comScore released a couple of interesting reports today. The first involves the social networking landscape in Europe. According to comScore, France in particular had a big year when it comes to social networking, growing by 45% with Facebook as the leading network.
Social networking is attracting new users to the mobile Web in Europe. In November, 34 percent of mobile phone owners in Western Europe who visited social networking sites accessed social media exclusive of all other mobile Web content, according to comScore.With 12.1 million users in Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.), mobile social networking is a rapidly expanding category that grew 152 percent from November 2007 to November 2008.
We think Microsoft might just be rubbing it in at this point. Even as Yahoo's stock plunges and major layoffs are rumored to be on the way, Steve Ballmer has announced that his company is opening research centers in London, Munich, and Paris.
Microsoft is looking to boost its online shopping search market share. The company has announced an acquisition of Greenfield Online, owners of popular shopping search site Ciao.com. This is the largest purchase Microsoft has made in a while. The company appears to be playing around with the money it had left from the Yahoo deal falling through. They dropped 486 million big ones on this one.
Google's camera cars may be prowling the streets of London now, prompting criticism from privacy advocates and a defensive response from the search advertising company.
Never mind advertising, upgrades, or even additional user bribes - when it comes to Live Search's market share in Europe, Microsoft is going to pull out at least some of the stops and open a new search technology center.
Google Cities in 3D hasn't been a strictly American affair; models of cities in Ireland and Japan, among other places, have shown up. Google's encouraging greater participation on the part of the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, however, with the launch of some localized websites.
It's mildly amazing to see another report about 2007 trickle in. The contents of the report are interesting, too, as Europe's online advertising market apparently expanded by about €4 billion since the year before.
When it comes to online television, American companies and programs are what we tend to discuss. Research shows that online television is extremely popular in Europe, however, and so Europeans could drive the next wave of advertising trends.
Europe's full of different countries, and all that impressive European Union stuff aside, it's hard to believe they've got much in common. Yet judging from new comScore statistics, it seems as if Google is the sort of thing that'll generate smiles, or at least recognition, everywhere.
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