It was late to the social-networking party in Europe, but the News Corp. site quickly overtook rivals with features designed for, and by, locals.A year is an eternity in Web 2.0 time. Just 12 months ago, social-networking site MySpace looked late to the party in Europe, as local alternatives and American rivals such as Facebook, Bebo, and Ringo got off to a fast start in the nascent market.But the News Corp. unit was far from giving up. First in Britain, then sweeping across the Continent, MySpace rolled out a series of country-specific sites retooled in different languages and with added features designed to appeal to the locals.The campaign has been remarkably successful. The number of unique visitors to MySpace’s European sites has risen more than 72 percent in the past year, to 26 million per month, according to researcher comScore. Traffic has grown even faster: Europeans viewed 2.5 billion MySpace pages in May (the most recent month for which figures are available), compared with 1.1 billion a year earlier, says market tracker Nielsen//NetRatings.http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,493755,00.html
How MySpace Conquered the Continent
It was late to the social-networking party in Europe, but the News Corp. site quickly overtook rivals with features designed for, and by, locals. A year is an eternity in Web 2.0 time. Just 12 months ago, social-networking site MySpace looked late to the party in Europe, as local alternatives and American rivals such as Facebook, Bebo, and Ringo got off to a fast start in the nascent market.