8 rising social networks around the world: Niche sites on the up

While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn dominate the global scene, niche social networks have massively increased their market share, with Instagram and Pinterest emerging as the global winners, according to a new study.

The study, from Experian, highlights the growth of Instagram and Pinterest between July 2011 and July 2012 in terms of their share of visits to All Sites by country.

The meteoric rise of both Instagram, which allows users to share photos with others through social networks and Pinterest, the online pinboard that allows users to organise and share their interests with others, has resulted in them now featuring in the top 20 social media networks used in Singapore, the UK and North America.
Other niche social networks such as Reddit in Australia, FanPop in the UK and Stock Twits in the US have also experienced significant gains.
James Murray, Digital Insights Manager, Experian commented: “The growth of both Instagram and Pinterest over the past year has been phenomenal. The reason for their success is that they haven’t tried to be ‘another Facebook’. Instead, they both identified a gap in the market and used the scale of Facebook to reach consumers. Both networks are image based which people love – we all relate better to pictures than just words. For brands that are retailers for example, a site like Pinterest presents a fantastic opportunity to promote products in a compelling and organised way to a wide group of people across the world.
“Over the next 12 months, we expect to see a proliferation of niche social networks. Offering deeper functionality combined with a lower technical barrier to entry will mean new leaders in social media being created in a matter of days versus weeks and months.”
As brands get to grips with using social media effectively to reach and connect with customers and prospects, Experian’s findings illustrate how broad the social media landscape has become globally. Social networking is one of the biggest online pastimes across the globe.
Further analysis also highlights some of the other fast growing social networks by country between July 2011 to July 2012:

About the new social stars
Instagram
Consumers all over the world love getting snap happy, using Instagram to take and upload pictures to share with friends and family. Further analysis reveals that Facebook is the number one driver of traffic to www.instagram.com in North America, Brazil and Australia where 47%, 44% and 33% of all traffic to www.instagram.com comes from Facebook. Interestingly, in Singapore, 42% of all visits to www.instagram.com are from Twitter, followed by 22% from Facebook. And upon leaving the site, social media loving Americans, Brazilians and Hong Kongers are most likely to head back to Facebook (21%, 16% and 8% respectively), Singaporeans will go on to Twitter and Twitpic whereas Britons, Australians and New Zealanders will go in search of something else through Google.
Pinterest
Pinterest has experienced a significant increase in users over the past year, particularly in the US where it is now the fourth biggest social network used by Americans. It still has a way to catch up in the UK where it is the 14th biggest social networking site.
Singaporeans spend on average 23 minutes on Pinterest, Americans 15 minutes per Pinterest session and Brits only nine minutes. Americans and Singaporeans are more likely to visit Pinterest after having been on Facebook compared to Brits who will go to Pinterest direct from Google.
In the UK, just over a quarter (28%) of Pinterest’s visitors are new users whereas in the US it is just 13% on average suggesting that it may be close to peaking in terms of new users.
Source: http://www.experianplc.com