[tweetmeme]Vincenzo Cosenza has mapped the most popular social networks by country, according to traffic data gathered on Alexa & Google Trends (June 2009). While Facebook’s growing dominance over MySpace in the US and other countries comes as no surprise, it is interesting to see the few smaller networks that most of us have probably never heard of that are country specific. It’s also important to note that that while Facebook is all the rage in the west, QQ (China) is still by far the largest social network in the world (300 million active accounts). As people continue to focus their time and energy on dominant networks, and the successful networks grow and take over, you’ll likely see many of these smaller social networks die out. It’ll be most interesting to see what happens if and when China becomes more open over time. We tend to forget about large networks like QQ and companies like BIDU that dominate the waking giant.
The Current Snapshot:
- Facebook is continues to dominate globe, especially in the west and other english-speaking regions, with more than 200 millions users.
- QQ, leader in China, is the largest social network of the world (300 millions active accounts)
- MySpace Still leads in Guam
- V Kontakte Still dominates Russian-speaking territories
- Orkut is strong in India and Brazil
- Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
- Odnoklassniki is strong in some former territories of the Soviet Union
- Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal
- Friendster is still rocking in the Philippines (remember Friendster?)
Other country specific social networks (that you’ve probably never heard of)
- Iwiw in Hungary
- Nasza-klasa in Poland
- Cyworld in South Korea
- Hyves in Netherlands
- Lidé in Czech Republic
- Mixi in Japan
- One in Lithuania
- Draugiem in Latvia
- Wretch in Taiwan
- Zing in Vietnam
Very useful, thank you!
I found it useful too. Vincenzo did a great job with the map.
Wow — talk about interesting.
Thanks for sharing that! I feel enlightened :)
No kidding, right? It's always great to zoom out and take a good look at
what's going on globally. When you look at the social sphere this way, you
get a different perspective on what's going on….of course, you also have
to remember that most people use more than one social network at a time
(statistics say 3 is average).
It's a shame that this is a snapshot. It would have been nice to see an
animation of the shifts over time. NYTimes did a great visualization of
facebook's growth mapped here -
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/03/29/bu…
You always find interesting stuff.
However, where is Twitter on the list, I'd love to see Twitter's global reach.
You know, that's a really good question. I think the answer is that Twitter
isn't on the list because it's impossible to get comparable data. The
majority of people use mobile apps, clients, SMS etc to access Twitter so
traffic stats wouldn't do you any good. Twitter's supposed to be at 44
million now (active + 25% dead accounts). The sysmos report on Twitter
offers the best snapshot of what the Twittersphere looks like right now (and
it's already outdated)…
http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/
Nice, I know that Hubspot does a “State of the Twittersphere” that is pretty
good.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/443…
Steffan,
Thanks for putting together the map – it provides some great insight into how social media is being used around the world. And thank for mentioning Sysomos' Inside Twitter report. If you have suggestions on how we can improve it, please let me know.
cheers, Mark
Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos.com
mark@sysomos.com
Mark — Thank you for providing your email address. I'll shoot you a note
shortly. I have a couple of burning questions. :)
Very useful, thank you!
I found it useful too. Vincenzo did a great job with the map.
Wow — talk about interesting.
Thanks for sharing that! I feel enlightened :)
No kidding, right? It's always great to zoom out and take a good look at
what's going on globally. When you look at the social sphere this way, you
get a different perspective on what's going on….of course, you also have
to remember that most people use more than one social network at a time
(statistics say 3 is average).
It's a shame that this is a snapshot. It would have been nice to see an
animation of the shifts over time. NYTimes did a great visualization of
facebook's growth mapped here -
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/03/29/bu…
You always find interesting stuff.
However, where is Twitter on the list, I'd love to see Twitter's global reach.
You know, that's a really good question. I think the answer is that Twitter
isn't on the list because it's impossible to get comparable data. The
majority of people use mobile apps, clients, SMS etc to access Twitter so
traffic stats wouldn't do you any good. Twitter's supposed to be at 44
million now (active + 25% dead accounts). The sysmos report on Twitter
offers the best snapshot of what the Twittersphere looks like right now (and
it's already outdated)…
http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/
Nice, I know that Hubspot does a “State of the Twittersphere” that is pretty
good.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/443…
Steffan,
Thanks for putting together the map – it provides some great insight into how social media is being used around the world. And thank for mentioning Sysomos' Inside Twitter report. If you have suggestions on how we can improve it, please let me know.
cheers, Mark
Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos.com
mark@sysomos.com
Mark — Thank you for providing your email address. I'll shoot you a note
shortly. I have a couple of burning questions. :)