Thursday, February 11, 2010

Geographic Segmentation in social networks: Facebook seriously challenged in Spain

Tuenti was born following Facebook model in 2006 . Several Spaniards witnessed Facebooks expansion in EEUU and decided to create a similar social network. They started as a closed network (only by invitation, such as SmallWorld) targueting high school and college users. Today, Tuenti’s differentiation strategy is challenging Facebook dominant position in the market (Tuenti has 7M users, Facebook 8M). How are they succeeding?. Through local adaptation. The use of Spanish and its focus on Spanish tastes is making a difference, along with its privacy policy. Tuenti realized from the start that privacy would be a huge issue. They set up a strict privacy procedure that earned them a better reputation than facebook on that matter (i.e. users under 14 have their profile info blocked, even for friends).
I would like to know if facebook is going to try to adapt to local tastes as it expands. It may be the only formula for success. It is not an easy thing to do when you are an international web.
Will we witness a different facebook per country? With different designs, colors and features?

No comments: