Valleywag
Click for the full-size version, and the map notes.
Let's play global domination. Here's a map of the world, showing the dominant social networks by country, according to Alexa. There are way more players than anybody, from a vantage point in Silicon Valley, would expect. In the US, the story of social networks is this: there was Friendster, which had no purpose but dating and didn't scale; then Myspace, which gave people freedom to make ugly personal websites; and then came along Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, which was classier.
But other services, such as hi5.com, Bebo, Orkut and Friendster itself, have established, and maintained, footholds outside the US. Unsurprisingly, social networks, which let people share news, photographs and other content with their friends, benefit from network effects. A dominant local site, such as Orkut in Brazil, can hold off the competition because it's the default, and nobody wants to migrate to another site, however much more advanced, if their friends won't follow.
Some patterns from the data:
- Orkut leads in the Indian subcontinent, as well as Brazil;
- Facebook is stronger, internationally, than Myspace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East;
- hi5.com is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia;
- both Bebo and Skyblog follow colonial patterns, the first strong in smaller English-speaking countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, and the latter in Francophone countries;
- and Friendster, the original social network, leads all across Southeast Asia.
- Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.
[Data collected by Valleywag. Thanks to Lucas Shaw of Wandamere for the map work. Please use a thumb, and link back to the original, if you're going to reuse the map.]
Comments
5 shades of blue? 4 of red/orange? Black and dark gray? Looks like their are only 3 or 4 social networks... that can't be right. There's like a brazillion.
Still... props to Lucas Shaw.
@Tim Faulkner: Those are the house colors of each network, more or less. And everybody likes blue.
props to everyone involved for the work.
only problem: i think i just found out i'm color blind!
j/k.
Too few blues?! Absolutely horrible choice of colors... it's impossible to tell what some countries are. But props for the effort!.
Facebook's cornering the Canada + 3rd world market... not much ad money there. Friendster/orkut curse of 3rd world growth continues.
how about if you keep all the shades of blue and add some texture to them, like those little dots or diagonal lines. we color blind people would be much obliged.
as a seasoned veteran of many, many GIS classes, i think you'd probably get an A for content, A for effort and a D for aesthetics.
The social network I own is in way more countries than all of these. :)
@Nick Denton: I'm missing the Valleywag house colors -- snot green in particular.
Fuck - the Greenland market's still up for grabs
I run PLANKSTER, the social network for plankton. We're white in the chart above with 71% market share.
@meanguy: comment of the day, nice job :)
and i hope you also bought plankstr.com (no 'e').
now we know which social network to hit up for picking up women in the country of choice
Really great idea but colors make it very hard to see the important stuff. Also, pls state methodology here. Blogger in iran? Was does that even mean. But THANKS for a great effort to answer a *very* important question.
@joeduck: So, methodology was that we went through this Alexa page, country by country.
[alexa.com]
We did not include the big portal sites such as Yahoo, even though they have personal pages, and some social network features. In each case, we looked for the social network or blogging site that was highest in the Alexa rankings for each country.
One exception: we awarded the UK to Facebook, rather than Myspace, because they were within one place of eachother, and Facebook is growing much faster.
If a country had no social network site among its top dozen, we left it blank.
Hope this explains things.
Ok, once again, why is blackplanet NEVER included in these social network popularity polls/displays, when it is:
1) *huge* (Comscore rank of 4 (or was it hitwise)
2) aged. Around atleast 7 years (excluding its previous incarnations)
3) Developing and growing!
Sure it's niche, but its still social, with massive appeal (to some folks atleast...)
Is there a reason, Xing was ignored? My gut feelings tell me, it is larger than StudiVZ (studiverzeichnis), at least in Germany. But certainly it has the right (numbers) to be mentioned here.
Actually, it is not correct about russia. LiveJournal is a blogging network, not a social network like facebook. There is a site www.vkontakte.ru having more than 500.000 registered users and it is the 4th popular site in russia according to alexa (http://valleywag.com/tech/data-junkie/the-world-map-of-social-networks-273201.php)
vkontakte.ru is a real social network (a facebook copy)
Is Blogger a social network? I dont think so!
Has it been included for the lack of any social nets in countries like Iran/Spain?
pluGGd.in
WTF is studiverzeichnis thingy? Damn those Germans and their German speaking allies.
Interesting map, but there is one glaring omission: Japan! Mixi is the predominant SNS with over 8M users (with 2.3M mobile Mixi users).
Here's a link to some stats on Mixi:
[fukumimi.wordpress.com]
Hi, i'm from austria and szene1.at is the leading social network there.
here's a description: [www.flucid.com]
No network for China? The Chinese market is huge, even if there isn't much money there yet. 51.com is the dominant network in China right now.
this is a really cool compilation of data, but it's a real big shame that the colors are so similar. any chance of a color update?
What's cyworld, I've never heard of it and it seems that all of Canada apparently uses it - which is BS because I've never heard of it. Facebook and Myspace are the norm, although I know 0 people using Myspace, almost all use FaceBook.
looking at the alexa site, myspace.com appears to outrank studiVZ - is it possible for that to change in a single day??
I'm not seeing the vast empire of deposed Nigerian Princes in West Africa. I know I've received email from at least 3,200 of them by now. C'mon, Ivory Coast representz! ;^)
Hi,It's takahiro from Japan.
You seem to have no social networking site for Japan
yet and Here's some information.
Currently Japanese leading SNS is the one called "Mixi" with 10million users.
as second one has only 2 million users or so.
It's the by far the strongest SNS in Japan.
best,
Sweden is definitely a facebook country, the fucking foreign minister is on that shit.
Alexa fails to show business traffic, since those users are rarely if ever given the admin rights needed to install this browser plugin.
So all my Alexa stats ignore business users, too bad.
Also, the map above ignored some important social network sites because they are primarily used by biz folks, no surprise..... If you have no Alexa browser plugin installed, your visit does not count.
usage varies enormously and Alexa.com may not be right - facts and details here:
[commetrics.com]
Facebook = sleaziest of all social networks. rife with identity thieves because facebook reveals everyones realname, real email address, and has code breaches which revealed personal information. Proprietary locked in system, uncustomizable layout, and constant spamming on Facebook with juvenile apps such as
FACEBOOK: You've received 1 egg from michael request!
FACEBOOK: You've been invited to take care of a virtual pet!
FACEBOOK: You got a Happy Pill Invitation
FACEBOOK: You 've got a My Hot Friends Request
And Facebook's constant stream of dopey Facebook apps telling you to do things like be a Zombie and Bite a Chump.
Livejournal is in RUSSIA because the company was bought by the russians.
Facebook is less professional, thats why you don't see many businesses using it. It's a security risk for any business. You cant use it to advertise and Businesses block it.
www.tulinq.com is a digg clone which is becoming very popular here in Colombia, I guest most the users don't have that alexa plugin, so it doesn't reflect on the stats.
I am in NY and the only thing I hear about is facebook and myspace... the two big dawgs! yet from time to time i get Hi5 invites but i always thought of them as junkmail till now...
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