Facebook No. 1 in most Asian countries, but...

...not in India, Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan, where Google's Orkut, Mixi.jp, Cyworld.co.kr, and Wretch.cc are No. 1, respectively (the US version of Cyworld ceased operation this past February). According to comScore's latest Asia-Pacific data (which don't include China), Filipinos are the biggest social networkers in the region, and 50.8 % of the total online population in the region, or 240.3 million people visited a social network site this past February. Nearly 90% of Net users in the Philippines, Australia, and Indonesia engage in social networking, comScore says, and Facebook is No. 1 in all three as well as in Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.

Europe on age verification, social networking

As the Internet Safety Technical Task Force wraps up its year of studying potential tech solutions for youth risk on the social Web, some perspective from across the Atlantic seems timely. The ISTTF's report, which we worked on together this week as Task Force members, goes to the 49 attorneys general who formed the ISTTF at the end of the year. The European Commission last summer held a public consultation on social networking, age verification, and content rating "to gather the knowledge and views of all relevant stakeholders (including public bodies, child safety and consumer organisations, and industry)." More than 6 dozen entities responded (links to their individual comments are included here).

Reports on those stakeholders' 70+ comments were presented at the EC's Safer Internet Forum in September. Here are the EC's conclusions on social networking and age verification, two subjects of particular interest to the US's state attorneys general and the ISTTF (so I'm zooming in on these two):

1. Summary of European views on age verification

Bottom line: "There is no existing approach to Age Verification that is as effective as one could ideally hope for.”

Flaws a reality: “Each individual method carries its own flaws, as does any combination of methods used.”

"Universal" really means "universal": The effectiveness of age-verification systems already in place in the UK and Germany is "largely undermined by the availability of sites offering similar services” in countries where there is no age verification in place. It can only be effective if it is "universally accepted, inclusive, secure and relatively inexpensive."

Avoid false sense of security: "Concerns were also raised about the false sense of security that might be provided and the adverse effects on safety this might have."

2. Conclusions from report on social networking

Significant consensus. "There was an important degree of consensus between respondents across most questions."

The peer-to-peer risk. "Bullying and other threats which young users inflict upon each other may be more likely to arise than threats from adults."

Communication not confrontation. "Parental involvement in their children's online activity is important, but principles of privacy and trust should dictate how parents help children to stay safe."

Education > regulation. "Education and awareness are the most important factors in enabling minors to keep themselves safe."

Industry self-regulation > legislation. "Industry self-regulation is the preferred approach for service providers to meet public expectations with regard to the safety of minors. Legislation should not place burdens on service providers which prevent them from providing minors with all the benefits of social networking.

Mandatory safety minimums maybe. "Available safety measures vary greatly from one provider to another and mandatory minimum levels of provision may need to be established."

More research needed. "Much is known about potential risks, but more research on the nature and extent of harm actually experienced by minors online is needed."

Related links

From this week's US news: "Age verification: An attorney general's concern" in the New York Times and my blog post about it

"Age verification debate continues; Schools now at center of discussion" at Adam Thierer's tech policy blog

Social networking's very global growth

While social networking may've reached the saturation point in North America, at just 9% growth among people 15+ over the past year, worldwide it has grown 25%, according to June traffic figures from comScore. Social networking's growth was highest in Africa and the Middle East at 66% from June 2007 to June 2008; Europe was next at 35%, and Latin America a close third at 33% (Facebook grew 1,055% in Latin America, 6/07-6/08). ComScore put the global social-networking total at 580.5 million visitors, compared to the world's total number of Internet users, 860.5 million (11% growth over June '07). The numbers for individual social-network sites were interesting too: The world's top 7 sites, in terms of June 2008 unique visitors, are Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut, Bebo, and Skyrock Network, respectively. Facebook grew 153% globally to 132.1 million visitors; MySpace grew just 3% (to 117.6 million), and 3rd-ranked Hi5 had the second-highest growth rate of 100% to 56.4 million visitors. The six largest social sites, including Google's Orkut, are all US-based, though Orkut is much more popular outside the US (it's huge in Brazil) and Friendster in Southeast Asia. No. 7, the music-and-blogging community Skyrock Network, is No. 1 in France and based in France (it had 21 million visitors in June). Here's the Machinist (Salon.com columnist) on one possible explanation for social sites' popularity: persuasive technology.

