Netanyahu is No. 10 on ranking of most 'liked' politicians worldwide

Al-Aqsa beats out Western Wall in Facebook end-of-year stats

Social media giant lists 2015’s most popular topics, places, politicians, among its billion or so users in Israel and worldwide

Former President Shimon Peres works on his Facebook page with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, looking on (photo credit: Moshe Milner/GPO/Flash90)
Former President Shimon Peres works on his Facebook page with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, looking on (photo credit: Moshe Milner/GPO/Flash90)

Al-Aqsa Mosque beat out the Western Wall in a year-end roundup of the most talked-about location in the Israeli Facebook world.

It’s not a political thing, though, said a spokesperson for Facebook Israel, explaining the ranking. “We determine the most popular places list based on the number of check-ins from the site. It has to do with the number of people who use Facebook to post something from a location.”

The place list was one of several released by Facebook for the “most popular” of the year – listing top discussions of topics, “likes” for TV shows and musicians, the world’s most talked-about politicians, most popular athletes, and other esoterica. Facebook’s methodology, the company said on a special web site dedicated to the topic, “measured how frequently a topic was mentioned in Facebook posts made between January and December 2015.To put this list together, Facebook posts were analyzed in an aggregated, anonymized way, and then ranked to create a snapshot of the year on Facebook.”

Outside of the traditional holy sites, the most popular location for Israelis was a much more modern site – the Tel Aviv Port, which in recent years has become a preferred location for shopping, dining, and events. After that came traditional tourist sites – the Dead Sea, Masada, and the Kinneret. Also listed in the top ten sites were three other Tel Aviv locations – the beach, the Old City of Jaffa, and the Tel Aviv Convention Center (Ganei Hata’arucha). All the Israeli check-ins were collated from all languages and local Facebook sites.

A view of a wooden footbridge leading up from the Western Wall to the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's Old City, with the Dome of the Rock in the background, December, 2011. (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)
The Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Neither the Western Wall nor Al-Aqsa made the top ten sites of check-ins worldwide; the most popular places for visitors posting on Facebook were the various Disney Parks around the world, followed by Universal Studios Properties, Times Square, the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls, and other similar touristy areas.

Other lists included the most-discussed topics globally (US Presidential election, November 13 attacks in Paris, Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, the Nepal earthquakes, the Greek debt crisis), most liked movies and TV shows, and most-liked politicians. Coming in at number ten on that list was Israel’s own Benjamin Netanyahu.

For other web activities, Internet data firm Alexa released its own top lists of sites visited – and in Israel, Google took the top two sites (with the .com and .co.il domains). Coming in third was Facebook, followed by YouTube. The Hebrew news site for Yediot Achronot, Ynet, was the fifth most visited site in 2015 by Israelis.

Interestingly, the eleventh most popular site in Israel was one that everyone who visits Israeli sites surfs to — whether they intend to or not. SekiNdo is by far the preferred ad network for Hebrew-language web sites, and specializes in pop-up windows that, unbidden, show themselves whether users want to see them or not. It’s quite an accomplishment; few ad networks in any of the 100 plus countries polled by Alexa even come close to the top ten web sites in their respective locations.

“SekiNdo has developed unique tools for online advertising, which allow advertisers to achieve wide scale exposure and high quality results,” according to the company. “Today, the SekiNdo network comprises a billion impressions network and provides the best results for hundreds of advertisers daily” — certainly enough to propel it into one of the most popular sites in Israel.

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