In most of the English-speaking world, the big three social networking sites–Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn–are king. However, the image above shows how diverse social media networking is across the globe, and which platforms are embraced by different nations. Though many of these networks follow similar principles, they each offer something unique. In a global society, it is important to understand how internet users across the world interact.

Cloob is a Persian-language social networking site, mainly popular in Iran. After the popular social networking website Orkut was blocked by the Iranian government, Cloob emerged to fill the gap. Users have access to features like job and resume database, virtual money (called coroob), income/expense bookkeeping, online shops for offering goods and services, classifieds, questions and answers, more.

Draugiem was launched on 2004 and is currently the largest social networking website in Latvia. This site plays an important part in the everyday life of internet users of Latvia and is frequently used as a tool of communication instead of e-mail.

Mixi focuses on ”community entertainment,” that is, meeting new people based on common interests. As is typical of social networking sites, users can send and receive messages, write in a diary, read and comment on others’ diaries, organize and join communities, and invite their friends. Started in 2004, it had 21.6 million users as of 2008.

Odnoklassniki is a social network service for reuniting classmates and old friends, popular in Russia and other former Soviet Republics. The website currently claims that it has more than 45 million registered users and 10 million daily unique visitors.

Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google, and is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. As of October 2011, 59.1% of Orkut’s users are from Brazil, followed by India with 27.1% and Japan with 6.7%.

QZone is a platform which allows users to write blogs, keep diaries, send photos, and listen to music. This is a very active community of over 480 million users.

VKontakte is popular among Russian-speaking users around the world. It began very close in design and functionality to Facebook, and like other social networks, VK allows users to message contacts publicly or privately, create groups, public pages and events, share and tag images, audio and video, and play browser-based games.

Weibo was launched in 2009 and is one of the most popular social media sites in China, this social media site can be thought of as a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter. It had 300 million registered users as of Feb. 2012.

Post written by Carolyn Rogers, IBM Worldwide Social Media Manager for ISV & Developer Relations.