Command Facebook, and there is none for anyone. Not even on the European social networking market, where clones of the prototype invented by Mark Zuckerberg have multiplied in recent years. In short, life is hard for the various Badoo, Linkedin, for the Russian Vkontakte, or again for the Dutch of Hyves and the Germans of VZ Netzwerke, to name a few.
According to data reported by ComScore, Facebook, currently 800 million subscribers worldwide and a turnover of 10 billion dollars, aims for one billion users by 2015, gradually overcoming the pitfalls of local social networks.
Mission already accomplished in Germany and Holland. The owner of VZ Netzwerke, the former German market leader, had to abandon the possibility of a market launch due to the decline in users and worsening market conditions. In fact, the number of users more than halved in September, falling to 8 million from 16 million a year ago, while Facebook visitors grew by 43% in the same period. The German social was born in 2005 with the name of StudiesVZ, which stands for student directory, sold in 2007 to Georg von Holtzbrinck Gmbh for 85 million euros in 2007. However, the same company sold its shares the following year to take over a Facebook package.
Same fate for Holland: Hyves, the social network in Flemish, had already been overtaken in August, when it recorded 7,2 million visitors, compared to 7,7 million visitors to Facebook. “Dutch people who want to connect with friends abroad cannot do so through my platform – says Marc De Vries, CEO of Hyves – Mine is too small a company in the world of social networks to compete globally”.
The strength of Facebook is now unstoppable. For example, the decision to offer language versions of the social network has given a further boost to its European market. "By now Facebook is super-local and also dominates in Europe," says Jan Rezab, CEO of the research firm SocialBakers. Facebook has indeed recently introduced versions in Russian, Flemish and Danish.
Another secret of the progressive market erosion is the graft of services and applications such as gaming and music, and other ways to earn users, from File sharing to TV programmes, passing through news and activities such as cooking and gymnastics.
Mark Zuckerberg's company is thus increasingly launched towards the IPO, for which it already has raised $1,5 billion in new funds from Goldman Sachs and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies.
But for the definitive conquest of the extremely fragmented European market (there are around fifty social networks in all countries), there is still some niche of resistance to be overcome. These are Poland, Latvia, but above all Russia, where the giant Vkontakte (translated: in touch) still dominates the market. The platform directed by Pavel Durov has in fact exceeded 100 million subscribers, with over 28 million daily entries and more than 3 billion pages visited. Numbers that make the idea of an obstacle still hard to die, in a large country like Russia (but not only, 30% of users are not Russian), with a winning format and very similar to that of Facebook. Perhaps too similar, given that Zuckerberg has repeatedly sued the competitor for plagiarism.
But the fact remains that Facebook in Russia is only the third social network, with 9 million registrations, compared to 34,3 million Vkontakte and 27 million Odnoklassiki. However, the trend could lead to think of an overtaking in the future even in Russian-speaking countries: in 2010, in fact, Zuckerberg's product grew by 67%, compared to 44% for Odnoklassiki and only 13% for Vkontakte.
But how will European competitors resist the inexorable domination of the US social network? Inventing anything. For example, the Dutch Hyves has removed the minimum age, to attract ever younger faces and try to create a niche in order not to disappear. In fact, Facebook only accepts users over the age of 13. Other competitors, like LinkedIn and Badoo, on the other hand, have specialized in particular market segments, alternative to Facebook, and have grown respectively by 24% and 67% in Europe over the past year, according to ComScore.
Badoo, for example, has recently become more and more a site for dating and appointments, for chatting and meeting new people, perhaps with the possibility of meeting a soul mate. A kind of Cupid of the web, which actually differentiates it a lot from Facebook which remains more generalist.
But the predictions are clear nonetheless: according to ComScore, in a year Facebook will be the market leader even in the most resilient countries like Russia.
Read also ComScore
