Comments for Social Networks Around the World

Social Networks Around the World

2009-06-07T17:51:09Z

Italian PR professional and former Microsoft Italy marketer Vincenzo Cosenza sent us an interesting visualization today. Below is a map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country. The map was built using Alexa and Google Trends for Website traffic data in June 2009 and we think it shows some interesting trends. After all, our world is becoming smaller and it's good to know what services our friends on the other side of the globe are using to connect with each other.

]]>

Top 3 Social Networking Sites by Country:

Australia: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Canada: Facebook, MySpace, Flickr

India: Facebook, Orkut, Hi5 (Twitter is a close fourth)

France: Facebook, Skyrock, MySpace,

China: QQ, Xiaonei, 51

Germany: Facebook, StudiVZ, MySpace

Italy: Facebook, Netlog, Badoo

Russia: V Kontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal

Spain: Facebook, Tuenti, Fotolog

United Kingdom: Facebook, Bebo, MySpace

United States: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter

Patterns:

Cosenza also noticed some visible patterns that are worth sharing. I've added my own notes in parenthesis:

- Facebook has almost colonized Europe and it's extending its domination with more than 200 millions users
- QQ, leader in China, is the largest social network of the world (300 million active accounts)
- MySpace lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
- V Kontakte is the most popular in Russian territories (looks a lot like Facebook)
- Orkut is strong in India and Brazil (this one was a little scary because it already knew my name)
- Hi5 is still leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania (Hi5 is a San Francisco based Company)
- Odnoklassniki is strong in some former territories of the Soviet Union
- Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal

Social Networks in Other Countries:

Finally, let's see what services our friends in these other countries are using to network with each other. Check out this list of social networking services that you may not be aware of:

- Iwiw in Hungary
- Nasza-klasa in Poland
- Cyworld in South Korea
- Friendster in Philippines
- Hives in Netherlands
- Lidé in Czech Republic
- Mixi in Japan
- One in Latvia and Lithuania
- Wretch in Taiwan
- Zing in Vietnam

Be sure to check out Vincos Blog and while you're at it, listen to his Last.fm playlist and read his thoughts about Facebook.

Comment from fairylandsolarlights on 2011-08-01

2011-08-01T10:00:39Z

learning social networks different countries for product marketing. My focus Lighting fishers indoor outdoor solar LED decorative garden lighting email info@fairylandae.com

Comment from Seyha on 2011-05-05

2011-05-05T10:44:03Z

wow.... I am very glad and pleased that to know your website right now due to it is talking a bout a good new technology and other document in order to provides them to other people who are looking for .
Best wish!!
http://artemisweb.info

Comment from altteam on 2011-05-05

2011-05-05T07:57:12Z

Very useful analysis - it helped me a lot. Division according to popularity in the specific counties - that's great. Thanks.

Comment from tütüne son on 2011-02-18

2011-02-18T21:29:29Z

Where is South Africa in this survey? We have a local IM platform called MXiT that now haS 13 million subscribers. This is not web based but mobile based, as there is a much higher penetration of mobile devices in SA than internet PCs

Comment from Mutuelle santé on 2010-09-15

2010-09-15T11:40:36Z

the post shows tht facebook is clearly dominating, in a way it is simple and very easy to use, so credit must go to facebook inventer.

Comment from Warez on 2010-08-31

2010-08-31T07:32:08Z

Turkey: Facebook, Facebook, hmmm... Facebook!

Comment from Victor Hugo on 2010-08-07

2010-08-08T02:41:00Z

And www.theanswerbank.co.uk ??

Comment from Tuzla Nakliyat on 2010-03-22

2010-03-22T10:51:57Z

space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments

Comment from Gebze Nakliyat on 2010-03-22

2010-03-22T10:50:56Z

space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the blog, use appropriate language and

Comment from videoizle on 2010-01-08

2010-01-08T16:08:17Z

Nice collection of top bookmarking site. Good thought and great idea. Thanks for the information.

