Social networking: a global affair

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twitter-bird3There are literally hundreds of social networking and social media sites on the internet today. As you can imagine, certain sites are more popular in some parts of the globe than others. By using Google Insights for Search, I was able to find statistics on regional interest for websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The google site shows social network popularity around the world. Let’s start with Twitter. Eight months ago, Twitter was most popular in Japan. Today, Japan ranks 9th on the list while the United States takes the number one spot. Here’s a map from google showing Twitter usage by location. Darker blue means most popularity.

current-twitter-popularity-map

Besides Twitter, Siouxland Chamber is involved in a number of other social websites. We’ll just look at a few of these. Take LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site. It is more prominent in India and the Netherlands than the states but its popularity is definitely rising here.

What about Facebook? This trendy site hit 200 million users on April 8th. Its popularity is growing more and more in America, however it’s most popular in Turkey and Croatia. A different site the Chamber has recently become very active on is Flickr. The photo sharing site is used most by the UK while the United States is 5th on the usage list.

It is interesting to see where these sites are most popular and it changes monthly like most trends. However, looking at the patterns, it’s easy to see that popularity of most social networking sites is growing and will probably continue to grow in the United States. It would be interesting to find out WHY certain sites are more popular in some countries over others. Maybe demographics play a role? Whatever the influence comes from, social sites like Twitter are Facebook are probably here to stay.

-Alicia, the intern

One Response to “Social networking: a global affair”

  1. Betty Lee

    Would it be possible for someone from the Chamber to conduct an educational seminar for members who want more knowledge of all the social networking tools deployed by the Siouxland Chamber?