Social networks are getting huge. So big, in fact, that many of them are competing in size with some of the largest countries in the world.

To give you (and us) a nice and visual overview of how today’s social networks stack up against countries in terms of sheer size, we have put together this chart:

Some quick observations:

• Apparently the Chinese social network QZone is even bigger than Facebook.
• Facebook is bigger than Russia.
• MySpace is pretty close in size to Mexico.
• LinkedIn, Bebo and Xanga are bigger than Canada.
• Considering Twitter’s strong growth, it won’t be long until it’s bigger than Sweden.
• Orkut is larger (barely) than France.
• And finally: Does EVERYONE in the Philippines have a Friendster account? Both Friendster and the Philippines have a population of 90 million. We had heard it’s popular there, but still…

If we view the Internet as a virtual companion to the real world, then social networks could be considered countries in this virtual world. And as you can see, these countries are getting enormous. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few years. How large can they get?

Data sources: Country populations are from Wikipedia. Social network sizes are always difficult to find reliable, up-to-date sources for, but we did our best: The numbers for MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Xanga, Imeem, Last.fm and Twitter are all from Wikipedia. The QZone number is from here. The Facebook number is from here.The Windows Live Spaces number is from here. The LinkedIn number is from here. The Livejournal number is from here. The Orkut number is from here.

art, big, chart, design, graph, graphic, map, nations, size, social networking, statistic

CURB is the world’s first natural media company. We offer a range of highly effective media solutions solely using natural earth elements. We have created a portfolio of unique eco-advertising services and a crack green team of creative experts, to provide clients with outstanding natural marketing which impacts on their target consumer without impacting on the environment.

Our award winning natural media has already achieved worldwide coverage and put simply we offer a viable and effective choice for clients and agencies looking to integrate nature into their marketing communications.

media, natural

This is even better than I first thought! You can create your very own David Cameron poster campaign.

Make your own David Cameron poster

creative, david cameron, fun, politics, spoof, viral

Shouldn’t say this, but I discovered a great way to set up an easy-to-use blog site at posterous.com

The downside is that there are only a few templates available, and they seem to be buggy with some browsers. Still, a useful tool for, as an example, for Oxfam’s emergency team out helping earthquake survivors. They can post updates to http://haitiquake.posterous.com – which is how I knew there had been a second earthquake, hours before mainstream media knew about it.

blog, earthquake, haiti, media, oxfam

Now here is an idea with a difference! This turns the concept of the usual spam emails you get – you know the ones: those pleading for help in syphoning money off by you supplying your bank details to someone sitting in the city jungle of Nigeria – on it’s head. A bold and clever idea:

concept, creative, mother, nigeria, spam, spoof

A simple statement that means so much. As a designer I offer a service, for which I charge money. But what is the point for an entrepreneur or marketing manager to use my service? After all, they don’t want yet someone else taking home a pay-cheque at their expense. Their ambition is not to feed another wage-slave, but to make money. New money. Not just enough to pay the mortgage, but to go beyond.

Well, for starters, I’m an entrepreneur in my own right. After all, if I can’t deliver a product, I don’t get paid.

But I not only want to make money to pay my bills. That would be short-term thinking. After all, I have to allow for ‘quite’ periods ie. during the Christmas holidays etc and so always need to generate a lot more money at any one time, so that I can see through the lean times too.

So I’m in the business of making money. And the only way I can make money is by making even more money for my clients. Their investment in my services has to yield real and measurable returns. By understanding this and using my 20 years of media industry knowledge, my service is, quite literally, value for money. And that’s why I have many long standing clients who keep coming back for more of the same.

So all I can say to any new client who wants to know more about my services: Let’s make money!

business, design, enterpreneur, enterprise, money, prposition, wage-slave

I can’t help but agree with most things Seth Godwin says. Take this latest posting on his blog:

When you’re trying to sell your idea, it’s natural to assume that the people you’re selling to think the way you do. If you can only show them the facts and stories that led you to believe what you believe, then of course they’ll end up where you are… believing.

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always think like you.

Go watch some videos of people of different political ideologies talking about why they support a candidate other than your candidate. These people are stupid! They can’t conjugate an idea, they have no factual basis for their beliefs, they are clueless, they are ideologues, they are parroting a talking head who knows even less than they do! (And those epithets apply to anyone you disagree with, of course). In fact, they’re saying the same thing about you.

Same goes for diehard fans of the other brand, or worse, the clueless who should be using your solution, but don’t even care enough to use your competitor’s product.

If they only thought like you, of course, and knew what you know, then there wouldn’t be a problem.

The challenge doesn’t lie in getting them to know what you know. It won’t help. The challenge lies in helping them see your idea through their lens, not yours. If you study the way religions and political movements spread, you can see that this is exactly how it works. Marketers of successful ideas rarely market the facts. Instead, they market stories that match the worldview of the people being marketed to.

[There's an alternative, one that you might want to think hard about: perhaps you should only market your idea to people who already think the way you do. After all, you're not running for president, you don't need a majority. Screen people by their behavior (what they read, what they buy, how they act) and only tell your story to the people who will embrace it. That's a lot easier to do that than it's ever been before.]

blog, marketing, seth godwin, thinking

A nice blog on how you you can have a lot more friends online these days…

friends, social networking