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Tuenti bids Adios to Spanish Facebook

Facebook has had its European rampage halted briefly in Spain where native social networking site Tuenti has managed to retain the top spot as most popular social networking site.

The online social network phenomenon is as stronger in Spain than anywhere else in mainland Europe.

Only the UK has a higher percentage of internet users logging into social network sites.

December 2008 saw a peak for Spanish social networks, with 13 million users visiting one of the top networking sites. Facebook has grown in popularity abroad with the introduction of foreign language interfaces.

Facebook in France managed to topple local opposition recently as it became the most popular social networking site in the country. In Spain, Facebook has also dramatically increased in popularity, sporting a 12 fold increase from the previous year.

However, it was the native site Tuenti which held on to the top spot, outranking Facebook by 1.2 million visitors in December. The Spanish site has seen an impressive growth over the last 12 months of 770 per cent and looks to continue its growth throughout 2009.

Whether the global dominance of Facebook can stifle Tuenti remains to be seen. Digital Media analysts comScore, who were responsible for the statistics said: “It will be interesting to see if Facebook can further close the gap on Tuenti in 2009, or if the market will reach an equilibrium and find room for both properties as leading destinations for the Spanish social networking community,” according to SVP Mike Read.

Overall, social networking increased by a rapid 41 per cent this year, unlike in other European countries, MySpace failed to even make the top 5 social networking sites in Spain.

Social Media news posted by David Finklehorn on 26 February 2009