Comments on: Quiz! Who’s on Social Networks?

By: Lily

Lily — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:57:41 +0000

Some interesting info:

http://www.quantcast.com/xanga.com/demographics

http://www.quantcast.com/yelp.com/demographics

Both Yelp and Xanga index highly Asian- that bar graph means that there’s almost three times as many Asians on Yelp and Xanga as compared to the rest of the internet.

By: akrypti

akrypti — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:23:30 +0000

I thought Orkut would be Indian and Hi5 would be ASIAN-Asian.

By: Efren

Efren — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:48:19 +0000

So why are all of us on Facebook?

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:03:18 +0000

Interesting info here!

P.S. Though this is second-hand data, I’ve heard that:

Bebo: British
Orkut: Brazilian
Hi5: Black

By: Ernie

Ernie — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:35:24 +0000

Good post, Lily. (It should be known that before my current position at Yahoo!, I worked as one of the developers for Yahoo! 360 and acted as de-facto Community Manager.)

People always forget that with every social network, a core community pops up for each social network. Every web developer on these sites will always plan to make a website for everyone – EVERYONE – but the people who work on sites like these do notice the core community members, and will make tweaks to make sure they retain these core members and keep them happy.

It’s unspoken, but these are the core groups the following social networks caters to:

Xanga: Asian Americans, Canadians, Asian Canadians
Friendster: (early) Burning Man attendees, (early) gay men, (current) Southeast Asians – Singaporeans, Malaysians, Filipinos, etc
MySpace: “Middle America”
Facebook: 20-30 year olds, comfortable to affluent due to its college roots
Yahoo! 360: “Middle America” over the age of 35, Vietnamese college students, some Vietnamese Americans
LiveJournal: (early) “counterculture” kids, (current) Gay bear subcultures, (current) Russians

Point being – people usually hang out with their “tribe,” and where people similar to them are, they go as well. Same goes for community websites on the Internet.