At the end of last year Brussels held a workshop on EU social networks and EU R&I programmes in which 15 social networks were present. Among them were some local leaders (as Holland’s Hyves, Spain’s Tuenti, Hungary’s iWiw, Greece’s Zoo, Sweden’s LunarStorm, Germany’s Vznet or Poland’s Nasza Klasa), some sites which technically can not be considered social networks (Portugal’s Sapo or Spain’s Barrabes), some content sharing sites (as France’s Dailymotion) and a few global social networks (Netlog and Badoo, which are based in Belgium and the UK). Germany’s Xing, which is a competitor to Linkedin with a strong position in Germany and China, also attended this meeting.

These last ones are the most interesting and they are the only ones that can be really considered as Europe-wide networks and the largest one is Badoo. So is this the largest European social network? The answer is yes. A dating site which makes money out of spamming and selling fees to its users is nowadays the largest social network in Europe. Industrial fragmentation is not good for Europe. Different regulations and strong cultural differences are dividing Europeans (and their social networks).

Curiously, the European Commission did set up this meeting because it considers that social networks offer big business opportunities to all the sectors of the economy. “Social networks are likely to become the main entry point to the web in the future, prevailing over the existing search engines. The continuous increase of registered users, together with the opening of social networks to business and entertainment spheres, unlocks new opportunities to increase the competitiveness of the web-based European industry”, explains the Commission.

As a result of this meeting, more bureaucracy was created. It’s called “steering group EU competitiveness on the web”. The members of the core layer of the Steering Group are representatives of social networks, online mobile gaming, web-based media, web end-to-end integrators, network service providers, public services providers, manufacturing industries, EU public administrations, and services industries. Interested organisations will also be represented through a second layer.