Many Vietnamese fabook users are ready to "unfriend" people putting up negative status updates. — Photo congnghe247.info

HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — Facebook users in Viet Nam are likely to "unfriend" people putting up lots of meaningless status updates, a survey released last week by market research firm Epinion has found.

This was listed as the most common reason for turning friends into former friends, with 60 per cent of respondents saying they have done this to someone due to the constant annoyance of their meaningless posts.

The survey done in April of 1,000 respondents also said 54 per cent "unfriended" people because of negative status updates.

Other common reasons for jettisoning friends were too many unrelated tags (50 per cent), boastful updates, and game requests (both 49 per cent).

"The use of social media is expanding exponentially in Viet Nam with Facebook users doubling every year," research director Tran Lien Phuong said.

"This is causing a social phenomenon that we wanted to explore. We wanted to look at people's behavior on Facebook to see what people ‘Like' and what type of posts and behaviour causes ‘unfriending".

Of the country's 36 million internet users, almost 25 million are on Facebook, using it to stay in touch with friends, share their experiences, and market their businesses.

Of the 1,000 respondents, 97 per cent have a Facebook account.

The survey also looked further at users' behaviour related to the "Like" button.

Eighty three percent hit it for posts that are funny, while over three quarters indicated that they "Like" statuses about family and photos of their friends' children.

Around 58 per cent "Like" and support posts and statuses about volunteer and charity work.

Phuong said: "Through this survey, we found that, like in real life, people do not want to be bombarded with negativity or spammed with annoying content.

"If you send me a game request several times a day every day, chances are I will unfriend you on Facebook and in real life."

Respondents indicated that they like the ease of sharing news via social media compared to other forms, with 78 per cent saying it is their most common way for doing so.

Also ranking highly were email, which is the second most frequent method of sharing (44 per cent) news, followed by consumer and free messaging applications (like Viber, Skype, Zalo, Line; 21 per cent). — VNS