Date: 02-13-2008
Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are now expanding and targeting countries outside the U.S., according to market researcher Comscore Media Metrix. ''It's a land grab, as well as a form of insurance in case the U.S. market proves itself to be fickle,'' says Marissa Gluck, an analyst at Radar Research. About 80% of the world's Internet users are outside the U.S., according to Computer Industry Almanac. Almost half of the $40 billion online ad market is not U.S.-based, and more than 6,500 social networking sites are active across the world, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. While MySpace and Facebook have dominated the American social networking scene, several homegrown sites in Asia have been independently experiencing the same kind of success. The trend now is that East and West are trading places.
