
Facebook is the top social network in 127 out of 137 countries - akos
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/01/02/world-map-of-top-social-networks-shows-just-five-left-facebook-dominates-127-out-of-137-countries/
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oellegaard
For me the news here was actually that there were countries where facebook is
not number one.

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sthkr
It's quite simple Facebook is banned in certain countries and english isn't a
native language for many of these countries. Considering this, the other local
social networks have more specific features suited for the local crowd such
weibo and qzone for china. Korea also has one. Weibo has more features than
twitter. The principle of "less is more" doesn't work well with many of these
other countries and their social networks.

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yid
That's discounting first-mover network effects before Facebook became as
international as it is today (VKontakte in Russia) and the big case where
Facebook is outright banned (China). For the rest, you have a point.

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igravious
Stats like this make me feel alienated from my fellow man (and woman).

I hate the fact that there is a whole universe of discourse from which I am
excluded simply because I choose not to jump on board.

Take email for example. You can be on Hotmail, I can be on Gmail, she can run
her own mail server (hopefully not sendmail!?) and we can all speak to each
other. Open protocols, federated. Run your own, go with someone else's
offering.

When, oh when, are we going to get federated social networking protocols? How
hard can it be? You can be on G+, she can be on Facebook, I can run my own
Diaspora* server and yet we can all friend and un-friend each other and follow
and un-follow, unhindered by corporate boundaries.

I despise lock-in of all varieties. We've been there and back twenty years ago
with Microsoft on the desktop, now we have to contend with Facebook on the
web. Who will be next in twenty years time? Why does no one else care? Why do
most people not see that this only and inevitably leads to a less well off
world for all of us.

And yet here we are, the supposed digerati, and what are we doing about it?
Sweet Fanny Adams, that's what. We jump on every story about Facebook because
we know they are the new nexus of lock-in rather than trying to break their
grip on the web.

I can tell you, I was never happier than when I deleted my Facebook account.
Of course it could have something to do with the constant social anxiety I am
afflicted with. Or I could chalk it down to my long-term vision of a better
communing with my fellow man.

What does everyone else think?

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ghshephard
My thought was that, simply by staying off of Facebook, I can avoid one of the
more privacy intrusive social networks out there. I also avoid the place most
targeted for tracking people.

I have a close collection of friends (defined as the people who will always
show up to help me move) and family on Path, and, until Path move's (further?)
into the dark side, we're all quite happy there. For the few people who are
also on Facebook, they have a pass-through-posting capability that lets people
post on both networks.

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aleyan
Watching the animation it is interesting that Iran flipped from facebook being
to dominant in June 2009 to Cloob being dominant in June 2010. Wonder if this
was due to government action or something else?

EDIT: Read the actual story. It says due to state censorship.

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gtr32x
Rather interesting that S.Korean is colored red as well? Imagine that should
be a mistake.

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aquadrop
I don't think so, according to alexa, qq.com is the second most visited
website in South Korea.

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gtr32x
Wow...I just checked the top list on Alexa for S.Korea and there are 5 chinese
websites in top 10 and 12 in top 20. For some reason that seriously surprised
me. While Baidu I understand as it had been trying to reach its arms into
Japan and S.K, but it just baffles me that QQ.com can be higher than Naver,
which is home to the largest native S.K portal site.

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pebb
Not in China

