It’s Facebook’s world – every other social network is just living in it. Big blue’s virus-like spread has been well-documented, as the company has spent the past three years making up ground in countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, and more to become the most-popular social network in the world (and in a majority of countries).
Social media analyst Vincenzo Cosenza has been tracking the state of social media across the world since 2009, and every six months he has put out his “World Map of Social Networks.” In June, he looked at 137 countries using Alexa data and found that Facebook was the most-popular social network in 126 of them, a truly overwhelming majority.
Now that six months have passed, it’s once again time for another map. This new map does indeed show gains for Facebook, but holdouts remain in various countries in the East.
As of now, Facebook holds sway over 127 of the 137 countries Cosenza analyzes. The major countries that boast networks more popular than Facebook include Russia, China, and Iran.
What’s interesting is that the map now features the least amount of networks ever considered. As of December 2012, only 5 networks dominate the world: Facebook, QZone, V Kontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Cloob.
V Kontakte and Odnoklassniki battle it out in Russia, of course, and QZone dominates the Chinese market. Cloob is the network of choice in Iran, where Facebook is more or less blocked by the government.
Although Facebook’s only unconquered territories lie in Asia, Facebook currently has the most of its 1 billion+ users hailing from Asia.
“One of the drivers of its growth is Asia that with 278 million users, surpassed Europe, 251 million, as the largest continent on Facebook. North America has 243 million users, South America 142 million. Africa, almost 52 million, and Oceania just 15 million (source: Facebook Ads Platform). In the latest months Zuckerberg’s Army conquered Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia and Vietnam,” says Cosenza.
Here’s a nice little GIF of Facebook’s global takeover, from 2009 to the present.
[Vincenzo Cosenza via The Next Web]