Comment from yazmir on 2010-01-01

2010-01-01T23:48:06Z

very god web side

Comment from Magesh on 2009-11-05

2009-11-05T15:36:57Z

so nice of you zumba :) magesh

Comment from Edgars Petersons on 2009-10-06

2009-10-06T11:56:32Z

actually for Latvia the most popular social network is draugiem.lv which is also more web2.0 than one.lv which is archaic

Comment from excel help on 2009-09-03

2009-09-04T05:51:18Z

Thank you for this good list! I started bookmarking my site and asking my friends to do so if they would and it’s definitely helping.

Comment from Daniel on 2009-09-03

2009-09-03T13:10:46Z

thanks, for good article!

Comment from excel help on 2009-09-02

2009-09-02T11:32:27Z

Thank you for this good list! I started bookmarking my site and asking my friends to do so if they would and it’s definitely helping.

Comment from Jan Martinec on 2009-08-08

2009-08-08T12:21:55Z

In the Czech Republic has Facebook 1mil. accounts. It's no. 2 after lide.cz but I think that Facebook has more active accounts than lide.cz now.

Comment from EgitimTUBE on 2009-08-06

2009-08-06T21:36:00Z

Turkey also wanted to Social Networks
thanks admin good post

Comment from nusret on 2009-07-31

2009-07-31T14:57:30Z

thanks for article very

Comment from accountinghomework help on 2009-07-02

2009-07-02T09:44:34Z

Thanks for the article on Social Bookmarking! Very informative… and timely! Keep them coming.

Comment from Accounting Homework on 2009-06-26

2009-06-26T07:19:03Z

Excellent,

Nice collection of top bookmarking site. Good thought and great idea. Thanks for the information.

Comment from tomas on 2009-06-16

2009-06-16T23:27:30Z

what about http://www.studyin.org ?

Comment from Julie on 2009-06-16

2009-06-16T16:00:08Z

Julie

Comment from rajiv menon on 2009-06-14

2009-06-15T06:50:34Z

great list. i didn’t know most of them before.

Comment from Football Highlights on 2009-06-13

2009-06-14T04:02:06Z

Soccer one : mysoccerplace.net

Comment from Ralph Jones on 2009-06-13

2009-06-13T15:40:51Z

Really great post! wow I never knew that there were so many Social Networks though I would agree with the geo targetting of the ones I am aware of, If you exclude the giants it seems there are a lot of other social networking sites that are popular locally. I will give some of them a try.

Comment from Szabolcs Baader on 2009-06-11

2009-06-11T12:27:59Z

Great post, thanks for sharing! :)

In Hungary:
Iwiw.hu, MyVip.hu are popular social portals
(i dont see MyVip, therefore i wrote this post)

Br,
Szabolcs

Comment from Walter Roark on 2009-06-10

2009-06-10T15:01:56Z

What a fascinating snapshot of the worldwide ascendance and dominance of Facebook in a relatively short time. I agree with another commenter that Facebook's neutral, uncomplicated interface has solid appeal for people of disparate cultures. The entire social networking phenomenon and its incredible growth is historic. It's only been five years since Facebook was "launched" in Cambridge. What will the next five years bring?

Comment from Ulrike Langer on 2009-06-10

2009-06-10T14:17:31Z

How trustworthy is this map? It lists Facebook as number one for Germany, but StudiVZ, Xing and Werkenntwen are all ahead. Facebook is only number 4 in Germany. So much can I trust the other data?

Comment from Riku on 2009-06-10

2009-06-10T10:10:29Z

There are not many indians in Estonia. It is a very small country and orkut was the first thing which spread very quickly in Estonia among estonians. Now facebook is spreading very quickly here. By the way, it is quite funny that orkut means in finnish orgasms :-)

Comment from Gretz on 2009-06-10

2009-06-10T07:18:54Z

Hi to everyone!
I know that many indian people live in Finland and Estonia maybe because Orkut so popular in Estonia and India ;-P

Comment from maia on 2009-06-09

2009-06-09T23:12:41Z

Dormancy? I've joined everything pretty much. But I only use the ones other people use. You know, well you don't, in the UK young people usually have pay as you go (=US 'prepay') mobiles (=US 'cell phones'), you get discounts on phoning/texting your own network, so everyone buys what their friend has to save money; leads to market domination by one brand, but it never lasts longer than 2 years.. Well I have to use QQ, facebook, and who am I going to contact on lokalisten, even though it's ace, if no one I know's on there? The only social networks you can use on your own, unless you're a stalker, are flickr/livemocha/last.fm, not first and foremost social.

