Facebook’s Growth in Germany and Austria: Das ist gut!
Germany and Austria have far smaller populations of Facebook users than many other European countries, but that is starting to change, and fast — both countries made our list of the top ten fastest-growing in the region yesterday. Here’s a closer look at what’s happening.
Germany, a country with 82.1 million people, grew by 541,000 Facebook users over the course of last month to reach 4.36 million monthly actives. Austria is ten times smaller, with a population of 8.34 million — but it also grew by 14 percent, gaining 129,000 users to reach 1.03 million.
This means that even though Germany is much larger numerically, Facebook has only penetrated 5.3% of the population. Meanwhile, 12.3% of Austrians are now using the site every month.
It is especially meaningful that Facebook is getting this growth in the German-speaking part of the region, because it faces an entrenched incumbent: A clone of Facebook called studiVZ. Facebook sued the company last year for copying it to the degree that it merely replaced “Facebook’s blue colour scheme with a red one.” Facebook was “seeking to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity to ensure that users are not confused and that Facebook’s reputation remains unharmed.” The suit was settled out of court a month ago. At the time, we noted Facebook was growing fast in Germany; while we don’t have fresh data on studiVZ’s traffic, last we heard in April, it was around 5.5. million. In other words, studiVZ does not appear to have a dominant share of its home market, and Facebook is now growing in the middle of it.
Time will tell if studiVZ has differentiated itself well enough as a German-language social network to be able to hold its own versus what we expect to be Facebook’s continued growth among the 105 million native German speakers in the world. For a visual aid, check out the map of German speakers in Europe, below.
[Update: As commenters add, below, studiVZ has three different sites that apparently add up to more than 15 million users. That's at least more of the market, although it would be helpful to see current monthly active user stats for these properties.]
[Photo of a German town taken from Austria by Luiz Felipe Castro on Flickr; German language map via Wikimedia.]
October 9th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Very good article. Facebook has recently hit 300M+ and are confident that they will reach the 1 Billion mark.
Keep the info coming
This is something that facebook fans may be interested in, have a look and let me know what you think
http://budurl.com/4t3g
Patrick
October 9th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Nice one. We like this growth ;)
“StudiVZ” is not the only social network in Germany. The “VZnet Netwerke Ltd.” has 3 different social networks targeted to different target groups. Overall there are over 15 million users on “StudiVZ”, “MeinVZ” and “SchülerVZ” (August 2009: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VZnet_Netzwerke). Another big social network in Germany is “WerKenntWen” with 7 million users (Sept. 2009: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wer-kennt-wen). It´s still a long way for Facebook in Germany, but it´s exciting to see how facebook is growing in Germany.
October 9th, 2009 at 6:54 am
It’s really time that they bomb away this *VZ crap!!
October 9th, 2009 at 7:20 am
You are doing the same mistake like many other blogs.
studiVZ, meinVZ and schuelerVZ are one platform, but just seperated from each other. They count more than 15 Million Users. Facebook still is far behind.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:06 am
studiVZ and it´s related social networks schuelerVZ (for school kids) and meinVZ (everybody else) are by far not innovative enough to compete with facebook. They copied FB in the beginning and are trying to copy some FB features now. It´s not working. People are changing to Facebook VERY fast here in Germany.
It´s just starting here. We all can see that by looking at which people from our German networks are new to Facebook: schoolmates, moms, dads, co-workers, old non-tech-savvy friends… They´re all coming over.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Don’t forget Switzerland !
Germany: The “VZ-Gruppe” is still the leader with the total amount of it’s three brands (StudiVZ, SchuelerVZ and MeinVZ). But facebook grows faster and passed StudiVZ in July.
But facebook get’s more attention especially in the marketing industry. As a result more and more brands start to use facebook for marketing.
Not to forget German developers. Brainbuddies http://apps.facebook.com/brainbuddies is a successful app made in Germany.
October 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Philipp, those links don’t take me to any stats, at least that I’m seeing. MMD, can you provide the evidence?
I’ve updated the story recognizing what you’ve said, but as I note, some sort of verified monthly active user count would be helpful in making a complete comparison between studiVZ and Facebook.
October 9th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
@Eric, it´s just german wikipedia entry to those social networks. I think the links are broken because i put in a bracket. Here are direct links to a “wer-kennt-wen” press release:
http://static.werkenntwen.de/presse/infos/wkw_Fakten_2009-09.pdf
and here for the “VZnet Netzwerke”:
http://static.pe.studivz.net/media/de/pm/090825.pdf
both in german.
br philipp
October 10th, 2009 at 4:07 am
Nothing on official users numbers, but the site of the German Audit Bureau of Circulation of Advertising Media (www.ivw.de) lists the certified visits and page impressions for the VZ pages as follows: meinVZ (105.778.723 V / 2.548.428.156 PI), schülerVZ (161.786.473 V / 6.084.588.526 PI), StudiVZ (171.124.918 V / 3.920.473.002 PI). Unfortunately no stats for facebook, though.
October 10th, 2009 at 8:00 am
While it’s true that Facebook is still far behind StudiVZ in absolute numbers, its progress is impressive. When I interviewed Zuckerberg in Munich onstage at DLD in January he said Facebook had 2 million in Germany. A year earlier it had 600,000. StudiVZ had been very powerful because of national loyalty as well as its effective imitation of Facebook features. Meanwhile, Wer-Kennt-Wen had come from nowhere and was itself taking members from StudiVZ, which was initially limited by being seen exclusively as a student service. That’s why it now has the two other arms–to attempt to disassociate itself from a “student-only” image. For Facebook to now be growing by more than half a million per month is especially impressive because of the strength of this local competition. .
October 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Thanks, Philipp and Sven.
Agreed, David, good mention of Wer-Kennt-Wen.
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