19% of New Facebook Fans Now Come From Mobile

Almost one in five new Facebook fans came from mobile devices in August, an increase of 280% in four months, according to a new research report.
PageLever looked at more than 500 Facebook Pages with 100,000 or more Facebook fans and found only 5% of new fans came from mobile in May, but that number jumped to 19% in August.

It’s unclear exactly what propelled the spike in activity. Facebook had 543 million mobile users in June and reported that the figure had passed 600 million in early October. One possible factor is Facebook’s introduction of a mobile advertising product in June. Some third-party studies have found those ads to be more effective than traditional desktop ads.


Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever, also cautioned that “when a new fan comes in from a mobile ad, Facebook has to choose whether to count them as ‘mobile’ or ‘ads’ and it’s not clear which they’re picking…”

Facebook reps could not immediately be reached for comment.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, akinbostanci