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683FEATURE ARTICLE
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)
© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. • DOI: 10.1002/tie.21493
Correspondence to: Nitish Singh, PhD, Assistant Professor International Business, Boeing Institute of International Business, John Cook School of Business,
Saint Louis University, 3674 Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3397, 314-977-7604 (phone), 314-977-3897 (fax), [email protected].
Global Social Media
Usage: Insights Into
Reaching Consumers
Worldwide
This study documents global social media usage patterns based on a large-scale survey of 4,630
social media users around the world. The study provides insights into how users in the European
Union, United States, and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) regions use social media for
business and personal use. It analyzes variability in global social media platforms being used in
these different world regions. The study also presents insights into usage of multilingual content for
global social media consumption and the global user propensity to translate social media. Finally, the
paper showcases an innovative technology solution to help companies leverage machine and human
translation to enable users to translate social media content. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
By
Nitish Singh
Kevin Lehnert
Kathleen Bostick
Introduction
In the past few years, social media has evolved from
just being a basic tool for collaborative creation and
the sharing of content to becoming an important
part of the present media landscape (Evans & Brat-
ton, 2008; Weinberg, 2009). The recent role of social
media in the “Arab Spring” and other pro-democracy
movements underscores the fact that social media is
increasingly becoming the vehicle for the voice of people
and consumers worldwide. From a business perspective,
companies are actively leveraging social media to create
brand communities and crowd sourcing models, gain
consumer insights, enhance product/brand awareness,
684 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
to communication across languages and countries. This
multilingual and cultural diversity on the web is creating a
diverse social media landscape, with unique global usage
and consumption patterns (King, 2010). Understanding
how social media is delivered, consumed, and leveraged
around the world can help global marketers in develop-
ing, positioning, and delivering global content to achieve
marketing objectives such as increasing website traffic,
lead generation, improving multilingual search engine
optimization, increasing global brand awareness, and,
most important, enhancing global revenues.
Thus, the broad objective of this study is to explore
global differences in social media diffusion and usage
as well as the challenges of dealing with multilingual
social media content. This study will analyze patterns of
social media usage of about 4,630 global social media
users from the United States, Europe, and BRIC coun-
tries. The study will provide unique insights into dif-
ferences in global social media usage and how online
users are translating social media content for personal
consumption. Furthermore, this study will provide indus-
try insights into emerging technologies being used to
develop dynamic multilingual social media content for
global consumption.
Global Social Media Challenges
A global web index survey found that online social
media usage tends to be driven by national and cultural
factors (Smith, 2010a). For example, this survey found
that Asia is now the leading region in terms of consumer
publishing and sharing information online. This trend is
being attributed not only to high Internet growth rates
in Asia but also because of Asians’ willingness to share
information and be more open in terms of online brand
involvement (Smith, 2010b). Based on recent estimates,
China dominates the blogosphere worldwide, with 162
million Chinese bloggers (CNNIC, 2009). According to
Walsh (2008), blogging in China is not just a pastime
for opinion leaders but a form of collective behavior
emphasizing the cultural need for togetherness in the
Chinese society.
It is hard to ignore the importance of culture and
language in the diffusion of global social media as these
communications are created “by the people—for the peo-
ple” in a unique online social environment (King, 2010).
A Forrester Research social technographic survey of 13
countries reveals seven types of global social media users.
These are creators (publish social content), conversation-
alists (constantly update social content), critics (critique
online social content), collectors (gather content from
improve search engine optimization efforts, reduce cus-
tomer acquisition and service costs, and optimize overall
marketing and communication efforts (Weinberg, 2009).
According to Burson-Marsteller’s (2009) report, 65%
of Fortune Global 100 companies have Twitter accounts,
54% have Facebook fan pages, 50% have YouTube video
channels, and 33% have corporate blogs. A follow-up
2010–2011 survey found a 25% increase in the number
of companies using the preceding four social media
platforms (Burson-Marsteller, 2011). Forrester Research
forecasts that social media will be the fastest-growing
interactive channel in the United States, with a 34% com-
pounded annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2009 and
2014 (VanBoskirk, 2009).
A global study of social media usage by UM Social
Media Tracker Wave 5 (2010) found that almost 75%
of the active Internet universe has used online social
networking sites, and almost half of them have joined
an online brand community. This shows that consum-
ers are actively using online social media to interact and
communicate with companies. However, social media
usage is not consistent around the world. Recent social
media usage data shows that globally there are significant
differences in how social media is being used, content
is being created, and “crowd wisdom” is being shared.
Global diffusion of social media has led to a rise in the
consumption of multilingual content and also barriers
The recent role of social media in the “Arab Spring” and other pro-democracy movements underscores the fact that social media is increasingly becoming the vehicle for the voice of people and consumers worldwide.
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 685
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
This study will present industry insights into emerg-
ing machine translation technologies that can help
facilitate the linguistic integration of international social
communities, which are currently isolated due to lan-
guage barriers. Linguistic integration of international
communities is expected to provide a true basis for global
sharing of information and globalization of social media.
Emerging Global Social Media Trends
This section provides an overview of some emerging
research and data on global social media usage patterns.
In academic literature, social media–related research is
growing in areas such as the evolution of social network-
ing sites (Boyd & Elison, 2008), application of social capi-
tal theory to understanding consumer behavior online
(Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009), social dynamics in
online social networking (Tong, Heide, Langwell, & Wal-
ther, 2008), the role of psychosocial variables in online
social networking (Pelling & White, 2009), relational
online communications (Kim & Yun, 2008), self-repre-
sentations on social media (Grasmuck, Martin, & Zhao,
2009), and some practitioner commentaries related to
using social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Unfortu-
nately, there is a scarcity of academic research on global
social media usage, adoption, and consumption patterns.
In most cases country was used more as a context rather
than a comparison parameter (Kim & Yun, 2008; Notley,
2009). Therefore, most of the efforts identified toward
profiling global social media usage and consumption pat-
terns summarized were found in the business press.
