Faces of Global Friendships

Relative sizes of social networks across the globe. Image: Olver Uberti, NG Staff; Hiram Henriquez

We are all familiar with the big social networks  (Facebook. Twitter, etc.) but are they the same for all over the world? National Geographic (March, 2010) had a really interesting item on how people across the world socialize.  Their comments on the different social networks (based on internet connection speed or locally sourced networks) tells us that while as an activity, social networks may have a global presence, there still remain pockets for localized activity.

So this is all nice and interesting  – but is it useful? Sure! If you want to say make friends in India or Brazil – you may want to head to Orkut.

But more seriously, there is a potential for businesses and organizations to also take advantage of such global distributions. If a company wants to target a market in say Brazil, India or Russia, it might want to set up a social network specific to that particular audience as an opportunity to sponsor this group. In other words, if you have a global audience, do not just settle on a common social networking site. Investigate if an important target segment favors any particular social networking site and make sure to devote resources to it. Note, that a smaller social networking site is not all that bad as it may allow you to create a more specific, targeted and active group. As per previous post – size is not everything!

Tagged as:  Global Marketing · Social Media