Taking Social Networks Abroad - Why MySpace and Facebook are Failing in Japan

As successful as the large social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are, the majority of their members are from the US (and to a somewhat lesser extent, other English-speaking countries).

Facebook has well over 100 million members. To give some perspective, the population of the US is roughly 300 million, the global population is around 7 billion. That leaves enormous room for growth internationally, but also raises a few questions.

Is it possible for one site to appeal to all users globally? Does culture-centric thinking prevent us from breaking the international barrier, or is something simply lost in translation?

The following article addresses one example of the cultural differences, namely in Japan where Mixi reigns supreme:

"Taking Social Networks Abroad, Why MySpace and Facebook are Failing in Japan", TechCrunch
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/03/taking-social-networks-abroad-why-myspace-and-facebook-are-failing-in-japan/