Various surveys in the business press document the
emerging data on global social media usage and point
to significant differences in social media usage type and
form, as well as how consumers interact with social media.
A survey of 23,200 active Internet users in 38 countries by
the UM Social Media Tracker–Wave 4 (2009) provided
insights into social media adoption, uses, involvement,
and penetration rates. For example, the survey found
that for 16- to 54-year-olds, Danes have the highest
penetration of social media, followed by Malaysians,
Norwegians, and Swedes. According to this survey, an
overarching global social media trend is that social media
platforms are becoming more multimedia savvy with the
convergence of photos, videos, music, and widgets (small,
embedded informational programs). Building on the UM
Social Media Tracker–Wave 4, the new Wave 5 reports
data from 54 countries with special focus on understand-
ing consumer needs and motivations relating emerging
brand communities on social media landscape (UM
Social Media Tracker–Wave 5, 2010).
social media), joiners (join social media sites), spectators
(view social content), and inactives (little social media
activity) (Bernoff et al., 2010; Li, Bernoff, Fiorentino, &
Glass, 2007). These seven types of global social media
users differ cross-nationally. While globally most people
fall under the category of “spectators,” Chinese dominate
this category, followed by Americans. Chinese also lead
the “collector” category; Germans lead the “inactives” cat-
egory; Canadians lead as “joiners”; South Koreans lead as
“creators” and are tied with Chinese as “critics” (Forrester
Technographics, 2009).
Beyond the cross-national idiosyncrasies of social
media usage and development, the diversity of languages
is creating effective communication and information
sharing challenging on a truly global basis. Facebook
has more than 400 million active users, with almost 70%
outside of the United States. To effectively communicate
with non-English users, Facebook has 70 translations
available on its site made possible by a vast network of
300,000 volunteers and translators (Facebook.com). Like
Facebook, other companies are exploring better ways to
develop and share multilingual content on a real-time
basis via their crowd sourcing models and social media
applications, respectively. However, even the vanguards
of multilingual social media content development like
Facebook understand the challenge of how difficult it is
to share user content in different languages.
Most international communities are constrained by
geographic and linguistic boundaries in terms of their
social media content. Valuable global consumer insights
are lost due to the lack of applications that can make shar-
ing multilingual social media content possible. Global
marketers may benefit by understanding the global dif-
fusion and consumption of social media and how to best
share multilingual social media content on a global basis.
Aligned with this business challenge, the current study
presents the results of a large scale global survey of 4,630
social media users exploring:
• How users from different world regions use social
media for business and personal use.
• The kinds of global social media platforms popular in
various world regions.
• The top languages being used to generate global
social media content online.
• User preference for English versus their local language
with regard to social media content.
• Global user propensity to translate social media
content.
• Methods used by consumers to translate social media
content.
686 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
that people connected by social media have on average
195 friends online, with Brazil leading the way with an
average of 360 friends, followed by Portugal (236 friends)
and the United States (200 friends).
Finally, Burson-Marsteller (2009) takes a firm-level view
rather than consumer view. This study analyzed the social
media efforts of Fortune Global 100 companies between
2009 and 2010. Based on this study, some country-specific
insights include the following: Chinese state-owned com-
panies have been a late and slow adopter of social media
compared to Chinese private firms and foreign subsidiar-
ies. Brazilian companies have been slow to engage users on
social media sites for fear of losing control of the conversa-
tion. In Japan, Japanese language social networking sites
(e.g., Mixi) are catching up, but Japanese companies have
been reluctant to use social media and prefer traditional
online forms of communication via company websites.
Similarly, Korean companies tend to use social media
channels specific to South Korea, such as Korean online
cafes and the social networking site Cyworld. French com-
panies have also been reluctant user of social media tools.
In Italy, the situation is different, as companies have been
actively engaging social media users with their brands. A
more recent survey by Burson-Marsteller (2011) provides
further insights into how companies are moving more
toward engaging and monitoring their social media users.
For example, companies are now directly engaging users
by using Twitter and Facebook pages to truly converse with
them and not just push their own message.
In conclusion, academic and business press yield
rich insights into social media development, usage, and
diffusion, but this review highlighted some deficits in the
literature pertaining to challenges posed by multilingual
online diversity and the emergence of several interna-
tional communities that are silos due to the lack of lin-
guistic integration. There seems to be a lack of research
into how companies can create truly global communities
where participation is not hindered by language use. The
present study extends the scope of global social media
research and differs from the past surveys as it focuses on
analyzing global online user language preferences, such
as their propensity to translate social media content and
tools used to translate multilingual social content, and
second, by presenting industry insights relating emerging
technologies that can help companies connect multilin-
gual communities through linguistic integration.
Sample and Method
Data were collected over a period of about three
months from late December 2009 to March 2010,
A 2009 Global Web Index large-scale survey of almost
32,000 social media users reported insights into con-
sumer motivations behind the use of social media (Smith,
2010a). Some of the findings from this survey shed light
on how people use social media in different countries.
For example, staying in touch with a friend was the most
frequent use of social media in China. For Japanese,
researching product purchases was the most popular
social media activity. In South Korea staying up to date on
news and events was most popular, and in India research-
ing for work topped the social media usage motivation.
A more recent Global Web Index survey in 2010 reports
that social media has now reached maturity and users are
moving from just being content creators and publishers
to using real-time technologies for sharing other people’s
content and opinions (Smith, 2011).
Another study by Belleghem (2010) surveyed 2,884
social media users from 14 countries to investigate social
media usage patterns for various social media platforms.
This survey found that Facebook is the most well-known
social networking site (83% were aware of Facebook)
followed by MySpace and Twitter. The Insite survey (Bel-
leghem, 2010) categorized social media users into four
quadrants based on “social media log-in frequency” and
“social media activity frequency.” This study also showed
A more recent Global Web Index survey in 2010 reports that social media has now reached maturity and users are moving from just being content creators and pub-lishers to using real-time technologies for sharing other people’s content and opinions (Smith, 2011).
