We Global: 5 International Social Networking Sites
Just because your entire world is on Facebook or Myspace doesn’t mean the rest of the real world is as well. They may reign supreme in the US, but in other countries homegrown social networking sites run shit. Sure, most of them offer up the same basic social networking features and services'the ability to make friends, post photo’s, share interests'but some go one step further and offer their users a little extra.
To see how the rest of the world is interacting with each other, we combed the ‘Net and came up with the five most interesting ones we could find. So just in case you find yourself overseas for a minute, check out our list below…
NAME: Mixi [LINK]
COUNTRY: Japan
# of Users: 19 Million
What Is It? This invitation only service is the biggest social networking site in Japan with massive 80% of the market on lock. They encourage users to write in their Diary which is available to all other users who read it and comment on your day to day affairs, kinda like a longer status update on Facebook. Going along with their “community entertainment” tagline, one application, Mixi Station, scans your Windows Media player and iTunes and posts the songs to a community playlists for all to listen to in the Music section of the site.
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NAME: Faceparty [LINK]
COUNTRY: England
# of Users: 200,000
What Is It? Faceparty is probably the least commercial site on the ‘Net. You have to be invited to join by another member and there’s no real emphasis on making and accumulating crazy amounts of friends. They’d rather you help build a community by offering up interesting conversation and jokes through their Gossip section, attending their Faceparty events or join one of the many Hubs, which are like member groups for various interests. And, for some reason, they sometimes randomly theme their entire website like they did in July, when they adopted a canine them and changed everyone’s picture with photos of different breeds. The current theme seems to be “mustaches.”
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NAME: Webkare (Japanese for Web Boyfriend) [LINK]
COUNTRY: Japan
# of Users: Unknown
What Is It? Geared towards young woman, Webkare is more like an online game than a traditional social networking site. Users sign up and choose one of four virtual boys to try and hook up with. The only way they speak to their “crush” is through animated sequences which they have to respond to. Social interaction is kept to a minimum, profile pages have the basic functions and the only time the users really talk to each other is work together in winning over their crush. Yeah, seems like a colossal waste of time to us, too.
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NAME: Cyworld [LINK]
COUNTRY: South Korea
# of Users: 23 Million
What Is It? Owned by communications juggernaut SK Telecom, Cyworld offers users a bunch of interesting and innovative features. Once you join, you get to set up a minihompy, which is basically your own minisite with a message board, photo gallery, friend list and personal bulletin board. You build friends by linking to their minihompy’s and having them link to yours, kind of like the blogosphere. They also have 3D virtual worlds called Mini Life where users can pick an avatar and interact with other users.
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NAME: Vkontakte [LINK]
COUNTRY: Russia
# of Users: 20 Million
What Is It? Despite the fact that they straight up jacked Facebook’s old design, Vkontakte has some pretty cool features like giving their users the ability to upload an unlimited number of video clips which then gets archived and made available for searching by any Vkontakte users, making it a mini YouTube. You can also upload music to the site and build a streaming library. And like the video function, you can search for music files on the site, too. Besides that, it’s pretty identical to Facebook.
