It shows clearly the lack of Facebook access in China and, frankly how many other countries around the world use the world’s largest social networking site.

He also has a series of other maps showing social networking across the globe dating back to last year.  You can view the maps at his website.

The social map shows the dominant social networking site in every country and on every continent on earth. The map, which is based on December 2010 data. Facebook is dominating North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and most of South America.

Other social networking site that dominate at least one country are Orkut in Brazil, QZone in China, V Kontakte in Russia and Mixi in Japan.

All they need to do is to join the new Orkut community at Orkut which will hand out an invitation to the redesigned Orkut interface to the user after the joining. The new Orkut community page can be accessed here. Just log into Orkut first and click on the join link in the left sidebar afterwards to join the Orkut community.

Some Orkut users might be wondering if the redesign is worth out trying right now, here are the main changes in comparison to the old Orkut design:

• * Fewer pages, faster browsing: We’ve concentrated orkut’s principal actions onto your homepage, making it a one-stop-shop for nearly everything that you’d like to do. Now you can chat, watch videos, and browse and search within your full friends and communities lists without ever having to open a new page. See a photo, video, or status message in your activity stream that you’d like to comment on? Just start typing away. After all, fewer pages and a GWT interface mean less time waiting for things to load and more time doing what really matters– hanging out with your friends!
• A clean, simple interface: We’ve reorganized the most important activites on orkut so that they are easy to find and even easier to use. Look out for larger pictures, easier to access notifications, targeted friend suggestions, and key updates closer to the top of your homepage. Now you can even use your friends’ profile pages to keep up with their most recent activities and leave them scraps.
• Greater personalization: Make your orkut profile and homepage truly your own by choosing the color that best fits your style. Have a personality that’s too unique to be captured by words? We’ve also made it possible for you to customize your “about me” section, adding video, OpenSocial applications and much more to your array of options.

The request to join the new community is pending until a moderator of the community approves it. This can take a few hours, sometimes even longer. It is still one of the fastest ways of being able to access the new Orkut design unless you know someone who could send you an invite directly.

Orkut login problems are reported by many users of the service. Some say that the page is not loading at all after logging into Orkut, others say the page that is loaded is completely white or loads that slow that they have to cancel the Orkut login attempt.

There are a few options that might help users who face Orkut login problems. The Orkut developers are offering the following advice:

• Clear your cache, then try accessing your profile again.
• Make sure that cookies are enabled in your browser.
• Try accessing your account from another browser.
• Try restarting your computer.

There are however other options for users who have troubles logging into Orkut. The first option is to access the mobile version of the service instead of the web version. The mobile version of Orkut has a much smaller footprint which should help users on slow connections. It can also help users who have Orkut login problems as it is located on a subdomain. The mobile version of Orkut can be accessed here.

Another little trick that might help is to log into another Google service first (e.g. http://www.google.com/mail/ ) and switch to the Orkut login page afterwards. Orkut should recognize that you are already logged in and let you in without asking for login information.

Have you other tips on how to solve Orkut login problems? Post them in the comments.

Gbutts displays a huge list of Google services after installation which can be used to select the Google services that should be displayed in Firefox. The services that have been selected are then available as a toolbar that has to be dragged and dropped to a Firefox toolbar. It can for example be placed next to the address field in the Firefox web browser to provide one click access to the selected Google services.

The selected services can either be displayed as buttons in the toolbar so that they can be clicked on instantly or as a dropdown menu which would save some space in the toolbar if more than a handful of services are selected. The dropdown menu would increase the click count to access one of the Google services to two however.

GButts (that means Google Buttons actually) could be an interesting add-on for users who work with multiple Google services throughout the day and want to access these services as comfortably as possible. Everyone else is probably better of using bookmarks or creating keyboard shortcuts to access the Google services.