New features afoot at MySpace

MySpace plans to be people's dashboard for navigating cyberspace, USATODAY reports - the place "where they can check in on the activities of friends, peruse email, get the latest on news and weather, and post their favorite photos and videos." To deal with the growing threat Facebook represents to MySpace, USATODAY says, the latter is projecting itself as a place for self-expression rather than being the social "utility" it says Facebook is (Facebook declined comment for the story). There are 6 million bands registered on MySpace, USATODAY adds. Other plans for 2008 include: giving members "the option of creating multiple profiles tailored to friends, family and business associates. A channel with Oberon Media, a maker of multiplayer games, is in the works for the first half of 2008. MySpace unveiled a service that lets MySpace members make free Internet phone calls through Skype (EBAY). And it just unfurled Transmissions, a program that lets musicians showcase music on their pages and sell performance videos," according to the article. With more members than the population of Mexico and local versions in 22 countries and territories outside the US, MySpace also continues its international expansion, planning to open offices and "launch custom sites in India, Russia, Poland, South Korea, and Turkey, the Zooped blog reports. For example, in India, where Net speeds are comparatively slow, a less bandwidth-greedy version is in the works. In South Korea, where blogging is hugely popular, MySpace will be more of a blogging site than in the US (though blogging is part of the US MySpace experience). Meanwhile, Facebook is growing fast internationally too - see Zooped for some comScore figures it cites.

Local social networking

Sites like Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook aggregate people from all over the world - they're more about interest community than geographic community. Niche social-networking sites zooming in on narrower and narrower interests are popping up all over the place. Another trend is increasingly focused geographic community online. It has several forms: MySpace's sites for individual countries, "home-grown" sites such as LunarStorm in Sweden and Mixi in Japan, and now sites as local as individual cities. Examples of that last category is Yelp.com in the US and the UK's welovelocal.com, just launched in London, with other UK cities coming soon. It's pretty smart - taking those searchable databases of local businesses of Web 1.0 days and putting them in the context of online community that allows people to make and share recommendations. They mashed up those attributes with Google Maps, so the user can actually find the business being recommended. Another twist is applying social networking to both interest and geographic community. PC World reports on and links to sites that help solo travelers find compatible people to sit next to on airplanes, friendly couches to sleep on in distant cities, and cheap rides from the airport in expensive cities.

Online socializing in Lithuania & Russia

This isn't just another business story. Since I'm writing this in St. Petersburg, it's fun to see a news story about social networking in both Lithuania and Russia. Russian tech-news site CNews reports that Forticom, which operates Lithuanian social site One.lt, has acquired a 25% stake in Russian social-networking site Dnoklassniki.ru. CNews says that the Russian site's 4 million registered users generally skew older than One.lt's, but Forticom's just glad to break into the Russian market, which it has been trying to do for some time.

German social networking

Social networking is happening pretty much wherever there's a Web, but the picture looks a little different in each country. Fresh comScore research found that 45% of Germany's 32.9 online people (14.8m) visited social-networking sites in July, the latest figure available. As for the where they socialize, the Top 10 sites were: MySpace (3.6 million), studiVZ (3.1m), jux (2.6m), Piczo (2m), StayFriends (1.3m), Netlog (1.2m), Sevenload (1.1m), Xing (685,000), Skyrock Network (507,000), and MSN (440,000), as listed on BlogNation. Facebook, in at least the Top 3 in the US and UK, came in 11th in Germany last summer (177,000 visitors).

Facebook & MySpace in Oz

Social networking growth patterns in Australia makes for an interesting case study for parents looking for a bigger picture. MySpace has 3.8 million profiles in Australia, while Facebook has 141,000 Australian members. But Facebook grew by 273% in Australia between April and June, putting it in that country's top 5 online communities and "outpacing the industry leader," Australian IT cites Hitwise as reporting. Hitwise found that 18% of Facebook visitors arrived there directly from Hotmail, "where they may have received emails from friends asking them to join Facebook," and "nearly 10% came directly from a MySpace page." They're not abandoning MySpace, though, Hitwise added - there's just "a lot of crossover." "Twenty-three percent of MySpace traffic came directly from Google Australia."

