How to log in to Facebook, Asian TV dramas top Google searches in Vietnam for 2017

The No.1 Google search in Vietnam in 2017 was “Ways to log into Facebook”.

The social network did not arrive in Vietnam particularly late; it just never stops adding new users.

More than a million new Facebook accounts were opened in rural parts of Vietnam in the past year, according to data released by global performance management company Nielsen last month.

The country of 92 million people now boasts more than 52 million active accounts, Reuters has reported, citing social media agencies We Are Social and Hootsuite.

In July, a We Are Social report said the Vietnamese are the seventh biggest group of Facebook users in the world.

More than 50 million people in Vietnam are online, which is above the global average and makes the country one of most internet-active populations in Asia.

According to Google’s year-end trends, Vietnamese are not just into social media, they're also hooked on entertainment.

The second top search was “Princess Agents”, a Chinese drama series about an ancient Chinese female warrior. The show has achieved overwhelming success and is currently the most watched Chinese drama of all time.

Vietnamese drama series “Song Chung Voi Me Chong” (Living with Mother-in-Law) came in at third, and “Nguoi Phan Xu”, which is a crime drama series based on Israel's “The Arbitrator”, claimed fifth position.

They flanked “Lac troi” (Afloat) by Vietnamese pop star Son Tung M-TP. The music video was released on January 1 and set a record in Vietnam by attracting nearly 5 million views on the first day.

Online game app Mod Skin took sixth, followed by Vietlott, the operator of the American-style computerized lottery Mega 6/45 that launched in Vietnam in January last year and has remained a popular search for people hoping to become a billionaire.

Football match schedules for the SEA Games finished in eighth, while Google Translate took ninth.

“The Legend of the Blue Sea,” a South Korean television series about fishermen and mermaids, completed the top 10.

Along with all the fanfare surrounding pop culture, Vietnamese still closely follow real life drama, according to the report.

Google's stats show that of the domestic news issues in 2017, Vietnamese cared most about the controversial toll station in the southern province of Tien Giang, where drivers protested for months for it to be closed.

Storms and education, including the high school graduation exams and university enrollment, were the next most followed events.

Cryptocurrencies and sports dominated international searches by Vietnamese, although the top 10 also included Black Friday, the NASA spacecraft Cassini which ended its 13-year journey to Saturn last September, and the “sexiest women alive”.