Social Media - Global Geographies of the Internet - page 142

Fig. 6.5 Map of U.S. Facebook penetration rates, 2010. Source. author, using data from
Internetworldstats.com
Facebook Facebook
Kontakte
Qzone
Zing
Other
Fig. 6.6 Map of world's dominant social networking services, 2011. Source. author, redrawn
from http://vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks
Works on the telephone, for example, held that it allowed the rise of ''communities
without propinquity,'' or groups of people with similar interests who lack a common
geographic location (Webber 1973 ). Some observers hold that digital networks can
successfully replicate the emotional depth of face-to-face contacts (Hampton and
Wellman 2001 ), that internet users have more off-line social interactions than do
non-users (Castells 2001 ), and that digital networks are replacing spatial commu-
nities as the primary vehicles of sociability. The growth of massively multiplayer on-
line role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, with eight million