Feb
27
Western Europe’s Social Media Trend
Posted by: ibonsegura | February 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Western Europe’s Social Media Trend
As I was reading an article in eMarketer about Europe’s increasing social media sites usage I couldn’t help but think about my hometown experience seeing as I’m from Spain. Having lived 10 years away from my home country has helped me identify clear differences in internet usage patterns. Just a few years ago, back when Facebook was restricted to several universities, everyone back home found my Facebook page quite strange. At the time I probably had around only 40 friends and the time I used to spend on ‘the’ Facebook seemed ridiculous.
Interestingly enough as the article suggests, nowadays the trend is changing. Given Europe’s aging population, these results are quite remarkable. However, as the article suggests, many organizations consider Western Europe as a similar market and yet their social media usage varies dramatically from country to country.
The UK, France, Italy and Spain have adopted social networks far faster than Germany has. Not only that, but although in most European countries, Facebook, just like in North America does dominate, other local sites are closely seconds and shouldn’t be overlooked. Examples of other social media sites are Tuenti (Spain), Hyves (Netherlands, #1 before Facebook), Copains d’Avant (France) among others, many of which are dominated by different age groups. Tuenti for example is dominated by younger teenagers, whilst the older population solely uses Facebook and most have not even heard of Tuenti.
So next time we are planning on advertising in Western Europe’s social media sites lets make sure we take a closer look at the individual country’s preference.
For the full article click here, note that you might have to be logged in to VPN to access it.
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