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 687
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
script the relationship between them is insignificant.
The uses of social media for business use are highlighted
in Table 1.
Results from the three economic regions found the
primary business use of social media to be for building
business contacts (BRIC mean = .403; EU mean = .429;
US mean = .595). Surprisingly, for both BRIC and EU
countries, the second-most-common user response was
that they “did not use it for business practices,” indicat-
ing that the strategic role of social networking has yet to
be leveraged in these regions. Following this, the respon-
dents tend to use social media for business purposes as a
research and advertising tool, utilizing it to read content,
engage in job search, and highlight expertise. Follow-
ing these, users utilize social media for business use as
a search mechanism designed to help find leads and
engage in market research.
For US social media users, insignificant differences in
social media usage indicates that they hold a wide range
of strategic reasons for utilizing social media. This implies
that US consumers are utilizing these tools for several rea-
sons and as a multifaceted strategic tool instead of solely
building contacts.
For personal use, social media was overwhelmingly
used to “connect with friends and family” (BRIC mean =
.857; EU mean = .827; US mean = .826). Following this,
consumers use social media to read content and engage
in connections with like-minded people as well as making
friends. This highlights the perceived use of social media
as a place to connect and meet others through these
electronic tools. Those choices least selected include
creating new content, reading reviews, and finding a job,
indicating that the use of social networking is not serving
as a new replacement for search and information seeking,
with individuals preferring different methods for product
information search and job hunting.
Table 3 presents the means, stand deviations, and chi-
square differences for these questions between regions.
Here we find that even though both EU and BRIC
regions rate “I don’t use it for business” as the second-
most-common social media use, the level of difference
between BRIC countries and the EU is significantly differ-
ent from the United States. These results are more telling
in that they indicate that different regions have different
goals in the use of social media, both for business and
personal usage. Globally, both BRIC and EU regions are
more similar to one another than to the United States in
their business usage of social media.
There were several differences between regions
regarding social media for personal use. There is more
congruency between the EU and the United States on
utilizing an international localization and translation
company. A combination of direct e-mail and social
media channels were used through a snowballing
method to deliver the survey worldwide. Surveys were
distributed in 21 languages, with subjects selecting the
language of their choice and linking to the online ver-
sion in the same language. All language versions were
translated by professional translators working for the
translation company.
This collection method yielded 4,630 respondents;
770 respondents indicated that they had never used any
form of social media and were subsequently removed
from the analysis. Responses were broken down into
economic regions (nBRIC
= 670, nEU
= 1,453, nUSA
= 1,027)
with the remaining responses falling outside of these
three economic regions. We utilized economic region as
a selection criteria as social networking is both a social
and technological phenomenon. Economic regions allow
for control of technological access, as social networking
necessarily requires a level of economic and technologi-
cal development. Further, the role of economic devel-
opment allows for a comparison of business, as well as
social usage. Ninety-eight percent of the sample ranged
between 21 and 50 years of age, and the gender was 52.2
percent female and 47.8 percent male.
The survey design consisted of 18 questions asking
respondents to indicate their reasons for using social
media for both personal and professional use. In order
to compare differences within continent/region, a series
of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were run. To compare
differences between responses across continent/region,
a series of Poisson regressions were run. Poisson regres-
sions (Coleman, 1964; Cameron & Tivedi, 1998) are
appropriate here because the dependent variable is a
count of instances and the coefficients indicates the prob-
ability that the occurrence of the variable is statistically
different from a comparison variable.
Survey Results
The survey looked into two broad areas related to global
social media usage. The study first investigated how
global social media is used for business and personal
use. Then the study looked at the role of language and
translation in global social media usage. Tables 1 and
2 provide the means, standard errors, and mean differ-
ences within regions for the usage of social media for
business and personal usage. In order to allow for dif-
ferentiation of variables, we utilize similar superscripts
to indicate no significant differences between variables.
Therefore, when two variables share the same super-
688 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
TABLE 1 Differences between Economic Regions’ Use
of Social Media for Business Use
Economic
Region
Top 3 Reasons for Social Media
and Business Use
Mean (St. Error)
BRIC
Building business contacts 0.403 (0.019)
I don’t use it for business 0.384 (0.019)
Read content 0.316 (0.018)
Job search 0.213 (0.016)
Highlight expertise 0.175 (0.015)a
Product or service information 0.158 (0.014)a,b,c
Identify potential leads 0.155 (0.014)b,c
Market research 0.136 (0.013)c
Build brand awareness 0.09 (0.011)d,e
Drive viewers to blog and website 0.085 (0.011)d,e
Create new content 0.084 (0.011)e
Customer support 0.037 (0.007)f
Recruiting 0.036 (0.007)f
Customer feedback 0.033 (0.007)f
EU
Building business contacts 0.429 (0.013)a
I don’t use it for business 0.407 (0.013)a
Read content 0.234 (0.011)
Highlight expertise 0.198 (0.01)
Job search 0.16 (0.01)b
Identify potential leads 0.154 (0.009)b,c
Product or service information 0.129 (0.009)c
Build brand awareness 0.079 (0.007)d
Market research 0.073 (0.007)d,e,f
Create new content 0.057 (0.006)e,f,g
Drive viewers to blog and website 0.056 (0.006)e,f,g
Recruiting 0.044 (0.005)f,g,h
Customer feedback 0.032 (0.005)h,i
Customer support 0.024 (0.004) i
United States
Building business contacts 0.595 (0.015)
Highlight expertise 0.264 (0.014)a
Read content 0.244 (0.013)a,b
Job search 0.234 (0.013)a,b,c,d
I don’t use it for business 0.198 (0.012)c,d,e
Build brand awareness 0.197 (0.012)c,d,e
Identify potential leads 0.171 (0.012)d,e,f
Drive viewers to blog and website 0.143 (0.011)f
Product or service information 0.101 (0.009)g
Market research 0.093 (0.009)g,h
Create new content 0.076 (0.008)h,i
Recruiting 0.058 (0.007)i,j
Customer feedback 0.05 (0.007)j
Customer support 0.029 (0.005)
Numbers in () indicate standard deviation. Same letters indicate insignifi cant pairwise comparison at .05 level.
