Geography of Social Sites on the Internet

Bebo is big with teenagers in Ireland (but not in the UK). No one can explain quite why this is. I understand that the original target demographic for bebo was college age Americans. From a cursory look, I think that part of the reason may be the subtleties of social structures in each country and that different networks have slightly different rules which may suit a particular situation better. No doubt language is a factor too.

Martin, nice landscape.
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Immediately the question that arises is why? Do the site’s name, technology or even the look and fell make a difference in social networking? To what extend first movers (the first service that appears in the country) capture/retain more market just for being the first rather the best? Is there some space for second movers? Would these users change its platform for a new – improved – one?
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The closer analogy I can find is the ICQ epoch. While the explosion of chatting brought to the general user the concept of having real-time interaction with other users. Back then, nobody believed that ICQ could be replaced by products of Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL. However, it happened. They were easier to install, to migrate from machine to machine, had more features and better usability and security. Moreover, many companies adopted/allowed messengers within their networks (firstly, Yahoo and AOL and later MSN) for business (and personal?) purposes.
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Therefore, what can be done in this market? Is there any chance to create better services? For sure yes. However, how can these users be captured? In which way the innovation can be more effective? Which controllable and uncontrollable factors can we find to create a radical, or even better, a disruptive innovation that can capture users making their life easier? Because, we have seen that incremental innovations (improved imitations) in this case do not work.
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by the way, there is no myspace here?

Pablo

How can FON be evenly distributed as it doesn’t sell any FONera’s in eg Australia or South America?
Also in the past the USA got 3 invites while the others got 1 invite… so the USA could evolve 3-fold!

Mvg,
Steven

I haven’t heard anyone articulate what exactly Web 2.0 is supposed to be or do. So far, only generalities.

Maybe with “Web 2.0″, I’ll be able to watch movies online, thereby making it my tv. Otherwise, I think in countries with established high-speed internet, usage may decrease because virtual life will never substitute for real life.

As far as social networking, it seems like a lot of hype to me. The different companies may have a high sign-up rate, but I bet they also have short retention and high abandonment rates also.

In Denmark Arto.dk is the leading social site, and in Poland it’s fotka.pl…
Just to fill out the empty spaces in Europe

I think America with Facebook and MySpace should be more blurry, and not divided like that, cause I’m pretty sure MySpace and Facebook is used just about the same in america, just by different and often the same users

But interesting map, have been wondering how orkut could get so high on the alexa list without ever hearing about it.

And as a little input – I don’t think Alexa is so reliable, it’s made from the 2-3 million users with a Alexa Toolbar, but still like to look at the top 100 from time to time and see what’s happening around the world