Twitter is Most Popular in Argentina, and More Social Media Use Patterns That Will Surprise You [CHART]

The leading social media platforms in the world were developed in the U.S., and the ability to create one's own filter bubble further localizes our perception of social networks relative to the world. Benzinga crunched some numbers in Excel, graphing the countries where Facebook FB, Twitter and LinkedIn LNKD are most popular, as well as tabulating the penetration of each social network as a proportion of each country's population. Some of what we saw surprised us: The ten countries where Facebook is most common make up about half of Facebook's 1+ billion users. The Chinese government has banned Facebook, but the top 4 users coincide relatively well with global population rankings. Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia and Japan round out of the top ten leaders in world population, but are underrepresented in the usage of the Mark Zuckerberg-led social platform. Mexico, Turkey, the UK, France and Germany jumped at least 6 spots to round out the top ten nations where Facebook is king. In terms of penetration, usage is highest in Qatar (ranked 97th), where more than 81 percent of the population is active on Facebook. Here's what the penetration percentages of the top ten users looks like: United States -- 50.22% Brazil -- 34.88% India -- 5.44% Indonesia -- 19.81% Mexico -- 36.89% Turkey -- 42.22% United Kingdom -- 49.46% The Philippines -- 30.48% France -- 38.99% Germany -- 30.48%

The popularity of Twitter in Ibero-America is noteworthy. Four of the top ten countries with the most Twitter users speak Spanish or Portuguese. Again, the top power players make up half of all Twitter users worldwide, but there's a much more level playing field compared to Facebook. China and India both make up 12 percent of all Twitter users, with the U.S. and Brazil not too far behind. Special thanks to Mediabistro for these estimates Penetration statistics in each country were certainly interesting. Out of the top nations, Twitter is far and away most popular in Argentina, where more than 15 percent of the population consists of active Twitter users. Here's what the rest of the top ten looks like: China -- 2.64% India -- 2.65% United States -- 7.29% Brazil -- 9.94% Mexico -- 10.17% United Kingdom -- 10.47% Argentina -- 15.37% Spain -- 10.64% Italy -- 5.08% Germany -- 2.92%

Lastly, there's LinkedIn, which appears to far more widely used in English speaking countries. Six of the top countries feature English as an official language. Despite small penetration figures, India and China's rising professional class appears to be taking advantage of the social network to boost their job prospects in an age of globalization. LinkedIn penetration is much smaller than Facebook, but in terms of active users, it surpasses Twitter, at least in the United States where a quarter of the population has a LinkedIn profile. What about other countries? United States -- 25.17% India -- 1.72% United Kingdom -- 18.58% Canada -- 19.47% China -- 0.23% Netherlands -- 18.12% South Africa -- 4.86% Brazil -- 0.98% Pakistan -- 0.90%