One thing that unites Facebook $META users in Asia, Europe and America: They all love Disneyland, and want everybody to know about it. Four of the top 25 locations that were most checked-in to by Facebook users this year—excluding transportation hubs such as airports—were Disneyland Tokyo, Disneyland Hong Kong, Disneyland Paris and Disneyland California. (Facebook’s top 25 consist of the single-most checked-in location in 25 countries, not the top 25 overall.)
Apart from Disneyland, many of the top places on Facebook’s list were predictable tourist attractions: The Blue Lagoon in Iceland, Piazza San Marco in Venice, the Sharm el-Sheikh resort in Egypt, Las Ramblas in Barcelona.
There are also some surprises. The most popular Facebook check-in in India is not the Taj Mahal but the Golden Temple, the spiritual home of the Sikh religion. In Moscow it is not Red Square $SQ but Gorky Park. And the top spot in Germany isn’t Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie but the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, heart of the city’s seedy red-light district. Why do so many people want their friends to know they were hanging out in a street full of strip clubs and brothels? Probably because the Reeperbahn is also where the Beatles spent two key years playing at clubs before they became world-famous, and Beatles-Platz, with statues of the band, sits at one of the Reeperbahn’s intersections.
