/De Telegraaf pays €21.5m for the largest social network in Holland

De Telegraaf pays €21.5m for the largest social network in Holland

TMG, editors of Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf are paying €21.5m for Hyves, the largest social network in The Netherlands. Is there any place for companies competing against Facebook? Some local players are still trying hard.

Hyves has 9 million users and a 68% penetration in Holland, which is more than three times as much as Facebook. Hyves was founded eight months after Facebook in 2004, which is about the same as Tuenti in Spain or Nasza Klasa in Poland. What’s happening with these local networks: they are all being bought by 2 different types of companies:

– Media groups: MySpace (NewsCorp), Bebo (AOL), Hyves (TMG), Nasza Klasa (Naspers) or StudiVZ (Georg von Holtzbrinck)
– Telecom operators: Zyb (Vodafone), Tuenti (Telefónica)