How Social Networks Are Used Worldwide

Facebook has been expanding it's influence through the world.

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Look at this map!  It is a map of the current state of affairs in social networks worldwide.  These images are based on an excellent article on VincosBlog.  For some of these visualizations, you will need javascript. Those on mobile devices will probably not be able to see them.  We will provide the links as well. IF you cannot see the visualization of Facebook's growth through 2009-2010, then click here.

If you follow the maps from 2009 to the present you will see patterns that show Facebook dominating worldwide and growing.  You will notice that the social network hi5 was dominant in Mexico, certain parts of Asia and in certain parts of Africa.  This changed in the later chart of 2009 (work your way from the bottom chart up).  Mexico fell to Facebook in December of 2009.  hi5 lost Portugal and all the other locations it had, as the dominant network, by June of this year.

But Facebook has not dominated everywhere.  Brazil still has Orkut as its dominate network.  China holds on with Qzone and Russia with Odnoklassniki.  Yet with Orkut, there is a decline sensed by Google Insights as seen here.  Facebook is in blue and Orkut in red.

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How is Facebook doing against Odnoklassniki in Russia? Here is a Google Insights chart on that. Facebook is again blue and Odnoklassniki is in red.  Facebook interest is growing and interest in Odnoklassniki seems flat.  The Google Insights search was limited only to Russia.

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VKontakte is the second largest social network in Russia with 23 million members. Is Facebook making a dent into as well? Interestingly enough, yes but with less of an impact than with the largest Russian network, Odnoklassniki. Look at the chart here(Facebook is blue, VKontakte is red):

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How about Facebook against Qzone?  The story is the same.  Facebook is rising and Qzone is staying flat.  This is particularly interesting since we did a search only in China with Google Insights.

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Here is a list of the top social networks as of March 2010.
1.   Facebook with 133,623,529 visits
2.   MySpace with 50,615,444 visits
3.   Twitter with 23,573,178 visits
4.   Linkedin with 15, 475, 890 visits
5.   Classmates with 14,613,381 visits
6.   MyLife with 8,736,352 visits
7.   Ning with 6,120,667 visits
8.   LiveJournal with 3,800,155 visits
9.   Tagged with 3,800,325 visits
10. Last.fm with 3,473,978 visits

This is a list for the United States.  It does not include networks strong in other countries.
The next chart represents the top 10 countries where its population spends the most number of hours per day.  It measures the population ages 15 and up at both home and work locations.  It does not include traffic from Internet cafes or mobile phones.  This information is current as of August 2010.  The Facebook average hours spent is 5:52 hrs per Nielsen ratings as of March 2010.

via: ComScore

The Next chart shows the number of unique visitors for these top 10 sites worldwide.

via: ComScore

The number of active users for social networks grew nearly 30% in 2010. Look at these charts also compliments of Nielsen.

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Current as of June 2010, Kim Heras from thenextweb.com shows some more statistics about the percentage of the population using social networks.

This is a breakdown, current as of December 2010, of the approximate sizes of the different Social Networks around the world. You can see how far Facebook surpasses all of the others.

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The future of all the Internet is based on the ability of people to easily communicate and share information.  This it seems, can be most easily accomplished through social networks.   Whether this will remain this way for a long time is hard to tell.  The basic feature of the Internet is change.  But for now, users have decided that social networks are the way they like to communicate best.  Facebook is their favorite way of communicating.  We will see if this trend will stand the ultimate test - time.