Marketing Communications

524 CHAPTER 15 E-COMMUNICATION

intention of stopping their membership, nor do they feel the need to further expand their

membership on social network sites. Facebook rules, at least in Europe, the USA and

Australia, but is having a hard time in China and Japan. No other network reaches its 96%

awareness and 62% usage level among Internet users. In Russia and Ukraine, Vkontakte (a

Facebook look-alike) is big with a penetration of 39% and an awareness of 55%.^174 I n t h e

Netherlands, Facebook recently surpassed Hyves as being the biggest social media platform

with 6.5 million active users versus 4.4 million for Hyves. Only 20% of the Dutch people log

in daily to their Hyves account, whereas this fi gure is 60% for Facebook.^175

Twitter and MySpace are the second and third most popular social media in Europe in

terms of both awareness and membership. Although Twitter has a high awareness (80%),

there seems to be a Twitter paradox since only 16% are using it. Compared with Facebook,

Twitter is still a rather small network of people. Th e future looks promising, but there is still

a long way to go. Facebook and Twitter are a perfect couple as they are serving diff erent

needs. When people join Twitter, their Facebook usage does not decrease. Twitter users are

typically using more social media than non-Twitter users. Given the fact that LinkedIn is a

professional network, it is worth pointing out that this network ranks fourth, in terms of

both awareness and membership ( Table 15.3 ).^176

Table 15.3 Overview of the penetration of social media platforms in Europe

Country % of total population Facebook^177 Twitter^178 LinkedIn^179 Google+^180 , 181

Europe 28.7% 4.6%^181

Norway 56.9% 11.6%

Denmark 51.67% 14.9% 10.5%

Sweden 51.4% 9.8% 9.3%

UK 49.9% 38% 13.4% 7.4%

Ireland 46% 13.3% 10.6%

Belgium 45.1% 10% 5.9%

Finland 40.8% 6.5% 10.7%

Portugal 40.7% 7.3% 8.3%

Hungary 39.8% 1.9%

Turkey 39.4% 10% 1.3%

The Netherlands 38.9% 33% 18.7% 5.9%

Switzerland 38.3% 8.1% 5.9%

France 37.7% 8% 5%

Italy 37.3% 4.9%

Spain 35.3% 17% 5.7%

Germany 28.8% 6% 1.8%

M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 524M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 524 6/6/13 8:55 AM6/6/13 8:55 AM