Here's how world uses social networks

A popular link-tracking service bit.ly has revealed nine fascinating facts on how people across the globe use social networking site Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

According to the service, almost everyone uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube heavily except in China, where those services are blocked.

Despite heavy censorship, plenty of Iranians still use Western sites. Google+, LinkedIn and Reddit are particularly popular, perhaps because Twitter and Facebook are blocked in Iran.

The service revealed that Twitter is quickly becoming a phenomenon in Saudi Arabia, with its Twitter base ballooning by 3,000 percent each year, the Washington Post reports.

Egypt and Libya, where social media-fueled revolutions, underindex significantly on all 12 of the major networks Bit.ly tracked except Facebook.

According to the report, China's Twitter, Weibo network, is the social medium of choice there, but it's also popular in a couple of odd places, including Uganda.

On the flip side, some countries you might expect to use Weibo, nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan, for instance, haven't embraced the Chinese social network, maybe because they have access to the Western services, the report said.

Several South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Peru, underindex across the board, it added.

Flickr, the once beloved photo-sharing site, is relatively popular in very few countries; Bolivia and Madagascar are two of them.

Lastly, South Koreans really love Tumblr.

According to the Post,

According to the Post, bit.ly tracked clicks on its links from 220 countries over the course of 12 months.