Ireland lagging in Social Media adoption

Ireland is getting further and further behind in the adoption of the new technologies. Only a few years ago we have been on the forefront, and look at us now? The time has stopped here. Words clock is ticking, but we got occupied with our own issues and forgot to look across our shores. Social media is just one of the examples. Here is the sample from the Twitter Job Search. You might remember I published the instructions on how to use it months ago (a week after it become available!). Where are we today? Well, the map below does not really need much comment:

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN… all got really small penetration percentage in Ireland comparing to the rest of the developed world. Perhaps the housing market ‘collapse’ (one third of the peak value is lost on average), or unemployment in Ireland at 12.6% and still raising, pushed us to think about the basic needs. Euro Disney got replaced by self catering holidays. Bread on the table is more in peoples mind today than thinking about the emerging marketing media. Unfortunately that is the perfect way to stop the innovation, stop the development, and back into the ‘Dark Ages’.

The social media adoption is actually a quite reliable indicator of where the country is going. It represents the mood of the population, on top of the basic indicators like the computer literacy, internet penetration, etc.