Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Get in touch with us nowColombia works and winds down online
Companies in Colombia, along with the rest of the world, were urged in 2020 to implement home offices when possible as a preventive measure to help slowdown the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps as a result, nearly a quarter of internet users surveyed across the country in June that year named work as their main online activity. This was followed by leisure and social network usage, as the internet provides much-needed and pandemic-friendly means to relax or have fun. Specifically, Facebook has shown itself to be important to the Colombian population during these hard times, concentrating around 58 percent of all social media visits in the South American nation. This has resulted in Mark Zuckerberg’s platform hosting approximately 33.4 million users in the country in 2021, the peak of Colombia's Facebook user base in recent years.Online retail therapy: convenience meets pleasure
Online purchasing habits in Colombia have also changed during the pandemic. For instance, there were on average twice as many e-commerce transactions made per minute in the country during July 2020 than in the same period the previous year. Much of this internet shopping traffic was generated by the Latin American e-commerce giant, Mecardo Libre. With about 22 million monthly visits, Mercado Libre was the most popular e-commerce website in Colombia as well as the nation’s hottest shopping app. However, when it comes to purchasing restaurant goodies online to enjoy at home, the favorite food delivering app of the Colombian population, Rappi, gobbles up the competition.
