Popular Social Networking sites across the world

This is a nice image created by LeMonde.fr, which nicely illustrates the popularity of the different social networking sites across the world in different countries. This is great data for geotargeting your social media content.

(Click image for larger view)

Here are some of my observations based on the above data for you. Make sure you pay particular attention to the color codes as this is where the juicy data is!!!

USA: Myspace

Canada: Facebook

Europe: Bebo has a clear edge and Myspace, skyblog and facebook trail on even ground. Bebo seems to be very popular in Ireland. Skyblog is the main social network in France. Facebook in the UK and Myspace in Italy. They figure does not cover every European country unfortunately.

Latin America: This came as a surprise to me but Orkit (the Google social network) is a clear market share holder in Brazil and Hi5 in Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. Interestingly, Myspace is the main social network in Venezuela.

Asia Pacific: Friendster (Asia) takes the lead with Cyworld (Russia) and Orkit (India) in second a third positions. Myspace is in last place in the Asia pacific region but the dominant Social network in Australia. Friendster has a very developed Asian website and this covers most Asian speaking countries. Cryworld is the main social network in Eastern Europe and Russia. Orkit is dominant in India which again comes as news to me and is something very significant for Google as India has a booming online industry which is growing exponentially. India has a population of 1.1 billion and only 5% of the population currently has access to an internet connection.

Africa: There are only 3 main regions which have significant online users. Facebook has clear market share in 2 of these regions, South Africa and Egypt.

I did not cover every country. Click the figure above to find out more info.

Social Networks are fast becoming very highly trafficked websites, especially in developing internet regions like India, asia and Latin America. They are ideal sources for driving quality traffic.