Turns out that only slightly more than half of adults know what social networking is.
According to eMarketer's reporting on a recent Synovate study, only 58% of the multinational respondents knew what social networking is. While some of you might be thinking, "How can that be? I spend my life on Facebook/MySpace/Hi5/Bebo/Orkut."
What's interesting to me is the specific geographical breakouts - the Dutch, Japanese, and Americans all had the highest percentages of recognition - 89%, 71%, and 70%, respectively.
And specific social networking penetration in countries peaked with the Netherlands at 49%, the United Aram Emirates at 46%, and the United States at 40%. This tracks fairly closely with results that were featured in the April 2008 Universal McCann survey. The U.S. clearly leads in raw numbers.
If you're interested in how social networks rank in international circles, here's a table of the top 3 social networking sites by membership in various countries.
Also worthy of note is that the UAE, Indonesia, India and Bulgaria all rank at the top of countries where social networkers register for multiple sites. Other countries consisted of respondents who registered for one or two main sites.
For my international readers, does this fit with your reality? Are there sites that you favor (or favour) that aren't listed here? Have you noted any trends in your own work?