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 689
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
TABLE 2 Differences between Economic Regions’ Use
of Social Media for Personal Use
Economic
Region
Top 3 Reasons for Social Media
for Personal Use
Mean (St. Error)
BRIC
Connect with friends and family 0.857 (0.014)
Make new friends 0.412 (0.019) a
Connect with people 0.376 (0.019) a
Read content 0.369 (0.019) a
Out of boredom 0.196 (0.015) b
Share links to content 0.167 (0.014) b, c
Read reviews 0.146 (0.014) c
Create new content 0.1 (0.012) d
Post ratings/reviews 0.072 (0.01) d
Find a job 0.07 (0.01) d
I don’t use it for personal 0.043 (0.008)
EU
Connect with friends and family 0.827 (0.01)
Read content 0.42 (0.013)
Connect with people 0.262 (0.012)
Share links to content 0.213 (0.011)
Out of boredom 0.173 (0.01)
Make new friends 0.13 (0.009) a
Create new content 0.107 (0.008) a
Read reviews 0.107 (0.008) a
I don’t use it for personal 0.076 (0.007)
Find a job 0.052 (0.006) b
Post ratings/reviews 0.041 (0.005) b
United States
Connect with friends and family 0.826 (0.012)
Read content 0.417 (0.015)
Connect with people 0.361 (0.015)
Share links to content 0.297 (0.014)
Make new friends 0.13 (0.011)a
Out of boredom 0.127 (0.01)a, b
Create new content 0.111 (0.01)a, b, c
Find a job 0.102 (0.009)b, c
Read reviews 0.088 (0.009)c
I don’t use it for personal 0.073 (0.008)d
Post ratings/reviews 0.038 (0.006)
Numbers in () indicate standard deviation. Same letters indicate insignifi cant pairwise comparison at .05 level
690 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
users tend to rank their reasons for using social networks
in a similar manner: that is connecting with friends and
family, as well as making new friends topping the list of
top social media uses.
In terms of primary social media tools for both busi-
ness and personal use, MySpace was found to be the most
popular across economic regions, with Twitter follow-
ing. Interestingly, Twitter was found as being equal to
MySpace in BRIC countries. However, for personal usage
the differences between the four most popular means of
social networking are smaller. Facebook and MySpace
tend to lead personal usage of social media across the
three regions. When looking across regions, we find
differences throughout, with the EU leading the way in
utilization of social media in business across all platforms,
with the exception of LinkedIn for business and Face-
book for personal usage. Tables 4 and 5 highlight the
differences in social media usage for both business and
personal usage.
When asked about other social networking resources
utilized in lieu of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Twit-
ter, global respondents overwhelmingly chose YouTube
as the next resource, with Flickr being in the global top
five. Again, there is more similarity between the United
States and EU following up, with Flickr, Delicious, MSN,
and Digg all claiming top ten spots. The greatest dis-
crepancy comes from the wide variety of selections made
by BRIC countries, indicating the role of regional and
country level preferences. While the top resources, such
as YouTube and Flickr, are globally utilized, specialized
and regionalized preferences quickly become predomi-
nant players, highlighting the need for firms to recognize
these cultural preferences in their selection of a social
media platform. For example, Orkut is widely used in
our BRIC sample, due to its popularity in Brazil, but falls
dramatically in usage for both the United States and EU.
In China, QQ, Q Zone, and Xiaonei are popular, as they
are local Chinese social media platforms catering to local
tastes and language preferences. Table 6 highlights these
differences.
When asked to discuss the role of translation within
social media content, BRIC countries made use of trans-
lation more than the other two regions. Further, when
this translation occurred, they were more likely to use
machine translation than the other two regions. Human
translation was the most preferred method for EU and
US respondents. The most common use of translation
across regions was to translate messages followed by
comments. This indicates that individuals translate the
content relating directly to the page/message they are
viewing, but not for information search. This implies that
personal usage than within BRIC countries. BRIC nations
are more avid users of the media to make friends and con-
nect with others than US and EU users, who instead dif-
ferentiate their usage of social media on a personal level.
By this we mean that US and EU users focus on more
individual reasons for using social media. Conversely, the
BRIC regions are more likely to share content and do not
significantly differentiate their main reasons for using the
media. For example, BRIC nations predominantly use
social networking to connect with existing friends and
family. However, they do not distinguish between making
friends, connecting with others, or reading content. This
is in stark contrast to EU and US users, who after con-
necting with friends make a significant choice in their use
of social media to read content, followed by connecting
with others, and then sharing content. BRIC nations do
not differentiate in their primary reasons for using social
media, which implies that they are more multifaceted
users of social networking, whereas EU and US users are
more directed in their supporting reasons for using social
media.
Finally, while there are significant differences between
regions for both business and personal usage, the overall
rankings of reasons behind the usage of social networking
are quite similar. When we look at the rankings, globally
BRIC nations do not differ-entiate in their primary rea-sons for using social media, which implies that they are more multifaceted users of social networking, whereas EU and US users are more directed in their support-ing reasons for using social media.
