From LComm client FortiusOne: Facebook’s primarily an east coast thing. Please forgive me for sharing, but I thought it was fascinating to see this statistical analysis. It’s amazing when you look at the map and see where the top ten individual metro network memberships:
1. New York, NY = 273530
2. Chicago, IL = 246759
3. Washington, DC = 210160
4. Boston, MA = 171837
5. Atlanta, GA = 156643
6. Los Angeles, CA = 144718
7. Dallas / Fort Worth, TX = 120602
8. Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN =114404
9. Philadelphia, PA = 112495
10, Detroit, MI = 110704
The fascinating bit of this is how few west coast cities there are on the top ten list – only Los Angeles.
A couple of theories: there are a lot more colleges on the East Coast. Many of those colleges were heavily involved with Facebook from the beginning. And the density of those schools is much higher. Facebook is not like MySpace in that as a closed network its about connecting those that you already know — for the most part. The networks started at these colleges and amongst these college friends and grew. Besides Los Angeles, the West Coast cities are also generally smaller. Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, although immensely influential as melting pots of innovation, design thinking and international trends — are actually all very small. SF is smaller than Columbus, OH.
That being said, SF is where my largest network of Facebook connections are. Perhaps I just have stronger connections there in general.