International Marketing Review – International Social Networking Sites
Social networking site are many, and there is probably one for every niche that you can think of. People will often say that one site in not quite 
right for them, but another site – for a very special reason – is better. People that say that are right. Each person has special needs and social networking is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution. What you may not know is that, if you go looking, you may find out that there are also social networking sites that are made for different countries and cultures. Countries and cultures that will best represent your potential (or existing) clients.
Here is a small list of some different social networking and social media site, most of which you have probably not heard of, yet.
Welcome to the 16 May 2009 International Marketing Review.
Acelerame – in Spanish, is a website that allows you to send news about the world of cars to be reviewed by other site members. When a user submits a story that stays in the pending queue until it gathers enough votes to be promoted to the main page. Registration required
Amina – Chechen Republic forum, photo gallery and Articles related to Chechnya and includes information on the Chechen language and culture and photos of the Chechen wars.
Black Planet – is the home for what’s relevant to blacks & the black community. There are about 16.5 million registered members.
ClubGh – Started as spideronline.net, a website primarily focused on providing entertainment and news for Ghanaians everywhere. The main aim of clubGh is re-uniting old friends, and helping them stay in touch. ClubGh has an average of 4000 visitors and 300,000 hits everyday and about 10 new members are added to the Club everyday
Hyves – (its name being a play on the English word “beehives”) says it has signed up 7 million Dutch residents, or almost half of the country’s population of 16 million, since launching in 2004. On the site, users post photos and videos, customize their personal profiles, and connect with neighbors in nearby provinces.
IRC Galleria – is Finland’s largest Internet community.Registered users can post photos and communicate with each other in numerous different ways. User average age is around 20 years. 60% of registered users are adults.
IndianPad is a general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.
iWiW – (abbreviation for International Who is Who) is a Hungarian social networking web service started in 2002. As of 2007 August, it has 2.6 million registered users with real names. The site is invite-only. Every user can provide personal information such as the place they live in, date of birth, schools and universities they attended, workplaces, interests and pets. To find friends there is a search tool or users through friends of friends.
LunarStorm – Sweden’s largest community – Lunarstorm has 1.2 million registered users and about 700 000 active members. Lunarstorm is one of the world’s first web community; an electronic bulletin board. 75 percent of the Lunar Storms members use this site mainly for businesses and organizations.
MiGente – Launched as a social networking site in 2000, currently it is an online niche social-networking site targeted especially for the Hispanic community. Its parent company Community Connect claims that Migente is currently the fastest growing English language site for the Hispanic community. According to the Community Connect website, as of June 2007 there were 2.8 million members on Migente.com. Members come from a variety of Hispanic backgrounds.
Mixi – is a Japanese “community entertainment” site where users meet new people by way of common interests. As is typical of social networking sites, users can send and receive messages, write in a diary, read and comment on others’ diaries, organize and join communities and invite their friends. Started in February 2004, there are now more than 10 million members and 1 million communities on mixi, and more than 2 million page views per day.
Nexopia – is a popular Canadian social networking website. Over 95% of its users are Canadian and the site has become quite popular in western Canada, with over 1.4 million member accounts and over 500,000 active users and a hit count of over 33 billion. During peak hours the site sometimes reaches over 30,000 users and several thousand guests online.
Playahead - is one of Scandinavia’s most popular and creative communities for young people, mainly aimed at Swedish teenagers. The site claims to have 2.9 million members, making an average of around 5,9 million logins per month.
Scoopeo – is a French news site where members decide what is published. News (scoops) to the members themselves to suggest the news found on the web and vote on. The site currently exists in french and news concerning French and English with a translation tool via google.It is inspired www.digg.com.
StudiVZ – is a German social networking platform for students, in particular college and university students in Europe. The name is an abbreviation of the German expression Studentenverzeichnis, which means students’ directory. The service is largely comparable to other social networking sites. StudiVZ claims to be one of the biggest social networks in Europe, with reportedly about ten million members as of April 2008.
Wamba – is a Spanish social network that provides services to share all types of media with friends. Wamba has a total of 8.5 million unique monthly visitors and 250 million page views.
Viadeo is a French social networking site, similar to LinkedIn. At the beginning of 2009, out of Viadeo’s 1,800,000 members in France 80 to 90% have at least five years of postgraduate education (Master’s level or higher).
Xing is a German social networking site for professionals that offers its service in 15 languages and claim to have users from 200 countries.
Yigg – is a German site similar to digg.com that combines social bookmarking, blogs, RSS feeds, news entries and tags, and is characterized by a non-hierarchical message distribution. User votes is the only method to determine if a particular post is rnked highly or not.
More International Marketing Reviews:
- #52 – International Social Networking
- #51 – Mothers Day 2009
- #50 – Cross-Cultural Management
- #49 – Holidays Around The World In May 2009
- #48 – Earth Day 2009
- #47 – Easter 2009
- #46 – G20
- #45 – UN-Earth Hour Events On Earth Day
- #44 – World Water Day
- #43 – Flat Stanley travels the world
- #42 – English Tweeting Women to follow from Europe
- #41 – English Tweeting Women to follow from Europe
- #40 – Intercultural Encounters
- #39 – International Valentines Day 2009
- #38 – The White Paper Summit 2009
- #37 – Social Media Changes and President Obama
- #36 – Social Media and the President
- #35 – Globalization and the Global Economy
- #34 – Cross-Cultural Encounters
- #33 – Cultural & International Links
- #32 – 2009 Predictions
- #31 – Christmas Meals Around The World
- #30 – Christmas Trees Around The World
- #29 – Santa Claus In Different Cultures
- #28 – International Christmas Shopping
- #27 – On Multicultural Matters
- #26 – On International Sales
- #25 – On Cross-Cultural Communication
- #24 – On Translations
- #23 – On Email Marketing
- #19 – International Business
Here is a complete list of International Marketing Reviews Technorati tags:
the international marketing review, blog carnival, international sales best practice.
She is who I turn to when I have questions and you should too"
-- Chris Garrett, co-author of the "Problogger" book
