Believe it or not, Facebook hasn’t taken over the entire world – yet.
Thanks to Vincenzo Cosenza, an Italian social network specialist, and IBM’s “Many Eyes” project, you can check out which social networks are dominating in which countries. Note that this information is not 100% up to date, but does an excellent job of showing which social networks are the most popular in each country.

The map confirms what we already know – that Facebook is dominating in Western countries like the United States, that developing countries like India, Brazil and China tend to have radically different preferences in social networking, and that networks like LinkedIn, while popular, do not dominate any particular country.
Users with Java installed can check out an interactive version of the map below:

As Facebook’s global reach continues to spread, we expect to see this map change.
Reminder: Adchap is available on Facebook, as well as the Myspace, Friendster, Bebo, and Hi5 social networks. Check back to our AdChap Blog often for more social networking, social networking demographics and social news and information.

When it comes to relationship status, not all countries are created equal, at least not in the world of online social networking.

According to statistics obtained from Facebook’s analytics system, there is a disproportionately large percentage of users reporting their relationship status as “single” in Middle-Eastern and South Asian countries; meanwhile, there is an equally heavy percentage of users reporting their relationship status as either “In a relationship,” “Engaged,” or “Married” in European countries.

The top ten “most single” countries (as measured by the percentage of Facebook users reporting “single” status in terms of users reporting any relationship status) are Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Ghana.

In contrast, the top ten “least single” countries (as measured by the percentage of Facebook users reporting “in a relationship,” “engaged,” or “married” in terms of users reporting any relationship status) are Finland, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Australia, Ireland, Switzerland.

Glancing at the gender balance of Facebook users in the top 10 most- and least-single countries, we can see some stark and statistically significant findings. Countries with the highest percentage of single Facebook users also have a disproportionately high amount of male Facebook users numbering among those singles.  Countries with a closer balance of single / non-single Facebook users also have a closer gender balance among those singles.

Overall the average percentage of single Facebook users is approximately 39%. The United States, comprising the largest percentage of Facebook users, shows 35% of users reporting “single” relationship status, making the typical American Facebook user slightly less single than average.

It’s important to note that these figures are in proportion to the number of users reporting any relationship status at all. Many Facebook users do not report any relationship status at all, and this demographic information shows equally intriguing results.

On average, 40% of Facebook users do not report any relationship status at all; this could be due to any number of reasons, but likely largely stems from privacy concerns. The five countries with highest percentage of users reporting a relationship status are: the United States, South Africa, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Australia, Denmark, Honduras and Puerto Rico. Of those ten, five are native English-speaking countries, and the remaining countries have either compulsory ESL (English as a Second Language) programs or high percentages of non-compulsory ESL learners. We can conclude, therefore, that statistically speaking, Facebook users from English-speaking countries tend to report their relationship status more often than Facebook users from non-English-speaking countries.

Although we hear often about the prevalence of social networking among teens, Facebook usage and age demographic data suggest that the vast majority of Facebook users are adults.

The following graph shows a country-by-country breakdown of the percentage of Facebook users below the age of 18, and dispels the myth that most Facebook users are teens.

According to data obtained from Facebook’s demographic reporting program, the mean percentage of Facebook users below the age of eighteen is 12.6%. The United States, currently the largest segment of Facebook’s nearly 175 million users, shows very similar usage, with 12.3% of Facebook users in the United States under the age of 18. The United Kingdom, the 2nd most popular country for Facebook, shows approximately 10.8% of users below 18. Among Canadian Facebook users, 14% are below 18.

Indeed, unlike gender or penetration statistics, when it comes to age, there appears to be little connection between the percentage of under-18 Facebook users and their countries, languages or regions. Countries with the largest number of Facebook users tend to have the largest numbers of teens, but in terms of percentages, there are no clear trends to be found from a first-glance at the data.

All of this seems to jibe with prevailing market research which suggests that Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is, in fact, adults. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has shown that during Q4 of 2008, one of Facebook’s fastest growing demographics was females aged 55 and over. They also show research from December, 2008 that shows that social networking use has quadrupled in the last three years among adults, and that roughly 35% of adults now have profiles on social networks.

What does this all mean in terms of social network advertising? In a nutshell, it means that different age groups may have very different browsing habits, which can have a big impact on how they use social networks – which, of course, can have a big impact on how you advertise to them through those social networks.

Which countries have the highest number of Facebook users per capita? The analytics may surprise you.

According to Facebook demographics obtained this month, Iceland, the country with the highest percentage of Facebook users, shows an astonishing 43% of the total population using Facebook, meaning that according to Facebook’s statistics, almost half of Iceland’s 305,000 residents are on Facebook.

In contrast, the United States, the largest country in terms of total Facebook users, is nowhere near the most “facebook penetrated” country, when graphing the total number of Facebook users against the total population. In fact, the U.S. came in #16 out of 96 countries with measurable Facebook analytics, with a total Facebook penetration score of just around 15% of the population.

What trends does this data show? At first glance, the ten countries shown here seem to have little in common, but if we look closer, we see that nine out of these ten countries are either native English speaking countries or countries with a very high percentage of second-language English speakers.

The other end of the spectrum yields equally interesting results – the five least Facebooked countries are (in order), China, Vietnam, Ukraine, Russia and India, each of them showing less than .15% of the total population registered on Facebook. It bears mentioning, though, that while these countries show low proportions of Facebook users, at least China, Russia and India feature high internet connectivity and significant social networking activity; this means that social networks other than Facebook may be better reaching audiences in their native languages.

Facebook’s localization and expansion efforts are in fact starting to pay off, we are seeing huge growth in countries where facebook has been translated.  This is another topic for another day however!