Post Tagged with "social media"

This island wants to be your friend

Inevitably, the research for my upcoming Iceland-trip led to reading and following Icelandic blogs – so I’ll use this opportunity to present some of the best blogs from the North Atlantic. For starters I’ve chosen the blog of Iceland itself, or to be more precise, the blog of Iceland wants to be your friend, a social media campaign initiated by the Icelandic tourist board.

Credit

In my opinion this is one of the nicest campaigns of recent years, and it enables you to befriend Iceland almost anywhere online, be that on Twitter, Flickr or Facebook – or on its own blog, where guest authors, both visitors and locals (like Annie Atkins, for example) write about their experiences on and with the Island. Have a look and become a friend.

Read more:
Dreams of fire and ice: Marcel’s quest to discover Iceland
More Iceland blogs on Blogs of the World
Balea lake ice hotel, a Romanian hotel carved from ice

Favourite online hangouts around the world

Which social network should you use if you want to keep up with friends from other countries? This map, developed by Vincenzo Cosenza from Italy, shows which networks are most popular in different countries around the world.

You probably guessed that the green colour dominating the Anglophone world as well as Europe and many other countries represents Facebook.

In fact Facebook has made impressive moves towards world domination in the last 8 months – compare with this map from November 2008 to see how much progress it has made since then.

Other areas are more divided, often along language lines:

- China prefers QQ

- Several other Asian countries are equally independent in their choices: Mixi is number one in Japan, Hi5 in Mongolia and Thailand and Friendster in the Philippines.

- Russian speakers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan choose to use V Kontakte

- Indians and Brazilians like Orkut

- Most of the Arab world uses Facebook, apart from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria and Oman where Maktoob is the favourite. How long before Facebook dominates?

- Facebook is also popular in Latin America, although in some countries Hi5 has the number one spot

So what about Africa? According to this map, many sub-Saharan African countries do not yet have a favourite social networking site. Probably because many parts of Africa still do not have easy internet access. Let’s hope that projects such as this one will help to change that.

(Via ReadWriteWeb )

Where are you from and what social networks do you use?

Read more:
Wired Africa? Africa prepares for its surge online
Is there an easy way to blog in a different language?
Top 20 Languages of the World: which second language will get you talking to the most people?
Which are the most religious countries?