Hyves Maintains Position as Top Social Networking Site in the Netherlands Despite Facebook’s Rapid Advances

ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study of social networking usage in the Netherlands. The study reveals that the Dutch social networking market continues to grow strongly as sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin extend their respective footprints in the market.

“The social networking market in the Netherlands is really quite unique and full of interesting storylines,” said Mike Read, svp and managing director of comScore Europe. “It is one of the few markets remaining where a local social networking player [Hyves] continues to lead Facebook, but that lead is becoming increasingly tenuous. Another interesting facet to this market is that the Netherlands has the highest Internet penetration worldwide for two of the other key global social networking sites, Twitter and Linkedin. The Netherlands is in many ways a nexus of global social networking behavior.”

Hyves Leads Facebook in Dutch Social Networking Market
Despite the overall maturity of the Internet market in the Netherlands, the social networking category continues to advance, growing 18 percent to 11.5 million visitors in March 2011 (representing 96 percent of the online population). Hyves continues to hold the top position among social networking sites in the market with more than 7.6 million visitors in March, but Facebook is quickly gaining ground, surging 76 percent in the past year to nearly 6.6 million visitors. Twitter.com and Linkedin.com rank third and fourth, respectively, with more than 3 million visitors and each growing approximately 70 percent in the past year.

*Excludes visits from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Netherlands Ranks #1 in Linkedin and Twitter Penetration
The Netherlands also has an exceptionally high representation among social networking sites Twitter.com and Linkedin.com, ranking #1 among all countries in Internet penetration for these sites. In each case, more than one in four Dutch Internet users visits these sites during the course of the month. While the top ten countries in Linkedin penetration are either English-speaking or in Western Europe, the top countries for Twitter touch virtually every corner of the globe.

Source: comScore