Courtesy of Le Monde here is a cool map of how strong each social network is all over the world. The map provides great insight into what is the network of choice in various parts of the world.
Stating the obvious MySpace has a slight lead on Facebook in North America, while Orkut is growing in popularity in Brazil and India. What’s neat is that most users beyond the Big 2 don’t know about these other popular and accessible sites, thus bringing into focus sites we rarely talk about in the US “starved for anything social media related” press. Examples of sites you might know about are: Cyworld and Mixi which are the #2 and #4 social networks in Asia-Pacific, while Netlog, Yonja, and Skyblog are #3, 4, and 5 in Africa, respectively. And, in addition to being really popular in Latin America, hi5 is apparently #1 in that destination vacation spot… Mongolia.
Just for the record: Eastern and Central Europe, where I am from, all use facebook.