Mention “social network” to anyone — especially a marketer — and you’ll probably get this response: “Facebook”. Facebook, the poster child for so-called Web 2.0 sites/services, has become so synonymous with the phrase “social network” that you will be hard pressed to think of another similar web service.

But while that may be true in a large and generally homogenous market like the United States, it does not necessarily apply in a fragmented market like the Asia Pacific. In this growing economic powerhouse, marketers have to consider the many different countries and languages, and the associated individual cultural eccentricities.

All of which means that if you’re asked, “What is the most popular social network in Asia Pacific?”, then Facebook should not be your only answer. Neither should your answer be limited to including Friendster only, which is still alive and kicking in this part of the world.

Comparisons of social network usage in Asia Pacific

To guide me in my thinking, I turned to Google Trends. Aside: this free service makes use of data from other databases to show how many visitors a website gets and which other sites these visitors go to. Thus, its results should definitely not be considered to be 100% accurate, but used as an indication of what the situation was in the past and where it’s likely to go in the future.

Based on what I found, Facebook is generally well visited across the Asia Pacific region. In all countries, it appears to have significant share of voice. So if you can only invest in one social network and need to reach the most number of people, then Facebook is probably your safest choice.

But if you can afford to target individual markets, then here’re are a few social networks that you would probably want to consider.

China

Local site Kaixin001 (开心网 - literally “happy Web”) enjoys a level of popularity that far surpasses Facebook. And it’s still growing! When you also consider that China is considered to be the emerging Internet giant of the world, then Kaixin001 should be the place you want to be.

Another social network, Xing, is supposed to be huge in China as well. However, it doesn’t appear to register in Google Trends. This either means that Google’s database isn’t as complete as we’d like to think it is, or Xing members have other, non-Web means of accessing the network. (This brings to mind a popular “social network” in India that uses the handphone, rather than the computer, as the device to connect with friends.)

Update: I’ve posted an addendum to this section to take a look at other Chinese social networks, like Xiaonei and 51.com.

The Philippines

Remember Friendster? Apparently, the Internet users of the Philippines still do. Friendster also still enjoys a good level of visits in Malaysia and Singapore. However, in these three countries, usage is dropping. Asia is supposed to be Friendster’s base of strength, but based on these declining trends, it may seem that that won’t be true for very long. (If I were Friendster management, I’d be thinking of ways and means to overcome this trend!)

South Korea

If you’re an Internet marketer, then you would know that South Korea is in a cyberspace all of its own. With the country’s unique characteristics, it is no wonder that its services are especially unique to its users. So it should come as no surprise that Cyworld is the largest social network there. Google reports that Cyworld’s visitor level has been dropping slowly over the last 12 months. Though the instinctive response would be to blame Facebook (!), I’d wager that there are other, more plausible reasons that only the Koreans would know.

Thailand

When it comes to social networks, Thailand is another country that is all on its own. Locally, Hi5 is the most used social network. As is the case of Kaixin001 in China and Cyworld in South Korea, it is possible that language plays a huge factor in contributing to its large presence in Thailand. Also, possibly as a result of the close physical proximity and cross exchange of peoples, Hi5 has been enjoying substantial use in Vietnam.

Australia, Japan

Finally, we come to these two countries where music-focused social network, MySpace, has significant number of visits. However, the social network’s visitor levels in these two countries has been dropping in the last 12 months, even as Facebook’s has increased. Once again, the upstart proves to be a formidable challenger to the throne. But if you want maximum reach in these two countries, for now, MySpace should still be in your social network mix.

What’s next?

Now that you have this information at hand, what can you do with it? That depends on why you need this information. If you need to blanket the region with a message, Facebook is probably your most logical choice. But if you have local content that is designed for local audiences, then you might want to think about diversifying your plan to include popular local social networks.

And one more thing: you might have noticed that I didn’t include another popular social network, LinkedIn, in the above comparisons. LinkedIn is focused on a different crowd — executives and professionals — whereas the social networks mentioned above have mass appeal. So yes, LinkedIn would barely register as a blip in Google Trends. But if you need to reach these kinds of people, then you might want to think of LinkedIn too.

(Note: for the purpose of this article, the Asia Pacific region refers to the group of these countries: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.)

This entry was written by Balasingam-Chow Yu Hui. He has worked as a Marketing Analyst at XM Asia Pacific since 2006.
You may remember him as author of “What is Web Analytics?” or from within the Singaporean social media circles. Or you may have seen his musings at his blog, Yuhui’s Blogger, Twitter, or at Facebook. When he’s not working on Web Analytics, he can be found analysing how to improve his performance at Mario Kart Wii.