In the Netherlands the biggest social network is not Facebook, but Hyves. And its our luck that the people at Hyves like numbers. On a regular basis they are publishing new numbers, usually showing us their growth. They always try to be as ‘honest’ as possible with these numbers, and therefore using numbers from for example Comscore.
The last update shows some interesting numbers. With 7946000 uniques in May 2010 Hyves still is the biggest social network in The Netherlands. But Facebook seems to be closing in on the Dutch giants. Where Hyves saw a growth of 1,64% Facebook grew 2,83% to 4658000 uniques in May. This however doesn’t make Facebook the fastest growing social network in the low countries. Twitter sees the fastest increase (almost 15%) followed by Windows Live, YouTube and then Facebook. The immense growth of Twitter can be triggered by the use of Twitter in the Dutch elections which were early June. The campaign was all through the month of May.
Time spent
Looking at the times spent on social networks Hyves however has the most loyal visitors so it seems. No less than 2060 million minutes were spent on Hyves in May. Facebook (261 million) and Twitter (40 million) have a lot less time spent.
There are many more numbers which Comscore has given out on the Dutch social networking market. Find them here. In general we can say that social networking in the Netherlands is growing steady. But looking at the numbers we should keep in mind that its definitely not ‘just’ Hyves or not ‘just’ Twitter and Facebook we should be focussing on.
Bas van den Beld
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[…] aboard a wealth of new users being engaged for the purpose of politics. Twitter alone saw a 15% growth in June 2010 directly tied to political […]