Social media in Europe and the US is very different to that in the Asia-Pacific region.

People in Asia are much more likely to use their own locally-developed social network site rather than Facebook to discuss international package delivery firms and which companies offer the best courier services.

This is the finding from Gartner, which has produced a report outlining the diverging social media markets in Europe, the US and Asia.

Many of the top social sites in the west, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are yet to take off in the Asia-Pacific region because of the strength of local sites.

The region has many of the earliest examples of these - Friendster, Cyworld, Mixi and RenRen, notes Gartner, though the landscape is changing.

Research director at Gartner Nick Ingelbrecht said some of these original examples of the online social network are starting to lose subscribers.

"The willingness of Asian consumers to pay for social network service features is being eroded by the onslaught of the free, feature-rich Google juggernaut and the range of Facebook's platform," he added.

Gartner said this week that virtually all business apps will be tailored for social media use by 2016.

Posted by Tom Sands 

Article Added: 21/10/2010 16:55:33