A year ago, we covered the global mapping of social networks by Vincenzo Cosenza , a public relations specialists and former Microsoft Italy marketer. Almost a year to the day later, Cosenza remapped the global use of social networks. Sponsor Like his previous effort, Vincenzo’s new maps were based on Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data. Among the trends the earlier exercise identified were Facebook ’s near-colonization of Europe and its 200 millions users; the status of China’s QQ as the largest social network in the world, with 300 million users; and MySpace ’s loss of leadership everywhere except in Guam. Unsurprisingly, the biggest change is the furtherance of a trend: Facebook’s growth. +Facebook is eating its local competitors +Facebook now has almost 500 million users +In terms of visitors, Facebook is now larger than QQ +Out of 131 countries surveyed, 111 show Facebook as the leading social network In-country exceptions to the Facebook rule includes China, where QQ still rules, and seems to still have a few more active users than Facebook and Russia, where Odnoklassniki and V Kontakte social networks remain the most popular. Orkut is still the most popular in Brazil but is losing significant ground in India, where Alexa, but not Google, gives Facebook the #1 position. A scattering of other countries retains its affection for local networks. Some of these, like Syria ( Maktoob ) and Iran, ( Cloob ) may have political considerations that effect their choices. The use of non-Latin writing systems may also have a part to play. Cosenza concurs. “In my researches (I’m director of Digital PR , an Italian social media agency owned by Hill & Knowlton – WPP) I saw that social networks adoption is driven by cultural, social and political factors. So I strongly agree.” Other interesting elements to note are the gain by Twitter against MySpace in Australia and Canada and the (slow) growth of LinkedIn. Discuss

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Today citizen journalism site AllVoices is launching news bureaus in 30 additional countries. They say the bureaus are to be staffed by a hybrid force of professional and citizen journalists. New countries represented include Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Egypt, India, the Philippines and Armenia. Sponsor Reports make their way up through a system in which the most popular stories are forwarded up levels from country to region to front page. Each city represented by the Global News Desk has a landing page which features local news. “Likewise each country and continent has their own landing page,” said Aki Hashmi, AllVoices Chief Marketing Officer. “An algorithm promotes the best of the city page to the country page and the best of the country page to the continent page. Finally, the best of the continent page will be promoted to the Allvoices front page.” According to AllVoices, 300,000 journalists and citizen journalists contribute to the service and serves and audience of 4.5 million. Citizen journalism site Demotix , by contrast, claims 14,00 members in 110 countries, though it acts as much as an agency as a news site. NowPublic claims it serves, and is served by citizen journalists in, 6,000 cities in 160 countries for five million monthly readers. Discuss

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According to a new study by Milan-based consultancy firm Lundquist , Apple has the best Wikipedia entry among Fortune Global 500 companies . Lundquist ranked Wikipedia pages according to the quality of the data in the infobox, page features like links and citations and the quality and availability of page sections like company history and charts. Today, 489 out of the Global 500 companies are featured on Wikipedia, though the majority of companies scored very low on Lundquist’s scale. The average score was just 11 out of a possible 25 points. Apple’s entry scored 22 points. Sponsor Top Wikipedia Pages Apple (22 pts) BT (21.5 pts) Nokia (21 pts) Royal Dutch Shell (21 pts) Ford Motor (20.5 pts) Toyota Motor (20.5 pts) BAE Systems (20 pts) Bank of America (20 pts) BP (20 pts) Dell (20 pts) Wikipedia is one of the first entry points for Internet users who are looking for more information about a company. A lot of companies score very low on Lundquist’s scale, however. Quite a few entries, for example, don’t even mention what geographic area the company serves or display any data bout the company’s board members or number of employees. According to the company’s researchers, entries for companies in the computer and IT services industry have the highest average score, while the entries for pharmaceutical and health care companies rank the lowest. According to Lundquist, Sumitomo Electric Industries and the French financial services group Crédit Industriel & Commercial have the worst Wikipedia pages of all the Global Fortune 500 companies. What Can Companies Do to Improve Their Pages? As the report’s authors point out, companies are strongly discouraged from editing their own articles on Wikipedia. There are some things, however, that these companies can do to enhance their entries. Here are three recommendations from the report, which don’t just apply to large companies: respect the rules of Wikipedia make copyright-free images available to the Wikipedia community only edit factual information like quarterly results or management changes (Wikipedia actually encourages companies to do this, though it’s probably best to explain the edit in detail) use discussion pages to interact with editors engage and help editors who are interested in the company or the company’s products monitor your company’s Wikipedia article for updates and vandalism Discuss

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