Social Networking is growing at a tremendous rate outside the US.

Websites such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Hi5 are seeing a surge in traffic from Asian and European users. In addition, Nielsen Online is claiming that nearly half of all Australian’s have a social networking profile. About one-third of the Australian users signed up within the last three months, much of this growth is being attributed to females signing up.

“The report, which Nielsen said was the most in-depth analysis of social networking ever compiled at a local level, found the catalyst for growth in profile creation was curiosity, followed by a desire to reconnect with people from the past and meet new people.” - USA Today

"Nearly half of all Australians now had a social networking profile and as many as half of current non-users indicated they would sign up within the next 12 months.

Nielsen said much of the growth could be attributed to increased interest from females, with uptake in this demographic growing by a third in the past three months. By contrast, a quarter of males with online profiles first created them over two years ago."Many of the most popular social networking players are aggressively pursuing overseas users, mainly in Asia and Europe, which together have more users than the US. Much of the activity is a desire to ensure that the services popularity and membership continue to grow, in case the US market flounders." - Sydney Morning Herald

FACT: Only 20 percent of the Internet traffic originates in the US, and 80 percent of traffic (over 1 billion users) originates from overseas.

Many of the social media destinations are developing translation applications in order to draw more non-US members. Facebook is one of the leaders in localizing its services for non English speaking users. As of last week, it is offering Spanish translations of its pages (via a selection in account settings) and will be soon offering German and French language options to users. Facebook has been quoted as saying that sixty percent of its users originate from outside the US, up from seven only percent in 2006.

MySpace is also becoming popular outside the US. They claim that forty-five percent of its users originate from outside the US, up from only fifteen percent a year ago. MySpace is expanding rapidly in other countries such as Russia, Turkey, Poland, Portugal and others (25 countries).

LinkedIn is also aggressively marketing to overseas professionals. LinkedIn has recently opened an office in London, and hopes to double its membership base in the UK to two million in 2008.

"Some social-networking sites, such as Hi5, decided to establish themselves overseas first and let others slug it out in the USA. And many countries have home-grown social-networking sites, such as Mixi in Japan and Skyrock in France, Gluck says." - USA Today

The Biggest Issue

The popularity of social networking is forcing advertisers to develop new tactics to reach users. Traditional forms of online advertising just are not cutting it any more. The social media users are just not clicking and buying products. Much of the blame is on the relaxed atmosphere of social-networks.

While non-US traffic is account for a large portion of social-networking services, monetizing that traffic is going to be one of the largest hurdles that these services will experience. With the recent news that advertising on social media sites is down, advertisers must innovate and find new ways to reach the social networking user base. While users aren’t clicking on advertising as they have in the past, branding is still an important factor advertisers must consider.

It isn’t about the click through anymore, it’s about brand awareness and encouraging the social network users to remember their brand and talk about it on these sites.

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