Although the United States dominates in social media, there four emerging social media markets in the world that you’ll want to keep an eye on: BRIC Countries.
What are BRIC countries? Brazil, Russia, India and China. They’re grouped together because they are “all deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development.” (Pardon the Wikipedia reference.)
Would you like to join the new social network offering participants “The Best of All Worlds?” Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s invitation only, so if you haven’t been invited yet, you probably won’t be. Don’t worry though – you’re in good company, considering.
Find out how to use Google Tools to manage social media content and campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an interactive online event starting June 6. Monica Morse (left), head of social & SMB solutions at Google, will familiarize you with a wide range of Google tools such as trends, Google+ and Hangouts. Learn more about our our twelve event speakers and register here. 
Vkontatke, the incumbent champion social network of Russia, found itself in a bit of controversy this week as a gay user found that he couldn’t properly express his same-sex orientation on the network. When he tried to contact the company to get the problem solved, he ran into a technician to asked him to change his gender to female in order to be able to show his relationship.
Renren’s stock has slipped after a mixed Q2 earnings report earlier this week, where net revenues were $44.8 million, up 47.5% year over year, but advertising revenues decreased and analysts are worried that the social network may be losing its potential as the “Facebook of China”. The stock has dropped around 25% over the last few months and the big question is whether nor not now is the time to buy cheap.
Mixi, the most popular Japanese social network, is offering a new birthday gift service. A user will be able to send a gift to a friend with minimal effort – you just choose who you want to send the gift to, make the payment and it’s done. The user will receive a message that a birthday gift has been sent from a friend, and they confirm their home address.
Facebook continues its siege upon the world population, and with the swagger of a conqueror, launches multi-front assaults on every country from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Taking a look at one of these campaigns, we see that Japan’s Facebook users have doubled in the last year while their previous incumbent champion, the home grown mixi, has started to lose users – 60 million in 2011. Is mixi going to be able to fight off the Facebook assault, or will they have to suffer a brutal defeat and be edged out into oblivion?
Pinterest, the biggest pin up bulletin board on the web, is getting integrated with Rakuten, a leading Japanese commerce service. The Rakuten commerce network will now include “Pin It” buttons to encourage users to share images of their products and services on Pinterest. I’ve always seen this as a tempting way for Pinterest to make money by working with large companies, and it looks like it’s happening here with Rakuten.
Sina Weibo, the Twitter of China, is now charging members for premium features, and the success may hint at a possible monetization model for Twitter itself – although it seems unlikely. Sina Weibo is making the move after they posted a $13.7m loss for its first quarter in May. The new services will allow for greater personalization, mobile access and security and will carry a monthly fee of 10 RMB ($1.57).
Vincenzo Cosenza of Vincos Blog has released the June 2012 edition of his World Map of Social Networks. He looks at Alexa and Google Trends traffic data to determine the global use of social networks and maps it out over a map of the world. Unsurprisingly, the world has been getting a whole lot more blue – for Facebook. Only Russia and China have not been gobbled up by widespread Facebook use so far, but how long can they hold out?
It’s easy to assume that America is the hub of world social media — especially considering the origins of Facebook — but the truth is that recent surveys of Chinese Internet users have shown that 95% of them use social networks, putting it on track to become the biggest social media savvy country in the world. Sites like Qzone, Renren and Kaixin 001 have taken off like wildfire in the country. Part of their eager appetite could be due to the fact that China is notorious for controlling state media, so the idea of a network where you can express your own views is very attractive.
