One of the largest fastest growing social networks, Facebook has been having trouble making its appearance know in Germany. Facebook is just ranked number 19 on the top 100 list in Germany which is ten positions behind StudiVZ, the local social network in Germany. Facebook has only been available in Germany since March of this year and it has only grown 200,000 members since then. As the largest social network in the German-speaking world, StudiVZ has over 10 million members while face book has about 800,000.
At the rate facebook is going now in Germany, it would take them over 20 years to catch up with StudiVZ. That's too long for any company to wait so Facebook has partnerd up with the promotion agency Shamboo. Shamboo has already started its efforts to help facebook by trying to get people to be Facebook ambassadors. These Facebook ambassadors would come up with challenges against each other to see who could recruit more facebook members. They would win non-cash prizes such as Iphones or Internships. StudiVZ has also attempted this method before facebook. They used their "campus captains" to recruit university students to be member of their site.
Facebook and StudiVZ use the same methods with slight differences. StudiVZ's campus captains never received any kinds of incentives, and Facebook had to use another company to help them.
Facebook will have a hard time in germany because they entered the market too late. Most users already had StudiVZ and most of them would not want to maintain two networks.
1 comment:
This marketing scheme in Germany makes me wonder just how much money Facebook makes. I'm guessing all the money they make is from the little advertisements on the side. I know Facebook is popular in other places in Europe such as France, but does everyone have to belong to the same social network? A little variation is good. Why can't Germany have a social network unique to their country? They are like none other after all.
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