaging, blogging, online shopping, broadcasting, and advertising application. On the other hand, this ability to form groups and create channels has successfully replaced Facebook groups. So, Iranian users create their family, friends or colleagues’ groups on this social media while there is no need for Facebook to communicate with only specific individuals.
Users also use it as cloud data storage and do their routines, relying on it. For example, when they need to print a file, share it with others or scan their documents to send to organizations, they save them all on Telegram and also share them using it.
Telegram security is another reason for its great importance. Although WhatsApp implements end-to-end encryption system, Telegram is safer. Iranian users believe that Telegram does not sell their private information to the government.
All these reasons have encouraged Iranians to keep using this application in spite of being banned.
The most popular channels on Farsi Telegram can be found using the data on tkanal.ir, From the top 20 most popular Persian channels, 6 go to the news, 6 go to entertainment, 3 go to sports, 2 go to music and 3 go to miscellaneous. Producing content on Telegram mainly comes to happen by copying content from other social media. Most of the Telegram content is excerpted from Twitter, YouTube, Aparat (more) or other blogs.
Like other social networks, Telegram is a perfect means of advertisement. Many companies or start-ups advertise their products or services through Telegram. Greatly-viewed channels are proper spaces to do advertisement. There are over 30 channels on Farsi Telegram with more than 1 million members. This helps different businesses to advertise within their desired community
There is no accurate estimation of the number of active Iranian users of Twitter. But according to Iran ICT minister, there are approximately 45 million users of social media in Iran, Also, the information on the website Stat Counter shows that in June 2018, over 12% of Iranian users use Twitter. In other words, it can be estimated that about 5.5 million Iranians use Twitter. There are other estimates that say Iranian Twitter users are about less than 1.5 million.
Twitter can be named as the most important social media in Iran. Twitter is highly effective on Iran’s political atmosphere and society. This social media first came to play in the 2009 Iranian presidential election. At the time, severe protests occurred after the election. Protesters rushed into the streets as a sign of objection against the election result. And the government fought with them. Ever since Twitter became the social media through which people posted their fight scenes against the government. At the time, people used Twitter so much that Twitter (according to Alexa) climbed to be in top 5 most visited sites by Iranians. This caused the government to ban many social networks including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Maybe this background caused Twitter to be the most political Iranian social media. Most journalists, political and social activists, civil rights activists and governmental authorities have accounts on Twitter. These people mainly post political content and use this media as their broadcasting system. Generally, Twitter is formed by the elite minority of Iranian society.
Unlike Instagram and Telegram, there aren’t fake pages for every celebrity. But what attracts your attention most is the majority of users are known by nicknames and in many cases, they troll infamous individuals because it could get really costly to oppose against the government with their real names, so they hide behind masks of nicknames.
Another feature of Twitter for Persian users is lack of advertisement on it. Unlike Instagram and Telegram that are commonly used to advertise goods or services, almost no users promote their products or companies on Farsi Twitter. Although a few companies have accounts on Twitter and they use this social media to promote themselves on the internet. As mentioned before, the elite minority of the society forms Farsi Twitter so creating appropriate content is the best way to promote your business on Twitter. As a prime example, Gorji Biscuit Company has absorbed a lot of attention by posting attractive content on its Twitter.
On the other hand, foreign companies scarcely use Farsi Twitter. Their presence on Farsi Twitter can be a big step towards attracting Iranian clients. Since Farsi Twitter is a source of creating original content for other social media, promoting on Farsi Twitter means promoting on all other social media. A prime example of foreign presence on Farsi Twitter is AS Roma that ran its official Farsi Twitter in April 2018. This account now has 14K followers and is very popular among Iranian users. An AS Roma authority in an interview with BBC stated that their Farsi account on Twitter was welcomed better than any other accounts they have. This implies that the presence of foreign clubs will be warmly welcomed on Farsi Twitter.
Facebook and Viber; the great forgotten
Between 2000 and 2010, Yahoo messenger was the most popular and the only application used by Iranians. It was the entry that let Iranians into social media and messengers’ world. People mainly used it to chat or making friends. Yahoo messenger did not penetrate into the society as deeply and then was not very effective on people. Unlike Instagram and Telegram that today overshadow people’s lives.
Since early 2007, Facebook was used by Persian Users as social media. At first, it became common between people who had relatives living abroad but then gradually spread out in the whole society. Iranians most commonly used it between 2008 and 2012.
Facebook was the first social media to affect Iranian society. The most important effect it had, dates back to 2009 Iranian presidential election when many protested against the election result and ran street protests. The protesters used Facebook as their exclusive communicational network to arrange the time and the location of the protests. Consecutively, Facebook was banned while the government stated the reason was protecting individuals’ privacy.
Since Facebook is banned in Iran and its services are banned inside the country, there is no accurate statistics on the number of its users at hand. But it is obvious that the number of its users dramatically fell. In 2015, Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance declared that around 4.5 million Iranians use Facebook.
Statistics on Internet World Stats says that in 2018, 40 million Iranians used Facebook. But this is incorrect because according to these statistics 1 Iranian out of 2 use this social media. Apparently, this cannot be true. Let’s assume there were 40 million Iranian accounts on Facebook, obviously, having an account on Facebook does not necessarily mean that it is active. Our observation depicts most former Facebook users have even forgotten their passwords. So Iranian’s activity on Facebook has significantly decreased.
All in all, it can be inducted that Facebook has lost its popularity between Iranians. This social media is literally forgotten that’s why companies and businesses no longer know Facebook as a suitable media to post their advertisement.
Viber used to be in the center of attention, as well as Facebook. But it lost its reputation just like Facebook did. Viber was banned by the government in 2014. According to the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance, around 10 million Iranians used Viber. After Viber was banned and Telegram appeared, the dominating majority of Iranian users moved to Telegram, all of a sudden.
[1] Iranian Students Polling Agency