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 691
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
TABLE 3 Differences between Question of Social Media for Business or Personal Use by Economic Region
Question
Business Use
BRIC
Meana
European Union
Meana
USA
Meana
Chi-Square Difference
(BRIC/EU)
Building business contacts 0.403** 0.429** 0.595 1.29
Highlight expertise 0.175** 0.198** 0.264 1.54
Read content 0.316** 0.234 0.244 16.62**
Job search 0.213 0.16** 0.234 9.23**
I don’t use it for business 0.383** 0.407** 0.198 1.01
Build brand awareness 0.09** 0.079** 0.197 0.66
Identify potential leads 0.155 0.154 0.171 0
Drive viewers to blog and website 0.085** 0.056** 0.143 6.11*
Product or service information 0.158** 0.129* 0.101 3.22
Market research 0.136** 0.073 0.093 21.17**
Create new content 0.084 0.057 0.076 5.22*
Recruiting 0.036* 0.044 0.058 0.78
Customer feedback 0.033 0.032* 0.05 0.02
Customer support 0.037 0.024 0.029 2.88
Personal Use
Connect with friends and family 0.857 0.827 0.826 3.11
Read content 0.369 0.42 0.417 4.81*
Connect with people 0.376 0.262** 0.361 29.48**
Share links to content 0.167** 0.213** 0.297 5.8*
Make new friends 0.412** 0.13 0.13 197.29**
Out of boredom 0.196** 0.173** 0.127 1.62
Create new content 0.1 0.107 0.111 0.26
Find a job 0.07* 0.052** 0.102 2.67
Read reviews 0.146** 0.107 0.088 6.88**
I don’t use it for personal 0.043* 0.076 0.073 7.81**
Post ratings/reviews 0.072** 0.041 0.038 8.59**
** p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. a Signifi cance between Region and N. America.
when firms fail to translate information, consumers are
not retranslating that information on their own, unless it
is a directed personal message.
More specifically, the strongest preference for trans-
lated content was seen in the case of China, where 86
percent of Chinese preferred content in simplified Chi-
nese. It seems India is one of the only countries in our
sample that uses more machine translation than human
translation. Both human and machine translation have
their challenges in the present state of the industry. Few
individuals are multilingual or have access to transla-
tors to help them translate social media content. In
terms of technology, machine translation has not yet
evolved enough to take into account the grammatical
and idiomatic nuances of translation. However, new and
existing technologies are being leveraged by companies
to enhance the quality of machine translation. In the next
section, we explore industry insights into a cutting-edge
tool that leverages both machine and human translation
to allow for real-time translations. Tables 7 and 8 high-
light these differences.
Managerial Implications
Findings from this study show that among all world
regions BRIC countries tend to be the least proactive
692 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
social media in BRIC economies, it could also have some
cultural explanations. Brazil, India, and China tend to
be more collectivist than most European countries and
the United States. In collectivist cultures, it is easier to
connect and communicate with people if they are part of
in using social media for business use but are avid users
for personal use. But even in terms of personal use, the
study shows that BRIC nations predominantly use social
networking to connect with existing friends and family.
While this finding can be related to slower diffusion of
TABLE 4 Differences in Usage of Social Media for Business Usage by Region
Economic
Region
Which Do You Use for
Business Use?
Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
Facebook MySpace LinkedIn Twitter
BRIC
Facebook 2.658 .044 .000 .776* .206* .710*
MySpace 3.434 .034 .000 .570* .066
LinkedIn 2.864 .046 .000 .504*
Twitter 3.369 .038 .000
EU
Facebook 2.968 .031 .000 .836* .164* .585*
MySpace 3.803 .015 .000 1.000* .251*
LinkedIn 2.803 .031 .000 .749*
Twitter 3.553 .024 .000
United States
Facebook 2.613 .037 .000 1.219* .619* .321*
MySpace 3.833 .015 .000 1.838* .898*
LinkedIn 1.994 .034 .000 .941*
Twitter 2.935 .037 .000
Which Do You Use for Business Use?
Economic Region Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
BRIC EU United States
BRIC 2.658 .045 .000 .309** .045
EU 2.968 .031 .000 .354**
United States 2.613 .037 .000
MySpace
BRIC 3.434 .024 .000 .369** .398**
EU 3.803 .016 .000 .029
United States 3.833 .019 .000
BRIC 2.864 .044 .000 .061 .870**
EU 2.803 .030 .000 .809**
United States 1.994 .036 .000
BRIC 3.369 .040 .000 .184** .434**
EU 3.553 .027 .000 .618**
United States 2.935 .032 .000
** p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 693
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
TABLE 5 Differences in Usage of Social Media for Personal Usage by Region
Economic
Region
Which Do You Use for
Personal Use?
Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
Facebook MySpace LinkedIn Twitter
BRIC
Facebook 2.304 .045 .000 .993* .791* .990*
MySpace 3.297 .037 .000 .201* .003
LinkedIn 3.096 .042 .000 .199*
Twitter 3.294 .040 .000
EU
Facebook 1.985 .030 .000 1.665* 1.315* 1.596*
MySpace 3.650 .018 .000 .350* .069*
LinkedIn 3.300 .024 .000 .281*
Twitter 3.581 .022 .000
United States
Facebook 1.772 .034 .000 1.955* .998* 1.290*
MySpace 3.727 .019 .000 .957* .665*
LinkedIn 2.770 .033 .000 .292*
Twitter 3.062 .035 .000
Which Do You Use for Personal Use?
Economic Region Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
BRIC EU United States
BRIC 2.304 .044 .000 .320** .532**
EU 1.985 .030 .000 .213**
United States 1.772 .035 .000
MySpace
BRIC 3.297 .028 .000 .353** .430**
EU 3.650 .019 .000 .078**
United States 3.727 .023 .000
BRIC 3.096 .038 .000 .205** .325**
EU 3.300 .026 .000 .530**
United States 2.770 .031 .000
BRIC 3.294 .038 .000 .287** .232**
EU 3.581 .026 .000 .519**
United States 3.062 .031 .000
** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.
the culture or “in-group,” and time and trust is needed
for “out-group” members to be accepted in the group.
