NEW YORK TIMES — Apr 10 — About 11 million of Orkut's more than 15 million users are registered as living in Brazil – a remarkable figure, given that ~12 million Brazilians use the Internet from home. Schools, workplaces, even residential streets have "communities" joined by people who have studied, worked or lived there. No one quite knows why Orkut caught on among Brazilians and not Americans. It exploded once it gained a foothold in Brazil.
The full article was originally published at IHT, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Rate.ee is Estonia's social network. Bebo 'owns' Ireland. Friendster is huge in the Phillipines. Please email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com or comment if you know of any other regionally focused social networks.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500
Alexa has a new section that shows the top 100 sites by country. Might want to start by looking there.
By the way. Orkut is popular in Estonia too. Older people who don´t want to use rate.ee prefer orkut because it has attracted more grown-ups (older than 20 year old).