This map by XKCD might look like a child made it, but it is in fact based on actual traffic to these sites. Here is the description:
Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community‘s current size and health. This updated map uses sizes to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.
Do yourself a favour and look at the large version of this file, it is pretty expansive. A few things took me by surprise – look at the size of QQ and Farmville. But these communities are not a patch compared to Email and the cellular cash cow called SMS.
Another very cool map was recently created for Web 2.0 Summit, called the Points of Control Map, which integrates a few other players, not only online communities. This map is actually interactive – so I recommend you go view the full version.
This is the very same map that recently came under criticism from Mark Zuckerburg, in which he mentioned that there is one missing part – “uncharted territory“… This is probably where innovative products like Facebook’s new messaging system would want to explore.
Source: xkcd
