Social networks and international audiences
My latest article is up on The Industry Standard, Facebook vs. MySpace: The battle for global social network dominance. It takes a look at MySpace and Facebook, and makes a prediction about which will win in the competition for international audience.
When researching the article, I came across a lot of data about social networks in various countries, and it as interesting to see the various social networks that are winning in countries around the world. According to Comscore, “the number of worldwide visitors to social networking sites has grown 34% in the past year to 530 million, representing approximately 2 out of every 3 Internet users.”
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the social networks that are less familiar to those of us in the U.S., and the countries in which they are popular. The data comes from sources here and here.
Orkut - Brazil
9158.com - China
hi5.com - Peru, Columbia, Central America, Mongolia, Romania, Tunisia
bebo.com - Ireland, New Zealand
cyworld - South Korea
Live Journal - Russia
This is also interesting - a visual look at MySpace (blue) vs. Facebook (red) according to Compete.com.
Tags: 9158.com, bebo.com, comScore, cyworld, Facebook, Globalization, hi5.com, international, Live Journal, MySpace, Okrut, social networks
April 17th, 2008 at 11:29 am
One major discrepancy here. Live Journal isn’t a Russian site. They are currently owned by a Russian company but Brad Fitzpatrick created the site while a student at University in Seattle and up until 4 months ago the property was owned by SixApart; the same company that makes WordPress. Also, the vast majority of Live Journal users are in the US based on their own statistics (http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml). 3.2 Million US vs 560 Thousand in the Russian Federation.
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Greg,
Thanks for the comment. Actually, the problem is that I wasn’t clear with my post. My intention wasn’t to illustrate other social networks that are from other countries, but rather the countries in which they are the most popular. So you are correct; Live Journal wasn’t built in Russia but it is the most popular social network platform in Russia. (Although I didn’t have that stat about it being more popular in the U.S. than in Russia - that’s interesting.) The same thing applies to Okrut, which is from Google (a U.S. company), but is the most popular social network in Brazil. Thanks for clarifying! — Melissa
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 am
As an active social blogger who comes originally from Russia would like to say that Live Journal is not the most popular one. The most visited social network is vkontakte.ru (reminds of Facebook, to be honest). Live Journal is used mostly for blogging.
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Where does Friendster lie in this popularity contest?