By now we all know that the U.S. ranking in Plaxo’s Connected Index was even worse than our showing in the World Cup. In fact we lag behind countries with weaker internet infrastructure and penetration. Some of you may be surprised, but I’m not.

That some cultures value social connectedness more than others is not a new idea and has been widely written about. The claim is that cultures fall into two categories.

● Independent cultures: Those that follow a more independent cultural norm, where members value independence above social relationships,
● Collectivist cultures: Those obeying a collectivist cultural norm, in which people exhibit a more interdependent mode of existence.

Anglo Saxon countries (therefore us) are said to belong to the former group, while Asian and Latin cultures belong to the latter.

These “Cultures of Connectedness” (my term) rely on many layers of social relationships where business, family, friends and social contacts are equally important. The term guanxi, here in Romanized form, attempts to describe the importance of social networks in the Chinese culture, which is definitely a culture of connectedness. But beyond the practical benefits that strong social networks may provide, in cultures of connectedness people just like…being connected.
This is highlighted in a recent blog post on the Connected Index describing the experience of a U.S. immigrant in Argentina who feels very much….connected.

So it’s no wonder several of these countries appear at the top of our Index, including the administrative region of Hong Kong, whose Connected Index is second only to Argentina with an average of 390 contacts per address book. It’s easy to see why: Hong Kong has guanxi, strong internet penetration and a high level of comfort with English -- about 1/3 of the population is fluent in English and 2/3 understands it. But in many of the other countries in our top 20 people are not as comfortable with an English UI and internet penetration, while growing, still has a long way to go to reach U.S levels. The one thing these people have in common is the importance of feeling connected.

I agree with John that the real measure of connectedness is not one’s six-degrees-of-separation network or the quality of one’s broadband connection, but the size of one’s address book. Those are the people we have direct access to, not through friends or friends of friends. If that’s true then we can extrapolate the Connected Index to measure individual levels of connectedness, which I did by comparing my own address book to the Index. I’m sad to report that my numbers are even lower than the national average. My immediate reaction was to mentally go through the list of people I have met recently looking for possible contacts to add. I guess this not only shows I’m unconnected but definitely competitive!

What about you? How connected are you?

-Regina Bustamante, Director, Globalization

Today we introduced our “Connected Index,” which ranks countries by average size of address book. You can think of it as World Cup of address books. It’s based on what we’ve learned about how our over 10 million members are using Plaxo.

Before we ran the numbers, I had some guesses about what the results might be. I figured the U.S. would probably be near the top, but not in first place. I imagined English-speaking countries would dominate the top ten, since we have not yet localized the Plaxo service. Instead, the U.S. tied for 29th place with the Dominican Republic, and Argentina was the clear winner – with nearly a 100-person-per-address-book lead over second place Austria. And three other South American countries joined Argentina in the top ten (Venezuela, Brazil, and Chile)!

We intend to update the Connected Index from time to time, to see how things are evolving. We may also come out with variations, such as city rankings or red states versus blue states. Your suggestions are welcomed.

Here are the top ten countries from the first edition of the Index:

1. Argentina
2. Austria
3. South Korea
4. Italy
5. Venezuela
6. Germany
7. Switzerland
8. Brazil
9. Czech Republic
10. Chile

John McCrea
VP of Marketing

Update:
Starting to see some pickup of this story in the blogosphere. A nice piece by the always-insightful Mark Kellner of the Washington Times is here. He draws a parallel to the U.S. coming in sixth in broadband connectivity, and links to a post on that subject, here.