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Here are some highlights from a survey conducted by research firm Synovate amongst 13,000 respondents aged 18-65 in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US (via eMarketer) –

- Only 42% of the respondents knew about social networking, even though a higher percentage of younger respondents were aware of social networking.

- Only 26% of the respondents were members of any social network. Some markets (like India) seemed to favor multiple memberships and some seemed to stick to one or two major ones.

- 51% of the respondents expressed concerns about privacy and security issues online. Brazilians (79%) and Americans (69%) were most concerned about such issues while Indians (19%) were the least concerned. Amongst members of social networking sites, only 26% were comfortable giving out personal details. Indians (57%) were amongst those most comfortable sharing personal details while Brazilians (23%) and Americans (30%) were amongst those least comfortable.

At my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — I use data from Wave 3 of the Power of the People Social Media Tracker by Universal McCann (PDF/ Slideshare) to do a comparative analysis of social media usage in BRIC countries.

Here are the top level highlights –

- The total number of active internet users in BRIC countries (101.2m) is higher than the number of active internet users in US (100m).

- Significantly more users from BRIC countries than US engage with social media tools, both in terms of content consumption and content creation.

- Even as percentage of active internet users, social media usage in BRIC countries is much higher than US across content consumption and content creation.

- At the country level, China leads in blogging and podcasting while Brazil is the leader in social networking and online video.

Do join the conversation at the How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies blog.

I’m delighted that my friend Chhavi Sachdev — who runs audio content and consulting company Sonologue — has started a new podcast on the state of the radio industry in India –

This week, I’m looking at a few new station launches in India, including India’s first real NGO-run community radio station, Q2 results from the RAB in the US and iWorldspace, as well as a UK study on podcasting and what the numbers mean for radio listenership.

After more than a decade in the US, Chhavi returned to India last year to seed the idea of meaningful talk radio in India. Before she started Sonologue, she was a partner in News Radio India where she produced content for Radio Netherlands and WBUR. Chhavi is very involved in the community radio scene in India and has some fascinating ideas about the state of radio in India.

I have been prodding Chhavi into doing a podcast for a few months now, and I’m delighted that she has taken the plunge at a moment when she is struggling with putting together the rest of the Sonologue website. Chhavi’s podcast is another lesson for me that we need fewer resources than we think we do to do something we really want to do.

My friend Rajesh Lalwani — who runs social media and brand consulting outfit Blogworks — has released a report on the social media scene in India.

‘An Overview of Internet, Blog & Social Media Environment in India’ is based on primary research with social media thought leaders (including yours truly), apart from secondary research. It covers internet, mobile web and social media usage trends in India, apart from analysis of the social networking sites and blogging platforms popular in India.

I have great respect for the team that has worked on the report and, at $1200 plus tax, it’s a useful introduction to the social media space in India. You can order the report by e-mail at studyreport@blogworks.in.

Later in the evening, I’ll be going for a book reading session of ‘Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics’ by Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox at Busboys and Poets.

Surprisingly, neither the Netroots Rising website, nor the book’s Amazon page offers a blurb! So, here’s the blurb from the Busboys and Poets events listings –

The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional “top-down” central broadcasters to new “bottom-up” decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb’s “rag-tag army” of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen’s senatorial bid.

It seems to me that the prominent use of social media tools in election campaigns has introduced social media to a set of Americans who wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise. As a result, there’s suddenly a lot of interest in the use of social media to engage (young) citizens in civic issues. Books like Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age and ‘Netroots Rising’ are an indicator of this interest.

According to the recent Mobile Media Marketplace report from the Nielson Company (via Ashish Sinha), gaming and entertainment are the most popular categories amongst mobile internet users in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) whereas email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users.

Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen, suggests that –

In the U.S. and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialized devices like iPods, to meet consumer’s entertainment needs. Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven’t had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile’s transition into a personal entertainment platform.

