Visualizations : Social networks popularity world map : The world map is a colour...

The world map is a colour coded map with each social networking site represented in a different colour. Where data wasn’t available the country border is not displayed. If you click on a site from the list on the right hand side the countries that use that site are highlighted.

Probably because we’re so used to these representations of the world, this one is someone easier to use and grasp. Of course, it puts way too much emphasis on landmass instead of the number of Internet users, but in terms of quick and easy visualization, this one seems to work best. The other two get a bit confusing, especially in terms of zooming in. A spreadsheet version would have some of the same advantages as the other two versions and might be easier to use, especially in terms of reusing the data.
One broad issue is that the level of analysis is so broad that it all seems to imply social networks follow national lines, which they rarely do. Sure, Facebook penetration in Canada is quite impressive but many Canadians are on other networks and there isn’t much in Facebook that makes it specifically Canadian. We also don’t know much about different regions of specific countries, which might differ significantly in terms of social network use.

Difficult to find smaller countries when a site is selected (e.g., Bebo). It might help to have the other countries become neutral (e.g., all light gray) to make countries with the selected site stand out.