Earlier this month, a PR professional and former Microsoft employee in Italy, Vincenzo Cosenza posted an interactive world map showing the use of social networking to his blog. It uses data from both Alexa and Google Trends, and shows some interesting patterns.
• Facebook dominates Australia, Canada, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and the US, and it’s growing with internet speed.
• MySpace has lost its leadership everywhere, except apparently, in Guam. But they’ve held on to the second choice spot in Australia, Canada and the US. It’s the third choice in France, Germany and the UK.
• Twitter, for all its hype, is only in third place in Australia and the US. They too are growing, though it’s difficult to get precise usage statistics.
• Hi5, a San Francisco based Company, is the leader in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania. It’s the third choice in India.
• Bebo is the second choice for social networkers in the UK.
• Flickr is the third choice in Canada.
• QQ is the leader in China, making it the largest social network in the world with 300 million active accounts. Facebook has over 200 million active users (those who have returned to the site in the last 30 days.)
• Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal
• Others you may not have heard of yet include:
• Orkut, which is the number 2 preference in India and is also big in Brazil.
• Skyrock, the second choice in France.
• StudioVZ is the second choice for Germans.
• Netlog is Italy’s second choice, followed by Badoo.
• V Kontakte is the most popular in Russian territories, but Odnoklassniki is strong in some former territories of the Soviet Union.
Tags: Internet Speed, Precise Usage Statistics, Social Networking