Mobile internet penetration in BRIC countries continues to lag US/ EU (10% to 16%). Still, Russia at 11.2% and China at 6.8% are far ahead of Brazil at 2.6% and India at 1.8%.

It’s interesting to note that India is the only country where neither search or news figure in the top 5 usages of mobile web. It’s equally interesting to note that China is the only country where e-mail doesn’t figure in the top five mobile web usage list.

I first asked: are there any subcultures in urban India that go beyond religion, caste, class and language? (tweet)

Then I realized that before I try to understand Indian subcultures, I’ll have to first ask: what is (the mainstream) Indian culture? (tweet)

So, I asked my friends on Twitter –

So, what is (the mainstream) Indian culture? Bollywood? Cricket? Weddings? Hindi soaps? Divisions wrt religion/caste/language? What else? (tweet)

Dina Mehta, Rajesh Lalwani and Harshil Karia responded that in a country as complex as India, there can’t be a dominant mainstream culture –

RajeshLalwani: I wish it was that simple. I don’t think it is that easy to qualify Indian cultural mainstream. (tweet) can we define anything as mainstream for an entire nation (tweet).

Harshil: I don’t believe there is a master Indian culture (tweet)… (even though)… key cultural indicators are religion, family, democracy (and the nuances attached to it) and cricket. (tweet)

Dina: I shy away from such stereotypes. My worldview may differ from yours. What’s mainstream to me may be different to you. (tweet) eg. twitter is mainstream for me & not a subculture. makes me think is culture static? can anyone say this “IS”. (tweet) More importantly, my worldview of urban indian culture is driven by my existence here. slums juxtaposed with hi-rise (tweet).

My social media consultant friends Rajesh Lalwani, Dina Mehta and Rajiv Dingra were recently interviewed for a very well-researched story in Live Mint about how corporates in India are engaging with social media.

Here is a quick snapshot of social media usage by Indian corporates based on the article and my own understanding –

- Financial services, travel, telecom and consumer product brands are the most active users of social media in India, apart from online brands.

- Most Indian brands skip the first two steps in the “Listen -> Understand -> Engage” model and start with engagement itself. This is perhaps a result of the costliness and clumsiness of the online monitoring tools that were available in India so far.

- Most Indian brands engage with social media in a limited way, using it as a broadcast tool instead of a participation tool. So, the use of branded social networks, social network apps, user created ads and viral videos is much higher than blogs, forums and wikis.

As the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University, I’ll spend the next year studying how social media in BRIC countries will be used differently from the first world countries and the implications this will have on how individuals and institutions in these countries engage with social media.

Inspired by Grant McCracken’s post on how trend-hunting is meaningless unless it is rooted in a deeper understanding of the underlying culture –

it is precisely when “culture above” resonates with the “culture below” that things “take,” that innovation has a chance to transform us in substantial ways.

– I realized that to understand how social media in BRIC countries will be used differently from the first world countries, I first need to understand how social dynamics in these countries differ.

So, as a starting point, I asked myself — and my friends on Twitter — if there are any subcultures in India, like this list of subcultures in the West.

I’m searching for someone who has studied Indian urban culture in detail, maybe done a PhD in it (tweet).

I’m also looking for books on Indian culture like Pavan Varma’s ‘The Great Indian Middle Class’ and Rama Bijapurkar’s ‘We Are Like That Only’ (tweet).

Quick Summary: I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at Georgetown University.

I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) associated with The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University.

The fellowship is funded by the $1 million Yahoo! Fund on International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet, which was established at Georgetown University by a gift from Yahoo! Inc. There is only one such position open for each academic year and I’m the second Yahoo! Fellow.

The Yahoo! Fellow is chosen from applicants drawn from the government, corporate, non-profit and academic sectors with interest in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Two graduate students from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program at the SFS are also selected to as Junior Yahoo! Fellows to engage in research associated with the Yahoo! Fellow. Part of the research done by the Yahoo! Fellow is also incorporated into the MSFS program as guest lectures, special seminars, case studies and/ or course modules.