Valleywag
The network effects, for sites such as Friendster and Myspace, are so great that an also-ran social network can keep a grip on an overseas community even if dies in the US. So it is that Friendster has become the default in Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, even though its audience has withered elsewhere; and Google's Orkut, which never took off in the US, has footholds in Brazil and India. Here are the territories in which the big social networks and blog publishing systems are particularly strong, mapped onto the board on which players of the global domination game, Risk, compete. I'm told hi5.com is popular in Latin America outside Brazil. I can't seem to discover which properties are strongest in Russia and sub-Saharan Africa; if you know, put the info in the comments.
Play social network domination
The network effects, for sites such as Friendster and Myspace, are so great that an also-ran social network can keep a grip on an overseas community even if dies in the US. So it is that Friendster has become the default in Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, even though its audience has withered elsewhere; and Google's Orkut, which never took off in the US, has footholds in Brazil and India. Here are the territories in which the big social networks and blog publishing systems are particularly strong, mapped onto the board on which players of the global domination game, Risk, compete. I'm told hi5.com is popular in Latin America outside Brazil. I can't seem to discover which properties are strongest in Russia and sub-Saharan Africa; if you know, put the info in the comments.
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2:41 PM on Mon Jun 25 2007
By Nick Denton
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10 comments
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Hi5 is popular in Peru and with a moderate success in some Central American countries (not the big ones such as Argentina, Mexico, Colombia or Spain). If I were to hightlight a social network with a large foothold in the entire Latin America and Spain, I'd suggest eGrupos (egrupos.net), a site that looks like Yahoo 10 years ago but with an impressive user base, probably because it's been up there since the Trumpet Winsock days.
eGrupos Alexa rating isn't impressive probably because it has all properties under different domains (elistas.net for email groups, zoomblog.com for blogs, zoomblast for videos, etc) but if you add them up it would probably be more significant (just guessing). Latest advertised numbers were around 20 million reg. users about a year ago.
Another one forgot to mention is miarroba.com. Not really a social network, but it looks better in Alexa, for those woh care.
So Facebook is dominant up north in Canada? I'd like to give my fellow countrymen a round of applause for avoiding the seemingly unescapable ghetto that Myspace has become. Come on America, you can do it to! Just think of your eyes.
Nick
Surprised not to see the kiddies favorite Bebo mentioned in this article, pretty sure it was the most visited site in Ireland and the UK last quarter.
Hope your not forgetting your roots.
I think Canada went straight from Friendster to Facebook. We've lost our early broadband lead and lag behind other countries such as the US and if you've ever tried to open a Myspace page on dialup you'll know why it didn't succeed. The only group of Canadians I know on Myspace are performing artists, who are there for the music networking.
LiveJournal.com and Ya.ru for Russia. Social networking is not taking up there, as Russian legislature allows KGB to snoop on any electronic communication passing through Russian ISPs, and everybody pretty much thinks a vibrant social network would allow KGB/FSB to snoop on everybody.
They had an uproar a few months ago, when LiveJournal licensed out the pageviews on Russian-speaking journals to SUP.ru, which is located in Moscow, and is therefore susceptible to liberal Russian legislature.
Purely anecdotal - but Facebook seems to be picking up in Ethiopia - although hi5 invites also keep coming in at the moment.
If its the Risk boardgame rules then Blogger has won.
@aheavens: What on earth are you doing in Ethiopia?
Too bad very few US blogs talk about Hi5. They are #2 according to the # of registered users (70 million+) and #3 in terms of uniques.
They are in top 10 in about 30 countries. They dominate online traffic in Portugal, Romania, Peru. BTW, do you guys know they are based right here in San Francisco?
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