Social Networks Global Presence

Oxyweb has posted a chart of the largest social networks throughout the world. The chart is a world map with the each country being colored based on the largest social network in that country. The most significant takeaway from this chart is that Facebook is rapidly obtaining global dominance. The largest competitor on a global level is hi5.

On an individual country basis, Facebook has fierce competition from StudiVZ in Germany, Xiaonei in China, V Kontakte (a Facebook copycat) in Russia, and a few other social networks each with a strong local presence. The chart doesn’t provide much insight outside of that but it definitely is a pretty picture with a basic level of insight for the global social network presence.

I am personally impressed with the reach of Facebook. According to the article, Facebook overtook hi5 in the Bahamas and Cuba. Currently, hi5 dominates Central America and part of South America. Between hi5 and Orkut, Facebook will have some fierce battles in the western hemisphere. Both hi5 and Facebook appear to be the primary competitors for global dominance.

It will be interesting to see how this chart changes 6 months from now. Facebook is on track to overtake MySpace domestically, but it won’t be anytime in the immediate future as MySpace has almost 20 million more monthly visitors domestically than Facebook. The site continues to gain ground though and as Mashable pointed out yesterday, Facebook hit 39 million monthly visitors last month according to Nielsen Online.

Click on the chart below to see the full-scale version.

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