Facebook By Region: Boston Behind

While I haven't done a geographic breakdown of my 1800+ LinkedIn contacts to see how many are based in New England, Europe, Silicon Valley and rest of world, Facebook does it for you. They do it for you that is, IF the people you are connected to subscribe to a geographic network.

It appears that some of my contacts have not, however when I know that they're from a particular city or live in one, I suggest that they join that network because frankly, its useful. It's useful for those who travel or are trying to keep in touch with a wide global network and it allows me, the user, to go into each of those networks from time-to-time to see how people are doing in each of those areas I know so well OR identify them with.

Most of these geographic areas I have either lived in, spent a chunk of time in or travel to extensively for business or pleasure. What's interesting is that Boston is the one city where I've spent most of my professional life and yet, on Facebook, its my smallest network.

It's not as if I haven't invited my New England contacts. AND, it's not as if I am not tapped into Boston's technology hub. Does that confirm that once again Boston has a tendancy to lag behind? Doesn't jump into new trends as quickly as the west coast? Doesn't place any value in social networks? Is too old school to care?

Perhaps I'm being harsh, but it is one of the reasons I decided to move west. The Boston technology community was slower to respond to new trends, had a lack of enthusiasm for fresh ideas and wasn't as willing to take deep dives. MIT was an exception, as shown in the breakdown.

Facebook only shows your top 7 networks. If it were to show more, you'd see that Seattle is pretty much neck to neck with Boston and Stanford, MIT and Harvard are close behind Boston, meaning that I have more contacts from these top notch universities than from the greater Boston area itself. Seattle was ahead of Boston until about a week ago.

New York, where I've never officially lived ranks higher and San Francisco where I'm a relatively new kid on the block is on top. I've taken the actual numbers off for privacy reasons, but below is the ranking of my Facebook networks from highest to smallest.

• San Francisco, CA
• Silicon Valley, CA
• New York, NY
• Boston, MA
• Stanford
• MIT
• Harvard