Thus, when doing business in collectivist countries like
China or Brazil, it is important to first develop trusting
relationships before using social media as a business
Rolodex (e.g., the role of Guanxi in China). Social media
in collectivist countries may play a more important role
in terms of nurturing and maintaining existing business
relationships than as a tool for developing new business
contacts and relations online.
694 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
TABLE 6 Comparison of Alternative Social Media Platforms and Translation Tools across Regions
What Other Social Media
Platforms Do You use?
BRIC
Meana/b
European Union
Meana/b United StatesChi-Square Difference
(BRIC/EU)
Bebo 0.158(0.593)** 0.114(0.494)* 0.071(0.402) 3.13
Biip 0.096(0.47)* 0.039(0.31) 0.044(0.329) 10.21**
Cloob 0.078(0.42)** 0.032(0.294) 0.019(0.218) 7.62**
Cyworld 0.136(0.548)** 0.033(0.295) 0.031(0.27) 25.26**
Delicious 0.212(0.696)** 0.2(0.687)** 0.426(0.924) 0.15
Digg 0.176(0.615)** 0.142(0.581)** 0.389(0.857) 1.52
Flickr 0.518(0.927)** 0.548(0.948)** 0.812(1.071) 0.46
Fotolog 0.106(0.488)** 0.045(0.327) 0.03(0.269) 10.67**
Friendster 0.151(0.571)* 0.042(0.318)** 0.097(0.459) 26.91**
Hi5 0.416(0.862)** 0.148(0.55)** 0.07(0.378) 67.38**
Hyves 0.087(0.456)** 0.059(0.363)** 0.021(0.245) 2.15
Imeem 0.107(0.499)** 0.034(0.287) 0.038(0.302) 16.42**
Iwiw 0.081(0.437)** 0.054(0.371)* 0.022(0.243) 2.15
Lide 0.091(0.469)** 0.025(0.263) 0.016(0.206) 14.4**
Livejournal 0.27(0.773)** 0.092(0.45)** 0.145(0.54) 40.42**
Maktoob 0.082(0.442)** 0.024(0.252) 0.019(0.229) 12.7**
Mixi 0.097(0.484)** 0.028(0.266) 0.03(0.276) 15.64**
Msnwindows 0.99(1.237)** 0.649(1.092)** 0.273(0.756) 41.62**
Naszakl~A 0.094(0.478)** 0.142(0.538)** 0.02(0.235) 3.57
Netlog 0.143(0.566)** 0.068(0.391)* 0.031(0.284) 12.03**
Ning 0.13(0.549)** 0.091(0.448)** 0.349(0.81) 2.94
Odnokla~I 0.204(0.648)** 0.039(0.297) 0.034(0.286) 49.95**
One 0.1(0.477)** 0.031(0.28) 0.016(0.206) 15.26**
Orkut 1.043(1.107)** 0.072(0.392)* 0.115(0.488) 322.49**
Plaxo 0.191(0.639)** 0.171(0.604)** 0.35(0.798) 0.47
Qq 0.424(0.88)** 0.025(0.257) 0.028(0.269) 103.23**
Qzone 0.29(0.75)** 0.027(0.268) 0.025(0.252) 72.19**
Reddit 0.115(0.527) 0.054(0.362)** 0.113(0.487) 9.04**
Renren 0.215(0.66)** 0.025(0.263) 0.02(0.235) 52.2**
Scribd 0.178(0.633)* 0.057(0.371)** 0.114(0.507) 26.81**
Secondlife 0.101(0.491) 0.061(0.368)** 0.111(0.493) 4.42*
Skyblog~K 0.093(0.468)** 0.047(0.348)* 0.021(0.245) 5.94*
Slidesh~E 0.169(0.619) 0.099(0.456)** 0.201(0.617) 8.17**
Sonico 0.093(0.471)** 0.025(0.257) 0.024(0.247) 15.31**
Stumbleupon 0.127(0.528)** 0.113(0.507)** 0.274(0.766) 0.34
Tagged 0.179(0.614)** 0.041(0.309) 0.056(0.353) 38.39**
Technor~I 0.133(0.562)** 0.095(0.473)** 0.257(0.711) 2.57
Vkontakte 0.27(0.76)** 0.033(0.278) 0.028(0.258) 72.87**
Wretch 0.079(0.439)** 0.022(0.237) 0.021(0.233) 13.05**
Xanga 0.09(0.458)** 0.021(0.231) 0.033(0.281) 17.21**
Xiaonei 0.246(0.701)** 0.023(0.244) 0.019(0.224) 62.23**
Xing 0.125(0.546)** 0.194(0.639)** 0.061(0.36) 5.34*
YouTube 1.175(1.102)** 1.379(1.111)** 1.572(1.18) 14.66**
Zing 0.112(0.499)** 0.045(0.334) 0.049(0.339) 12.37**
Do you Translate Social Media? .276 (.447)** .217 (.412)** .179 (.383) 9.14**
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 695
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
to local language demand is often more important than
providing a “perfect” translation.
The other option for translating social media is auto-
mated machine translation (MT). This can be a valuable
tool, as it allows social media publishers to offer transla-
tion instantly and dynamically, as a user expresses inter-
est. Clearly, MT removes the time barrier of traditional
translation. Unfortunately, the quality of MT is often
very poor, rendering the translation unintelligible and
unreliable. Therefore, when it comes to translating social
media content, the traditional approaches have largely
failed. As a result, the majority of social media content is
never translated. The next section describes cutting-edge
technological developments that combine human and
machine translation to deliver more accurate real-time
translation of multilingual content.
Industry Insight Into the Custom Real-Time Translator (CRT) Technology Tool
Emerging technologies can help companies leverage
both human translation and machine translation to pro-
vide real-time translation capability for social media users
worldwide. The “GeoFluent: Custom Real-Time Trans-
lator” (CRT) is an innovative technology solution that
uses the translation workspace and machine translation
engine to provide higher-quality real-time translations
Another interesting finding of this study shows that
while Twitter or Facebook may have some global appeal,
Orkut is still very popular in Brazil, and in China, QQ,
Q Zone, and Xiaonei are better positioned to cater to
Chinese local preferences. Thus, when targeting interna-
tional markets, companies need to consider popular local
social media sites in vogue in specific countries.
