Although Facebook’s foray into the public market has left many with quite the bitter taste in their mouth, the company can take comfort in the fact that at least for now, they are without question dominating the world’s social media market.
Vincenzo Cosenza has just put out the June version of his “World Map of Social Networks,” (he does two a year, one in December) which uses Alexa and Google Trends traffic data to determine the most popular social networks in countries all over the world. For this map, 137 countries were analyzed.
And as you can see, there’s a whole hell of a lot of blue on it:
Facebook now rules in 126 of the 137 countries included.
Per Cosenza’s analysis, Facebook has its largest user base in Europe, with 232 million – followed closely by North America with 222 million. He notes that Facebook is currently not the most popular social network in Russia, where local networks continue to win out, and China, where much of the same is true. In Russia, Facebook comes in third behind Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte. In China, Facebook doesn’t even crack the top three.
To see how the social networking world has changed in three years, check out Consenza’s map from June 2009. It’s still pretty blue, but nowhere near as solid as the latest map:
As you can see, Facebook has since swallowed up South America and Mexico, as well as India, Portugal, and Japan. Europe and Africa are also a bit more monochromatic.
And Facebook’s growth is naturally coming at the expense of other, regional networks. Just count that number of social networks represented in 2009 – it’s 17. The newest map sees only 7 networks make an appearance.
Facebook users might be getting bored, and analysts can continue to predict doom and gloom for the social media giant – but this map is visual proof that it’s Facebook’s world. And everyone else is just living in it, for now.