Thursday, January 5, 2012

Social Network Stats are Wrong Wrong

I caught this InfoGraphic on "how the world uses social networks" off a tweet. Once you read it you notice that it excludes India and China the two worlds largest populations. Those two countries are also Internet giants; especially China. I don't know about India but living in Kunming, China I know and see how people use, the famous QQ (here's the link to the International version). This author: Tony D’Altorio (Investment U Research) does a nice economic analysis on "How Does Renren Compare to Facebook?". One would say that the Chinese versions are not international and if it was would foreigners use it. Tencent does offer QQ in six languages for now. This article: "Will Foreigners Use a Chinese Microblog if the Version is in English?" tells a good story how certain industries can capitalize. I have a QQ account but the problem is that Tencent does not offer a desktop QQ Linux version of the international package yet. Moreover, for me to Weibo (microblog like twitter) I need a Chinese ID number; i.e. for citizens only! These requirements are not barriers to enter Twitter or Facebook.