Our survey shows that there is a paradox when it
comes to multilingual social media. Eighty-five percent of
people surveyed use social media for business use. Almost
40% of worldwide social media users prefer content in
languages other than English, but only 23% are actually
translating their social media content. In short, organi-
zations are failing to meet the demand for multilingual
social media. The reasons are clear. Historically, there
have been two options for translating content—human
translation and automated machine translation. When it
comes to social media, those traditional approaches face
three major barriers: time, cost, and quality.
Human-based translation services provide a high
level of quality. Unfortunately, human translation is
expensive and time consuming. As a result, human-based
translation is typically done in advance, in anticipation
that a user would be interested in the content in their lan-
guage. While human-based translation is certainly appro-
priate for content such as software and medical devices,
it may not be as practical for social media that requires
a more immediate or real-time response. In the case of
social media and other applications, responding quickly
TABLE 6 Continued...
What Types of Content
Do You Translate?
Message 0.152(0.36)* 0.111(0.314) 0.112(0.315) 7.29**
Comments 0.097(0.296) 0.101(0.302) 0.084(0.277) 0.09
Blog 0.113(0.317)** 0.073(0.26) 0.063(0.244) 9.54**
Tweet 0.03(0.17) 0.034(0.182) 0.045(0.207) 0.3
Community Discussion 0.064(0.245)** 0.05(0.217)* 0.032(0.176) 1.91
Profi le 0.072(0.258)** 0.051(0.22)* 0.032(0.176) 3.62
Other 0.009(0.094) 0.016(0.125) 0.016(0.124) 1.56
How Do You Translate Social Media
Content?
Human 0.173(0.379)** 0.173(0.378)** 0.114(0.318) 0
Machine 0.137(0.344)** 0.07(0.254)* 0.093(0.29) 24.92**
Other 0.007(0.086) 0.003(0.059) 0.01(0.098) 1.51
**p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 Numbers in () indicate standard deviation. Signifi cance between Region and N. America.
696 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
TABLE 7 Types of Media Translated by Region
Economic
Region
What Types of Content
Do You Translate?
Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
BRIC
Blog .113 .012 .084** .049** .042** .039* .016 .104**
Tweet .030 .007 .034** .042** .122** .067** .021**
Community discussion .064 .009 .007 .088** .033** .055**
Profi le .072 .010 .081** .025* .063**
Messages .152 .014 .055** .143**
Comments .097 .011 .088**
Other .009 .004
EU
Blog .073 .007 .039** .023** .022** .038** .028** .057**
Tweet .034 .005 .015* .017* .076** .067** .019**
Community discussion .050 .006 .001 .061** .052** .034**
Profi le .051 .006 .060** .050** .035**
Messages .111 .008 .010 .095**
Comments .101 .008 .085**
Other .016 .003
United States
Blog .063 .008 .019* .031** .031** .049** .020* .048**
Tweet .045 .006 .013 .013 .067** .039** .029**
Community discussion .032 .006 .000 .080** .052** .017*
Profi le .032 .006 .080** .052** .017*
Messages .112 .010 .028** .096**
Comments .084 .009 .068**
Other .016 .004
** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.
(Geoworkz.com, 2011). A nontechnical description of
custom real-time translation technology is included here,
along with two case scenarios of how this technology can
be used for translating user-generated content and pro-
viding multilingual customer service.
The GeoFluent tool is an example of a custom
real-time translation tool that leverages a technology
platform called the Translation Workspace. Translation
Workspace is a cloud-based technology that contains
“Translation Memories” (TM) or content that has been
previously translated by humans. Translation Workspace
can be used by a firm to increase the productivity of its
high-quality, human-based translation by building upon
previously translated content stored in the cloud. The
second important technology leveraged for custom real-
time translation is an automated machine translation
technology that instantly translates content and com-
munications into multiple languages. The design of this
machine technology or MT engine is such that it can be
trained or “tuned” to increase quality. Studies have shown
that the highest increases in MT quality output occur
when the engine is trained using domain-specific and
even company-specific translation memories. By utilizing
this method in conjunction with Translation Workspace,
a firm can utilize the high-quality human-translated con-
tent in Translation Workspace to train and customize its
MT engine. In doing so, a firm can have a fully automated
solution that can be rapidly customized using existing
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 697
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
language translation solution. With the help of a custom
real-time translation technology solution, the company
could easily integrate on-demand translation into all of
its support centers, forums, and web pages providing its
non-English-speaking customers with immediate access
to dynamic user-contributed content and rich support
resources in many languages.
Another example is the case of a major North
American retailer (name withheld for privacy reasons)
exploring the potential of custom real-time translation
technology. When a major North American retailer
specializing in housewares, furniture, and home acces-
sories faced the business challenge of expanding its
online and brick-and- mortar retail operations into three
new global markets, the company knew that increasing
online engagement between agent and customer could
play a valuable role in converting interested interna-
tional prospects into loyal customers. The problem was
that hiring in-country French, German, and Spanish
agents would cost the company five times as much as
hiring English-speaking agents. The immediate need
was for a cost-effective solution that would enable the
company to engage global customers proactively in their
native languages without having to incur additional
labor expenses for international sales and support.
The company was also concerned with how they could
preserve their brand integrity in global markets without
content and be configured for social media translation to
increase translation quality and availability.
