Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate visitor interaction with your site to monitor the end user experience.

View Product Info

FEATURES

Simulate visitor interaction

Identify bottlenecks and speed up your website.

Learn More

Real User Monitoring

Enhance your site performance with data from actual site visitors

View Product Info

FEATURES

Real user insights in real time

Know how your site or web app is performing with real user insights

Learn More

Infrastructure Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Instant visibility into servers, virtual hosts, and containerized environments

View Infrastructure Monitoring Info
Comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations

Including dozens of AWS and Azure services, container orchestrations like Docker and Kubernetes, and more 

Learn More

Application Performance Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Comprehensive, full-stack visibility, and troubleshooting

View Application Performance Monitoring Info
Complete visibility into application issues

Pinpoint the root cause down to a poor-performing line of code

Learn More

Log Management and Analytics Powered by SolarWinds Loggly

Integrated, cost-effective, hosted, and scalable full-stack, multi-source log management

 View Log Management and Analytics Info
Collect, search, and analyze log data

Quickly jump into the relevant logs to accelerate troubleshooting

Learn More

Social network popularity around the world in 2011

social networks

Online social networks are everywhere these days, a truly global phenomenon. But where are the different social networks having the most success in terms of popularity? That is what we’ll try to answer in this post.

We have included 11 social networks in this survey: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Orkut, Tumblr, FourSquare, MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5 and Bebo.

Please note that this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list covering all social networks out there. There are literally hundreds of them.

To map popularity, we’ve used Google search statistics (their Insights for Search tool). This will give us a good indication of the interest – or popularity, if you will – of a social network in a given region. We’re basing this survey on search results from the past 90 days, so it’s a reasonably large, up-to-date sample. After all, we want to know the situation right now.

A few initial observations

We’ve gone through and summarized some of the information for you, but please feel free to scroll down and check out the individual social networks you’re interested in.

Top countries for each social network (in terms of interest)

  • Facebook is most popular in Turkey and Venezuela.
  • Twitter is most popular in Venezuela and Brazil.
  • LinkedIn is most popular in the Netherlands and India.
  • Google+ is most popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
  • Tumblr is most popular in the Philippines and Brazil.
  • FourSquare is most popular in Indonesia and Malaysia.
  • MySpace is most popular in Puerto Rico and Myanmar (Burma).
  • LiveJournal is most popular in Singapore and Russia.
  • Hi5 is most popular in Thailand and Romania.
  • Bebo is most popular in Ireland and New Zealand.
  • Orkut is most popular in Brazil and Paraguay. The interest shown for Orkut in Brazil far outstrips that of any other country.

It’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t necessarily mean that the majority of users come from these countries. We’re talking about sheer interest in a service. The size of the local user base will depend on the size of the Internet population in that country.

Also note that we haven’t compared the social networks against each other. This is a survey that examines where each social network has managed to garner the most interest in its service.

Some standout countries in this survey

  • Brazil is in the top five for Twitter, Orkut, Tumblr and Bebo.
  • Singapore is in the top five for LinkedIn, Tumblr, FourSquare and LiveJournal.
  • The United States is in the top five for LinkedIn, Tumblr and MySpace.
  • The Philippines is in the top five for Tumblr, FourSquare and LiveJournal.
  • India is in the top five for LinkedIn and Orkut.
  • The United Kingdom is in the top five for LinkedIn and Bebo.
  • Indonesia is in the top five for Twitter and FourSquare.
  • Venezuela and Turkey are in the top five for Facebook and Twitter.

That was just a brief summary. Why don’t you go ahead and have a look for yourself? We’ve listed the results for all the included social networks here below. We’ve also included direct links to Google Insights for Search if you want to dig even deeper into the results and play around a little.

Facebook

Interest in Facebook

Countries with the highest interest in Facebook:

  1. Turkey
  2. Venezuela
  3. Tunisia
  4. Colombia
  5. Dominican Republic

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Facebook here.

Twitter

Interest in Twitter

Countries with the highest interest in Twitter:

  1. Venezuela
  2. Brazil
  3. Indonesia
  4. Turkey
  5. El Salvador

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Twitter here.

LinkedIn

Interest in LinkedIn

Countries with the highest interest in LinkedIn:

  1. Netherlands
  2. India
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Singapore
  5. United States

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for LinkedIn here.

Google+

Interest in Google+

Countries with the highest interest in Google+:

  1. Taiwan
  2. Hong Kong
  3. Nepal
  4. Finland
  5. Honduras

(Ok, Hong Kong isn’t a country per se, but Google Insights for Search lists “regions”, which don’t always correspond to countries.)

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Google+ here.

Orkut

Interest in Orkut

Countries with the highest interest in Orkut:

  1. Brazil
  2. Paraguay
  3. India
  4. Haiti
  5. Oman

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Orkut here.

Tumblr

Interest in Tumblr

Countries with the highest interest in Tumblr:

  1. Philippines
  2. Brazil
  3. Australia
  4. United States
  5. Singapore

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Tumblr here.

FourSquare

Interest in FourSquare

Countries with the highest interest in FourSquare:

  1. Indonesia
  2. Malaysia
  3. Singapore
  4. Thailand
  5. Philippines

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for FourSquare here.

MySpace

Interest in MySpace

Countries with the highest interest in MySpace:

  1. Puerto Rico
  2. Myanmar (Burma)
  3. United States
  4. Jamaica
  5. Trinidad and Tobago

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for MySpace here.

LiveJournal

Interest in LiveJournal

Countries with the highest interest in LiveJournal:

  1. Singapore
  2. Russia
  3. Belarus
  4. Ukraine
  5. Philippines

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for LiveJournal here.

Hi5

Interest in Hi5

Countries with the highest interest in Hi5:

  1. Thailand
  2. Romania
  3. Peru
  4. Laos
  5. Portugal

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Hi5 here.

Bebo

Interest in Bebo

Countries with the highest interest in Bebo:

  1. Ireland
  2. New Zealand
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Brazil
  5. Australia

You can dig deeper into Google’s search stats for Bebo here.

Final notes

As you noticed, we only included a limited list of social networks in this survey. For example, we didn’t include social networks that are regional by nature, i.e. don’t have a global focus. There are plenty of country- or language-specific social networks that are successful in individual countries, for example VKontakte in Russia and the Russian-speaking countries of the former Soviet Union, Mixi in Japan, RenRen and Qzone in China, Hyves in the Netherlands, etc.

If you’re curious, you can check out a similar survey we did three years ago, in August of 2008. We thought an update was long overdue, since things change so rapidly in social media.

Introduction to Observability

These days, systems and applications evolve at a rapid pace. This makes analyzi [...]

Webpages Are Getting Larger Every Year, and Here’s Why it Matters

Last updated: February 29, 2024 Average size of a webpage matters because it [...]

A Beginner’s Guide to Using CDNs

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Websites have become larger and more complex [...]

The Five Most Common HTTP Errors According to Google

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Sometimes when you try to visit a web page, [...]

Page Load Time vs. Response Time – What Is the Difference?

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Page load time and response time are key met [...]

Monitor your website’s uptime and performance

With Pingdom's website monitoring you are always the first to know when your site is in trouble, and as a result you are making the Internet faster and more reliable. Nice, huh?

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL

MONITOR YOUR WEB APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Gain availability and performance insights with Pingdom – a comprehensive web application performance and digital experience monitoring tool.

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL
Start monitoring for free