An interesting study released by comScore showed that MySpace and Facebook are both not popular in Asian countries, albeit that their growing popularity in the U.S. and Europe. As shown in the below picture, only 8.1% of MySpace’s visitors and 7.1% of Facebook’s visitors are came from Asia-Pacific. Ironically, Friendster, not popular anymore in the U.S. has nearly dominated the whole Asia-Pacific, with 24 million unique visitors in June and 88.7% are from Asian countries.

It was the aggressive moves by Friendster in Southeast Asia that cause its continued popularity. Friendster is doing fantastic well in Malaysia at this moment, where the site has grown through the tie-up with some local pop singers there. Clearly, Asian countries has destined to be the next battleground in the social networking war between these three players I mentioned.

Apparently, when Asian can’t find their friends in MySpace or Facebook, in spite of MySpace and Facebook have a stronger brand, it’s sound no difference. In this case, it was a cultural shock for MySpace and Facebook, and to me, social networking are closely linked to cultural prejudice. For example, you probably can find a group with same language, same ethnic in social networking site. Maybe it’s time for MySpace and Facebook to rethink their market strategy and build the local site to cater to the Asian market.

Source: adapted from http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1555, accessed 31 July 2007.