That's pretty nifty — I wonder if there's something like that for 3D virtual worlds.

Facebook is huge in Canada. I know people who're on it that can't figure out the distinction between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.

This stuff shows a lot of Orkut and Hi5 users in South America. I live in Chile and I've never meet actual users of that -unless you consider Hi5 spam as "use".

Well, the map actually shows a blank for Chile and Argentina, so maybe the Orkut thing is true for Brasil. At least here, Facebook is growing very quick among people around 25 yrs old and older. Teenagers seem to prefer Fotolog, which is mainly based in sharing images and comments. Personally I hate it, but teens are crazy about it.

hey and where´s Chile, here everyone has a fotolog account.
even the dogs and cats, an they also hava a championship of it.

For those of us who are incompetent at reading French and digging down a few levels, and who don't have Twitter accounts, is there a link to the full-size image anywhere?

Full Size Image:
http://medias.lemonde.fr/mmpub/edt/ill/2008/01/14/h_4_RESEAUX+X1I1.gif

Orkut is some kind of "institution" on Brazil. Quite scary.

Those social stuff are so scary...

How to give more information to Marketing
compagnies ?

even if you never post true personal facts to such networks, your network of friends defines,locates and identifies you in reverse. To say, a government.

Cool graph, and honestly, no surprises.

Though in the future, I see bebo going down in Europe, it's primarily used here in the UK by people under 18, I forsee Skyblog and Facebook going up as younger generations start to see the older ones using FB and skyblog as it spreads through France and Switzerland.

Myspace could go either way, but people are getting sick of its poor interface.

This map ignores Mixi which in Japan which seems to be the number one networking site.

More on Mixi and SNS use in Japan
http://whatjapanthinks.com/tag/mixi/

Mixi
http://mixi.jp/
(You need a valid Japanese cellphone to sign up however)

As for China, just in my personal experience, a service called QQ is extremely popular-- it's mainly instant messaging, but users create profiles and use it as e-mail, and even web profiles of themselves. Perhaps appropriately given the country, users don't use screen names but rather are assigned a QQ number like 28384739294. People often exchange their qq numbers, and some people even leave them around in net cafes to attract attention.

Another service that is becoming more and more popular is a service called xiaonei. It is an EXACT copy of facebook. I mean word-for-word even (except in Chinese). In one way this points to China's propensity for copying things so exactly rather than R&D'ing their own new products (that's a whole other discussion), but in another way it shows great ingenuity in that facebook didn't have a good Chinese translation, so they just hacked it and copied it in a way that was useful for them. Jury's still out on my opinion of XiaoNei.

3daywalk,

Those links were rather spammy and have been reported as such.

I don't really follow how Bebo can be the biggest in Europe when only Ireland is coloured 'Bebo-green'? Fitting colour though, heh.

Yeah, Orkut in Brazil. Given the trusty-sexy-cool voting thing, it's perhaps the realisation of the Miracle of Science line "Brazil has decided you're cute" (MoS 179).

:-)

FWIW: I guess hyves is the most used social networking site in Holland, which is left white on the map.

I find it interesting that so much of the Pacific Islands marketshare is held by Friendster. I briefly flirted with Friendster during the period between its boom in popularity and near-total abandonment. I understand that most folks left because the software architecture then in place couldn't support its size; once the problems were fixed it had already lost its audience to other emerging sites. I still occasionally receive friend-request spam from the site (one just hours ago), but I had no idea that it was still really viable.

Huh. In my experience, Studivz is by far the most popular social network in Germany, at least for 20-somethings. Skyblog, on the other hand, I can't even remember ever running into.