[credit – GigaOM]

I enjoyed Om Malik's post on Different IMs For Different Folks not so much because of the Skype quibble he has but because of the image above. It’s very very easy in the world of the web to think your world is the de-facto standard. For example, lots of people (as you can see from this map) use MSN Instant Messenger and in the past I’ve assumed my friends around the world do too – it’s naive but easy to do and as you can see from this, there isn’t a standard.

The world of search is of course more dominated by Google but when you look at Russia and China they’re bit part players.

What’s my point? It’s really that we need to be careful as a company and industry (and individuals) of silo’ed thinking. It’s easy to assume but very dangerous. Having worked for 10 years in Microsoft UK I have become conditioned to UK thinking but now I work with our subsidiaries around the world it’s a real eye opener. Case in point – you may think South Africa is well developed in terms of broadband penetration. You’d be wrong and when you start making product launch and localisation decisions based on assumptions (thankfully we don’t) it becomes a very dangerous approach.