“European social networking sites have lost their leadership in their domestic markets”. This is the conclusion of the last European report on digital competitiveness. The document outlines the cases of diVZ (Germany), Skyrock (France) and Tuenti (Spain), which used to be “undisputed leaders” in their markets.

What happened? They had limited international expansion and Facebook started a big effort to localise its site back in 2007. In fact, the report remembers that MySpace made little inroads against them, though it was already a big leader in its home market, the US. Globalisation is killing old European social networking sites, which were in fact copycats of Facebook or Friendster.

Nevertheless, the report explains that local sites are still very active in several Eastern European countries, as Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. But the last report by Italy’s Vincenzo Cosenza shows that these networks, including Nasza-Klasa, have also been beaten by Facebook. The only exception is Hyves, which still leads the Dutch market, but this could change in the near future.