Important new study: Students on the social Web

In releasing its study "Creating & Connecting: Research & Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational - Networking," the National School Boards Association this week added some balance to the public discussion about safety on the social Web. The 10-page report is just as useful to parents as it is to educators. Conducted for the NSBA by Grunwald Associates, the study found that…

These days US 9-to-17-year-olds are spending almost as much time on the social Web (about 9 hours/week) as they are watching TV (about 10 hours/week), and for many that online activity is "highly creative."

"Overall, an astonishing 96% of students with online access report that they have ever used social-networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities, such as Facebook, MySpace and services designed specifically for young children, such as Webkins and the chat sections of Nick.com," the NSBA reports. Interestingly, one of the most common topics of conversation in all this online communicating is education itself (about 60% of social networkers talk about this and 50% specifically about schoolwork). Grunwald surveyed, students, parents, and school district leaders for this study.

As for those creative online activities, the NSBA and Grunwald found that 32% of online students share music; 30% videos; 24% photos (22% their own photos or artwork); 12% updating/decorating their Web pages; 30% have blogs; 16% create and share virtual objects sucha as puzzles, houses, clothing, and games; 14% create new characters at least weekly; 10% contribute to online collaborative projects. The survey found that "nonconformists … are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors an skills that indicate leadership among their peers." They're "significantly heavier users of social networking sites" - 50% of them are producers and 38% are editors of online content. These students, the study found, are "significantly more likely than other students" to be "traditional influentials," "promoters," "recruiters," "organizers," and "networkers."

Fewer risks than expected
"Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown" is the headline on ArsTechnica.com's report on the NSBA study. It "suggests strongly … that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information." And there's a big discrepancy between students' actual experience with risk, as they reported it to the researchers, and school perceptions. More than half of US school districts (52%) say students providing personal information online has been "a significant problem," while "only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, screennames, or other personal info to strangers." The School Boards Association ends the report calling on schools to "reexamine their social-networking policies." It's important to have such policies, it says, but students may learn online safety and responsible online expression better "while they're actually using social-networking tools." [The ArsTechnica piece includes a link to the complete study in pdf format.]

Related link
PC World: "Report Refutes Claims of Social Networking Dangers"

Hacks in social sites

What I mean is, hackers (not malicious ones) have something to say about social-networking sites. Thousands of them gathered at two conferences in Las Vegas this past week, the Associated Press reports. Here's the important part: Hackers are seeing intruders in social-networking sites who "commandeer personal Web pages and possibly inject malicious code." They look for flaws in sites' code that allows them to "inject" their own malicious code into pages. This is " a particular problem for social networking sites, where it's difficult to police the content of the millions of posts each day," according to the AP. The intruders often add links to Web pages in other sites that steal the computer "cookie" information from the computer of the social networker who clicks on the link. Particularly vulnerable are people who use older versions of Firefox, one of the AP's sources said. The source said Facebook and MySpace patch flaws they find, but there are probably hundreds of flaws like this and it's tough to keep up with what's on tens of millions of pages. So the take-away is: Everybody needs to keep their browsers up-to-date and be careful about what links they click on in profiles and blogs!

More global-socializing numbers

Once you get past Tagged.com's and Facebook.com's amazing growth figures this past year (774% and 270%, respectively, with Bebo in third place at a respectable 172%), the worldwide membership of these sites is a little less jawdropping. But that international appeal probably explains a lot of these sites' growth. Friendster hasn't grown as much, but 88.7% of its members are in the Asia/Pacific region, as opposed to 7.7% in North America. Bebo's mostly in Europe, but Tagged's membership is more evenly spread through all regions of the world. All three are based in Northern California. All this is according to comScore's latest figures. PC World's headline is "Social networking quickly taking hold globally," and CNET ran an analysis.