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.

I recently gave a brief bit on social graph marketing, but for all intents and purposes, i’ts basically the same as social media marketing. Social media according to Wikipedia is “the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.” At its core SMM is about creating and positioning your content (be it your message, picture, video, sound bite, whatever) in a medium where it can propagate itself as much as possi ... Continue reading

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I've been thinking about the posts that Markus from Plentyoffish posts on his blog, where he claims the online dating companies are afraid of being left behind by the social networks, and free dating sites. But my question is, where are the social networking sites that get the mix right? If myspace is all about hooking up, then why don't they make that a crucial tool. Enhance that experience! One of the most important things in any ... Continue reading

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short post today, bereft of proper grammar too. social networking is the hotness, small groups of likeminded people (refresh, yopos, etc.) getting together via the web and building exciting stuff. this is what the world was waiting for to tear down barriers such as geography in team building.