This interesting, if simplistic, illustration from Valleywag shows you what’s hot where. But, uh – no social networks in China or most of Africa? Or at best “unidentified” (which is also what Antarctica and Greenland show up as)? And what about places where two networks vie for dominance – how is that indicated?
The data comes from Alexa rankings, and it’s good to see that it included Cyworld, which is both the world’s oldest social network and the dominant player in South Korea, where 50% of the adult population has visited it.
Very interesting to see, but it is drastically oversimplified.
Sort of like an alien showing up on earth and labeling the whole earth by its dominant species based on numbers – which is Bacteria SAR-11. This might not give a true picture of the complexity.
And if the data comes from Alexa then it is likely fairly suspect and probably relies on reach, page views and their traffic rank system, which may not be the best measure. I would prefer something like percentage of population who is member and active in last 30 days or something.
I am being a bit nitpicky, but this is actually quite interesting nonetheless.