[abossy]

I agree. My personal anecdote is that I've been to three countries in the past year; Japan, Mexico and Colombia; and later connected with every single person I met that was in their teens or twenties. This includes some fairly rural parts of Mexico and Colombia that don't necessarily have broadband or very good Internet access, in general.

[ramchip]

From what I noticed among my japanese friends however, Mixi is a lot more popular over there than Facebook. It's less open though: invitation-only, and you need a japanese cellphone address to register, so I've seen few travelers/foreigners on it.

[madmanslitany]

It's pretty geared towards Japanese cultural norms, from what I've read and what my own Japanese friends have told me. I don't think it would be as acceptable as it is here to meet someone briefly through a friend and then add them the next day on facebook, for instance.

It's an interesting barrier towards global adoption, methinks; it's like how neither Google nor Yahoo can beat Baidu in mainland China, because Baidu just understands what its audience wants better. But, I think that a social networking platform is going to struggle a lot more with adapting to cultural norms than information search is.

[sachinag]

You haven't had to deal with "social media experts" who treat Facebook as LinkedIn and friend me after meeting me at an event.

http://explore.twitter.com/sachinag/status/1122877566