Comment from Howard Brown on 2009-06-09

2009-06-09T21:26:20Z

This is very interesting thread and chart. Social Networking / communications are cultural phenomena. My 3 questions:
1.) Are any of these top sites monetizing besides online ads
2.) What is the dormancy rate of users that have an account or multiple accounts but do not use them? (example I have a Friendster account I have not logged into in a very long time
3.) In 5 years will any of these social networks even exist or will they be out of biz or replaced by the nex new thing...

Comment from Rumi on 2009-06-09

2009-06-09T12:07:55Z

damn,
My Country (Bangladesh)is not there. :(

Comment from Penn on 2009-06-09

2009-06-09T08:44:43Z

The reason Orkut knows your name is because it is a google service - if you are logged into your gmail, you are already 'technically' signed-up. The wonderful weird and scary world of Google Open Social. Great post! Interesting to see how the rest of the social world works

Comment from Kats on 2009-06-08

2009-06-09T06:46:00Z

Orkut is closely related with Google, so it knows a lot of you:)

It's really strange about countries mostly using orkut - Brazil, India and Estonia - three countries with absolutely different culture and geographical location

Comment from Meelis on 2009-06-08

2009-06-09T05:42:03Z

Orkut knows your name probably because its a Google service.
If yu have Google account/use some Google service (Gmail, Docs, Picasaweb etc.)with your name, then every other Google service knows you already...

Comment from SVicente on 2009-06-08

2009-06-09T04:01:39Z

Here in Brazil, I think that Orkut is a phenomenal social network most because Google influence. GMail has dominated the scenery of new mail accounts and its fastest translation to Portuguese leverages a lot its dissemination. The others are in foreign language (MySpace has been translated very recently...) and English language it's not common to be understood to Brazilian in general.

Comment from Cem Basman on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T22:28:33Z

Xou forgot XING.com from Germany. The business network with 7+ millions professionals and users.

Comment from RobertHiggins on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T22:04:01Z

its cool slide. not a critique but the info could be more "Self illuminating".

How about some data info over time. So we could see how myspace has ebbed and flowed.

Or how about some sort of tie in with the social site as focus. So once again I am thinking motion. Perhaps starting with a global country view and your country map begins to dissolve into matrix like social networking bits and the data reconstitutes itself as Social Countries which echo the influence of their users countries...

The idea when be to allow the data to express itself and tap directly into the immense bandwidth of the eye.

Comment from joab ng on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T16:55:57Z

nice info. great to see how pple is connected

Comment from Tony Searight on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T16:11:49Z

Nice Article. It's Great to see how the world is connected with every day ordinary people doing the connecting.

Tony Searight
"A Father Teaching Kids To Invest And Give Back!"
www.tonysearight.zoomshare.com

Comment from web creative on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T15:08:39Z

Yes, it seems social networking is just getting bigger and bigger, with no slow down in sight

Comment from Neal on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T13:10:22Z

This is a great list.

I live in Japan and I have to say that the vast majority of people here use Mixi. Mostly because it is perceived to be 'safe' even though it isn't so much. To be a member of Mixi you have to be invited by someone in Mixi AND have a Japanese cell phone address. Despite all this I found it to have more pseudo-spam in it than Facebook. Also, most Japanese that I have talked to that are on Facebook and Mixi say that Facebook is more convenient and easier to use, but Mixi still has the most users.

As for Twitter, hardly anyone knows about it except expats and programmers.

