International Social Networks

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What Industries are Growing Fastest on LinkedIn in South Africa? [Infographic]

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LinkedIn is definitely on a roll. The company, which is public, has a strong stock with over 600 times earnings and a great support around $100, even on tough days in the market. They've also been recording record quarters and have started to aggressively expand internationally. A recent infographic from digitlab looks at one of those expansions, and reveals how LinkedIn breaks down in South Africa. The stats are pretty illuminating.

What Industries are Growing Fastest on LinkedIn in South Africa? [Infographic]

map

LinkedIn is definitely on a roll. The company, which is public, has a strong stock with over 600 times earnings and a great support around $100, even on tough days in the market. They’ve also been recording record quarters and have started to aggressively expand internationally. A recent infographic from digitlab looks at one of those expansions, and reveals how LinkedIn breaks down in South Africa. The stats are pretty illuminating.

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Russian Social Network VKontakte Ordered to Remove File Sharing Function

Russia Protests VKontakte Facebook

As we covered earlier in the year, VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network, has been in court defending itself against an order to remove its file-sharing functionality from its site. One of the largest record labels, EMI, led the charge and won the case. VKontakte recently appealed, but have lost the appeal again.

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China’s Tencent Plans Restructuring, New COO

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China’s Tencent, one of the top social networking companies in China, has announced that after a period of increased spending, they will now restructure their business into a more efficient configuration to grow beyond its core business. Tencent is best known for Tencent QQ, an instant messenger not dissimilar to Microsoft’s Live Messenger service, but with enhanced web and mobile capabilities. The new restructure will help the company’s smaller teams gain enough independence to grow faster.

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The World Social Media Map

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Facebook appears to have cemented its position as the world’s favorite social network.  It announced recently it’s reached 900 million “active users” – more than one in eight of the Earth’s population. And there are few signs it’s slowing down. Last year, its growth tripled in the huge Brazilian market, and it’s finally overtaken Google’s rival Orkut there.

The latest figures by Comscore show it’s the largest social network in all but seven countries around the world. As more of the world gets online, they’re also catching the social media bug. Last October, 55 per cent of online users visited the site to chat, “like” pages and make friends. It’s estimated that three out of four minutes spent social networking are on Facebook.

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African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Users Can Now Update their Google+ Status through SMS

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The Google India Blog announced that users can now easily post status updates to Google+ via SMS.  For some foreign countries where mobile internet isn’t always a given in all areas, this tool allows people to stay up to date without having to head over to an Internet cafe or finding a wi-fi signal.  The feature is pretty simple, but adds to Google+’s buffet of services.

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Yankee I Love You — A New Japanese Social Network

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The sharpshooters over at Rocket News 24 have uncovered a new social network in Japan called “Yankee I Love You.”  Despite the connotations of its name, the network is not about loving American foreigners in Japan, but is rather all about Japanese delinquent youth, who are called “Yankees” in Japan.  These are likely some of the images you’ve seen here and there of Japanese people with bleach blonde hair or baggy gangster clothing, and now they’ve got their own network where they can exchange ideas.

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Iran Plans Closed Intranet to Stifle Social Networking and Email

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Iran announced Thursday that they will be setting up a national Intranet and blocking sites like Google Plus, Yahoo, Google and Hotmail to establish a “clean internet”.  Whether the goal is cleanliness or suppression is debatable, but this does mean that many of these American services will be replaces with government services like Iran Mail and Iran Search Engine.

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Music Labels Pin Russian Piracy Problem on VKontakte Social Network

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As we’ve mentioned in the past, VKontakte, the largest social network in Russia, is a hotbed for all sorts of rebellious activity.  From helping to spark protests to file sharing, the site is often the subject of scrutiny and admonishment.  A recent study at Paidcontent shows that while labels are trying to improve music sales in the country, it’s been decreasing steadily due to a “culture of copyright infringement.”

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Russian Social Network VKontakte Offers 5m Rubles to iPhone App Creators

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If you can put together an iPhone application that enables VKontakte users to view their profiles, exchange messages, watch videos and do all the other things that VKontakters do, the company is ready to reward you with 5m rubles.  It’s part of a contest they are launching to have contributors build their official iPhone app and expand their services into the iOS arena.

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