In recent years, Facebook has become a staple in the lives of Filipinos. Over time, online users in the country have definitely gone beyond posting OOTDs and connecting with loved ones using Facebook. The platform’s usage among Filipino online users has significantly expanded. What exactly are the ways in which Filipinos have expanded their use of Facebook?

The recent findings from Capstone Intel Corp., a high-impact research agency focusing on actionable intelligence, revealed that Facebook gathered the most engagements related to social media. The company’s use of social listening tools and artificial intelligence enables data gathering from more than 80 million publicly available Filipino Facebook accounts, providing valuable insights into recent social trends and patterns.

Going Live on Facebook

With the amount of time that Facebook has been present in the lives of Filipinos and on their cellular phones, it has become a source of a plethora of things for Filipinos. Its evolution is evident in its varied usage, ranging from content sharing and extensive engagement to facilitating income generation and online commerce. One of the up-and-coming SEA e-commerce trends engaged with by Filipinos can be found on the platform.

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A notable example of this evolution is the rising prominence of “facebooklive” as one of the most trending topics related to Facebook during the latter half of July 2023 (see Table 1). Ever since this feature was introduced, Filipinos have fully embraced this feature, using it extensively to capture events in real-time and enable synchronous interactions with online audiences. 47 percent of Facebook online sellers utilize Facebook Live in their commerce (Cahiles-Magkilat, 2023).

During the pandemic, the use of Facebook Live expanded beyond entertainment purposes, encompassing online masses, webinars, and game live streaming. Moreover, an ingenious practice emerged during this time called “live-selling.” Business owners ingeniously leveraged Facebook Live to showcase and sell products in real-time, providing customers with an interactive shopping experience and, concurrently, earning income despite being confined to their homes during the lockdown. As a result, next to Shopee and TikTok, Facebook places itself among the top three live-selling channels.

However, after having only taken off during the pandemic, fears were raised among live sellers when Meta announced the shutdown of Facebook’s Live Shopping feature. However, fears were quelled when Meta clarified that the shutdown did not affect the regular Facebook Live feature, which Filipinos had been using for live selling. Besides, the Live Shopping feature was never available in the Philippines to begin with. 

Compared to other areas of Southeast Asia, the Philippines hosts online entrepreneurs that conduct longer hours of daily live selling. Though the quick adaptation of this feature by Filipino retailers is remarkable, it is necessary to recognize that this is only one of the many other ways Filipinos have navigated through Facebook and its features. And Facebook isn’t the only place e-commerce thrives as online sellers in the Philippines are also known to use multiple platforms with live selling in order to gain a wider reach among shoppers in the online marketplace. Spaces online and through social media have evolved beyond the initial perceptions of their functions for communication and into the world of marketing tactics for e-commerce sellers. Filipinos can be expected to continue to skillfully navigate and utilize digital platforms such as Facebook as we have seen them do so in recent years.