Sites of choice

The survey then asked social networkers to name the sites they belong to. Some markets seemed to favour multiple memberships and some seemed to stick to one or two major ones. The markets where social networking aficionados favour signed up for many sites are UAE, India, Indonesia, and Bulgaria.

Robby Susatyo, Managing Director of Synovate in Indonesia, says: "It's a snowball. It's considered cool to have multiple membership because it shows that you are following the trend."

Showing the vast array of social networking niches, our open-ended question about site membership attracted responses naming around 150 sites across the 17 markets surveyed, but naturally some sites stood out as more popular.

Almost unanimously, 91% of Japanese social networkers are on a Japanese-language site called mixi. Synovate's Managing Director of Japan, Rika Fujiki, points out that attitudes and thinking on social networking are impacted by the site that created the boom in each market. "In Japan, social networking has become very popular in a short period of time due to mixi, especially among younger people.

"One of the major features of mixi is that it's invitation only. Because of this feature, mixi's networks are based on friendship in the real world. So it's not used the way some sites are... it's not for broadening networks, rather for strengthening existing networks."

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> Let's start at the very beginning... (it's a very good place to start)

> Who's in the in-crowd?

> Privacy and predators

> Poking around social media attitudes

> Is social media a marketing dream?