Organizations are failing to reach the 40% of users
that desire social media content in languages other than
English. Technology solutions that effectively leverage
machine and human translation could allow companies
to offer a “translate now” capability on their blogs, mes-
sage boards, and social network platforms so that users
can get an instant translation as they need it. In addition
to demand in a social media environment, organiza-
tions with customer service operations are also rushing
to adopt this technology. The motivation is twofold—to
increase customer loyalty and satisfaction and avoid
costly calls to a technical support center. Next, we dis-
cuss two case scenarios to show how companies could
benefit from custom real-time translation technology as
a solution for translating user-contributed content and
providing multilingual customer support on a real-time
basis, respectively.
A global security technology company (name with-
held for privacy reasons) wanted to increase interna-
tional sales; it began by looking at how it could extend
its user-contributed content to its international and non-
English-speaking customers. It soon became obvious that
human translation methodologies would be ineffective in
handling the continually changing content, and the com-
pany quickly realized that it would have to find a real-time
TABLE 8 Mechanisms of Translating Media by Region
Economic Region How Do You Translate Social
Media Content?
Mean Std. Error Mean Difference
1 2 3
BRIC
Human translation .173 .015 .036 .166**
Machine translation(e.g., Google Translate)
.137 .013 .130**
Other .007 .003
EU
Human translation .173 .010 .103* .169**
Machine translation(e.g. Google Translate)
.070 .007 .066**
Other .003 .002 0
United States
Human translation .114 .010 .021 .104**
Machine translation(e.g. Google Translate)
.093 .009 .083**
Other .010 .003 0
** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.
698 FEATURE ARTICLE
Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012 DOI: 10.1002/tie
terms of further understanding the specific cross-cultural
differences in consumer motivations for use of social
media and expectations for localization and translation
of social media. Research is also needed to further
integrate machine translation technologies with human
translation to help connect islands of multilingual social
communities and bridge language differences on the
web. This study provides only a snapshot in time of the
global social media usage and language expectations. We
are seeing social media platforms like Facebook gaining
more traction and MySpace losing market share, and also
consumer motivations for social media usage are evolv-
ing. Thus, longitudinal studies are needed to assess how
global social media usage and consumption patterns tend
to evolve.
This research is also subject to some methodological
limitations. The use of an on-line survey tool limits the
respondents to those who both have immediate access
and self-reported usage of social networking. This could
create a bit of self-selection bias within the study. Further,
the use of categorical responses in determining social
media usage is limiting in the analysis that can be per-
formed; additional research would benefit from measur-
ing the magnitude of usage for each category in addition
to the type of usage.
Companies need to localize and translate their social
media platforms if they truly want to penetrate global
markets. We hope the findings from this study will help
companies better understand global social media patterns
having their corporate identity lost in translation. By
harnessing the power of custom real-time translation
technology, the company can extend the benefits of
proactive multilingual chat to its international and non-
English-speaking customers in the three target markets.
Moreover, because the custom real-time translation
technology solution like GeoFluent can be trained in
specific linguistic patterns and industry terminology, the
company would be able to easily preserve its brand and
corporate identity in the new markets. Leveraging such
automated custom translation technology can empower
the retailer to expand without incurring the costs of
additional facilities, in-region hiring, recruiting, staffing,
attrition, and everything else that comes along with sup-
porting customers in new markets.
As customized MT gains traction, organizations will
learn how to remove the time, cost, and quality barri-
ers that have inhibited multilingual communication. As
social media continues to grow at an unprecedented
pace in global markets, it will likely be at the forefront
of embracing the real-time, multilingual communication
solutions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the goal of this study was to address the
apparent gap in the current literature regarding lan-
guage usage in global social media. This study also tried
to uncover global social media usage patterns for busi-
ness and personal use across economic regions in North
America, Europe, and Asia. This cross-regional analysis
yielded global social media usage patterns and showed
that, while there are emerging similarities in social media
usage, countries show unique local preferences in terms
of how they utilize social media for business and personal
use. It is evident that Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and
Twitter usage is not uniform across the world, and there
are significant differences in terms of cross-regional
preference for these social media platforms. It is also evi-
dent that country-specific social media platforms are, in
fact, widely used along with global giants like Facebook,
Twitter, and others. Finally, the study showed that local
language preferences for social media usage are strong
across the world.
This study also took an economic regional view of
social networking trends. Thus, our analysis is limited
by the economic regional comparisons that are made.
Additional analysis and research across countries and
among particular cultural and psychological components
is needed to address differences between economic and
cultural environments. Future research is also needed in
It is evident that Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter usage is not uniform across the world, and there are significant differences in terms of cross-regional pref-erence for these social media platforms.
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide 699
DOI: 10.1002/tie Thunderbird International Business Review Vol. 54, No. 5 September/October 2012
Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge Lionbridge Technologies
Inc. for the help with the data collection and information
for the case scenarios used in this research.
and consumer propensity to translate social media con-
tent on real-time basis. The case scenarios of a custom
real-time translation tool could serve as an example of
how to leverage both human and machine translation for
achieving real-time translation of social media.
Nitish Singh received his PhD from St. Louis University and is an assistant professor of international business at the
Boeing Institute of International Business, St. Louis University. His research emphasis is in the area of e-business,
cross-cultural research, and sustainability. His publications include journal articles in JIBS, Journal of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, International Marketing Review, Journal of Advertising Research, MBR, JECR, JCB, TIBR, and others. He is also co-author of the book The Culturally Customized Websites and author of the forth-coming book Localization Strategies for Global E-Business.
Kevin Lehnert received his PhD from Saint Louis University and is an assistant professor of marketing in the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University. His research interests have focused on cross-cultural consumer behavior, social media, and advertising creativity.
Kathleen Bostick is vice president of travel and hospitality at Lionbridge. She specializes in global websites, interna-tional SEO, global social media, and multilingual content management. Prior to this role, Kathleen was vice president of global marketing, where she was responsible for setting the worldwide marketing strategy for Lionbridge, including developing a global social media strategy. This role gave her a unique global perspective on social media marketing, where she used her knowledge to develop innovative programs to connect with industry communities, clients, and analysts.
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