Note: Although I didn’t write this exactly about development of Internet in China, I’m posting it here because it was recently included in a future publication about global social networks.

Whether its myspace or facebook, there is enough talk about them worldwide for global brand recognition. Just the recent addition of 100K members from Hong Kong in one week is a point worth noting. U.K. on its own provides facebook with over 1 million registered users. So what does all of this really mean? Will facebook overtake every single foreign market? Will it become the dominant platform for personal connections, interactions and information screener—at least for some demographics? Will it perhaps become a leader for English speaking countries? Do foreign languages represented within fb mean anything in terms of future adoption? Finally, how to explain the growing rise of smaller social networking site – or are they simply following the hype?

The answer to many of these questions is a simple no. Why? Well, because facebook’s initial unique target audience is exactly what attracted college students in the first place. It created a network, a filter, a community – that had something in common. After all, that’s what brand is all about: central idea and theme. Sure there is myspace, the site that completely disregards this concept of “common” – but then that’s exactly why it appealed to a certain type of audience (and primarily) during the earlier years of www. It caught up because people who never knew how to reach out for information (whatever that might be) were finally given a remote control into the internet. While some of us were reaching out to use google and wikipedia, others simply chose to sail with the media—myspace, the company.

Yet, the world is changing and the amount of information out there is staggering. People make claims stating how much more “bad news” is happening globally, but then fail to notice how much more connected the world has become. The problem of yesterday is no longer the problem of today! The information is there, it is how we filter the rest that matters! There are thousands of blogs covering local city events – whom do I spare my attention? Editorship, Style, Language Use – do I use these to compare (on thousands of blogs)?

Or should I perhaps trust my friends’ judgment as a filter? Sure, sounds good! But then I’ve a variety of friends: some I know from birth, others speak only Chinese, a few live in Russia – surely their knowledge of each single issue is not the same. Do I really want to know about the sexual interests of a friend I know from work? Then perhaps I could specify limits to what information I’m willing to accept from others, right? Wrong! Internet allows us to expand our knowledge, why limit ourselves to what we already know?

That’s where the global facebook fails. It provides a filter based on my friends, not their knowledge of any particular subject. Global facebook no longer has a brand! That’s why Google exists and Yahoo is losing on revenue; whereas local social networks matter because they provide a specific central theme for a particular audience—however large that might be. On a Russian career network I will trust opinions about Russia’s job market. On dogster I will find the best information about dogs…

Sure facebook might integrate locales. I might even feel partly isolated from the outside world (i.e. other languages) - but all of that is only on the surface. Micro information can only be dealt with on a micro level.

So while most are trying to figure our how to build the next global social network, the answer is quite simple: find a solution to integrate all without replacing them! Perhaps that’s where the evolution of feed readers will take us – who knows?

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