Comment from top007 on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T12:50:01Z

what about Xing in Germany / German speaking countries?

Comment from Engago team on 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T07:28:43Z

@Vincenzo Cosenza: never heard of 35mio people on Netlog?
http://www.netlog.com
Or even in Italian: http://it.netlog.com/

You miss 35mio people in your analysis, thus your analysis is wrong.

Comment from Deepak jain on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T06:55:31Z

Great post, thanks for sharing. By this one can know which social community is popular in which area and trends can be known.

Comment from Darren on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T02:23:52Z

I sometimes speak to education institutions, and often to international recruiters. I put together my own map based on ad hoc research (as opposed to Alexa et al):

http://bit.ly/eJlwv

Comment from Justine N. on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T02:14:41Z

Oh that's strange, Orkut know my name too ... =S! How does it do that?

Comment from changho on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T01:40:29Z

How does Oktur lead both in Brazil and in India?
Two countries are too far to have any geographical or demographic common factors. Any Idea?

Comment from Portland SEO on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T01:16:55Z

Wow, facebook is #1 in pretty much every english speaking language. I wonder if the government has the ability to spy on people through facebook.

Comment from nebben on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T01:02:30Z

Found the map's data on Africa interesting & did some extra research, which you can read here, http://bit.ly/akyiR.

Comment from Tan on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T00:49:12Z

Message from Vietnam

Zing is mp3 download site not a social networking site. In Vietnam Y360 is dominate, but for some reason Yahoo is closing it. FaceBook is growing supper fast here, I expect FB to dominate Vietnam to the end of this year.

Comment from Doug Coleman on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T00:34:23Z

Thanks for the heads-up jef.

Comment from MacStories on 2009-06-07

2009-06-08T00:01:02Z

please, don't talk about italian Badoo and NetLog, they're worse than Vista running on a Game Boy.

Comment from jef on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T23:14:19Z

You've linked the wrong URL to Cyworld. Technically, http://us.cyworld.com/ is a website for Cyworld US, which is targeted on people in US. It should be http://www.cyworld.com/

Comment from Fleshlight Reviews on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T22:07:45Z

Another proof of the basic rule of 3 (the rule of branding). The networks that dominate dominate by an enormous margin relative to the 4th and downwards placers. And it seems China's isolation is a self imposed thing? It's not like Facebook can't do chinese, right? Why do these users automatically prefer something homegrown? Hmm...

Comment from Stanislav on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T21:49:28Z

I think Facebook is more classic and neutral in interface than myspace, so that potential auditory is more wider.

As for culture - russian and ex-soviets users are non-english speakers and have less expirience in internet at all. That is why they choose local products.

Comment from R_L on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T21:36:52Z

I'd say in Latvia the largest social network is draugiem.lv (English equivalent is frype.com). 2.5 million members accounts to total number of population in the country.

Comment from Doug Coleman on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T20:51:36Z

Zumba,

I'm not sure how Facebook and MySpace are marketed in other countries (if they are at all), but I think you are right, it's probably a demographics thing. It's hard to figure out why a service is more popular in certain countries. It could be how well each service works in those countries, it could be that those companies market better in those countries or a number of other factors. I also wonder what sociological factors are at play here? Could culture play a role? You raise an interesting question, I'm sure I'll have a chance to look into it further.

Comment from Doug Coleman on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T20:39:50Z

Thanks Megesh. Of course, how dumb of me to not include India. I'm adding that now.

Comment from Zumba on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T20:32:27Z

Doug, that's a very interesting post. Do you have any thoughts on why MySpace is losing ground and Facebook is climbing so quickly?

My opinion is that MySpace has a different demographics and Facebook does. MySpace seems to attract a younger audience while Facebook is being used a more business orientated group of individuals. What's your opinion?

Comment from Magesh on 2009-06-07

2009-06-07T20:31:46Z

i dont see India there in the country lists...
the social networkings used in India are:
* FaceBook
* Orkut
* Hi5
* Twitter

plz add this to the list...!