Social Networks Search Trends

Welcome back from the holidays everyone. Rob and I have a ton of new things we want to talk about – candidly the semi-holiday did us good. (Semi, because we worked anyway…)

One of my latest obsessions has been Google Trends. Although it’s been around for a while now I never really took full advantage of it’s potential. I now find myself taking any subject, business, or brand that I become interested in and use Google Trends to plot how any one keyword tracks against it’s competitors.

I did a comparison of some of the largest social networks based on registered users. It was really interesting to see the rise of MySpace with the apparent fanfare that surrounded it then see the unbelievable surge of Facebook (in terms of searches being done for that keyword on Google). It surpassed MySpace in early 2008 which was somewhat in line with it’s status change as the new largest social network in the world.

If you click the link above you can also note the regions, city, and  languages that the keywords searchs have been the most active in. I’m continually surprised by how big Facebook is in Turkey.

As fascinating as all of this is (for nerds like me) – here’s the bit that really blew my mind.  Let’s do the same search with business social networks….

Business Social Network Search Trends

Plaxo seems to be running pretty consistently for the last four years – even the Comcast acquisition didn’t appear to do much to raise it’s profile. Naymz and Ryze are virtually off the radar (even though I find Naymz very useful). There’s no surprise that LinkedIn is going strong as the primary business social network in the United States, BUT where the hell did XING come from. I had no idea they were getting that much attention internationally. Visit the full Google Trends analysis to check out the regions, city, and languages of the most common searches.

I make a point of signing up most every social network (personal or business). Sometimes I use my real name and sometime I create dummy accounts just so I can sniff around without anyone hunting down my profile (for the advertising world). I recently signed up for XING. I had received a couple invites – primarily from friends in Asia and Germay and figured it was time to check it out.

Anyway, here’s my point. If the quantity of searches correlates to the popularity of a site then XING is the biggest contender to LinkedIn on a global level for the number one business social networking site. Combine that with the face that I believe Asia is the future center of the world then I think it’s essential to get registered on XING if you do business internationally. I think this XING has the right ingredients and has chosen the world’s largest growth markets to become, in time, the world dominant leader in business social networking.

I’m going to start using my XING account far more aggressively and I’ll keep you posted on how I think it’s evolving and how useful it is in business. It’s going to be a while before the traffic catches up, but it’s on the right path.

PS – If you use XING and/or want to sign-up. Visit my XING profile and add me as a friend: https://www.xing.com/profile/Freddie_Laker