If you’re looking at the landscape for social networks, social media, and are feeling a bit overwhelmed, don’t be worried, its easy to get lost in the mess.

First thing first, decide what countries/regions you want to grow in. You might be thinking, but Brian, why would I care to look anywhere other than english speaking regions? Well first off, you’d be missing out on billions of potential users, and you’d be missing an opportunity to beat out your competitors to these regions.

So here are my targets for each market worldwide:

• North America
  • MySpace (200 Million users, 65Million+ in US – supposedly)
  • Facebook (55Mil, 30Mil in the US)
  • LinkedIn
  • Bebo
• South America/Latin America
  • Facebook
  • Hi5
  • Orkut
  • Myspace
• Europe
  • Bebo
  • Myspace
  • Facebook
  • Netlog
  • Hi5
• Asia
  • Orkut (India – wow)
  • Facebook
  • Myspace
  • Hi5
  • Friendster (whaaat?)
  • Netlog (Middle east, turkey, that region)
• Africa
  • Honestly don’t know. South Africa and Egypt are the only two viable markets to target, so I’d bet on Facebook.

You might be thinking, but Brian, where do you get this data? Well most of it is from trends I observe, and from my vast network of connections around the globe. I follow where these people are socializing. I know a lot of people in South America, and I hear them talking about Facebook alot now, so thats why I give FB a big 2008 in Latin America. Over a million users are on FB in Latin America right now according to Facebook’s Social Ads.

In a later post I’ll outline how to approach each of these markets, as each is as different culturally online as they are offline.

The fact that his account with 5000 friends on it was shut off doesn't upset me one iota. Wanna know why? Because his account is a perfect example of a unidirectional relationship, completely going against the concept of friends (disclaimer, I follow his twitter feed, but its not the same thing). The idea of a friend connection in a social network is supposed to be you agree to a two way communication exchange. Do you really think a man with 5,000 social network friends will ever pay attention to what you're asking him seeing as you've likely never met him in person? So in his case you " ... Continue reading

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Widgets, widgets, widgets. 2007 is going to see a number of new delivery methods for widgets, more useful widgets will emerge. We’re already seeing the emergence of video chat and regular chat widgets making any site a lounge of sorts. My guess: widgets will further decentralize the web. We’ll also see a growth in widgets on blogs, and social sites. We might want to look for a social widget that ties into a user’s browser, so they can tell people where they are hanging out on the we ... Continue reading