Webempires, a company that creates apps and visuals on interesting web companies, technology and business, recently published a map of the world’s dominating websites. The map visualizes the #1 websites in each country based on traffic rank (Alexa data). The visualization does not take into account properties. Where Google dominates in most of the world, it is interesting to see the Facebook footprint visualized in Africa.
The team at Webempires explains in their analysis, ‘What may come surprising (or not at all) is that Facebook is not lighting up across American continents. It’s far from taking over Europe, too. If this was a game called ‘Risk’ and your objective was to take over the entire world, it would be clear that Google is winning. However, Facebook is on its way of taking over Africa and fighting some really tough battles in Asia.’
Internet research site oAfrica, reported January 2012, that the number of Facebook users across the continent had increased 165 percent over the previous 18 month period. At the same time they questioned Facebook’s traction in more developed Internet economies like Kenya and highlighted Twitter as fast growing competitors. But a changing landscape aside, data from the Internet World Stats website shows more than 40 million Facebook users in Africa as of March 2012. That’s not bad for a continent with a population of about one billion people.
Also interesting to note, is the presence of American firms in all parts of the world but Asia. Webempires explains, ‘You will notice that American companies are leading in absolutely every country, but not in Asia. It’s the only continent where local companies are dominating. With Russian search engine Yandex taking a very strong position in Russia and lighting up a good portion of the world map, Baidu going right after, and with all the censorship challenges, American companies are finding it challenging to take the lead.’ In looking at Asia’s homegrown successes the question remains for Africa, is the continent able to produce its own?
And what about all of those Yahoo addresses? It is interesting to know the company is still number one in Cameroon!