Les Français are very social
Our friends at Hitwise have just released a study of Internet usage in France which includes a very interesting comparison with UK usage.
Unsurprisingly, social media is the second biggest activity in both countries after search. However, what is surprising is that according to this latest study, French people use social media 21% more than British people.
This is surprising because with both countries with a population roughly the same size, whilst there are 24 million Facebook members in the UK, i.e. more than one in three inhabitants, there are ‘only’ 16 million members in France, i.e. one in four. Proving once again that social media does not just equal Facebook.
As you can see, British people are more slightly more likely to use the internet to make transactions or to search for information whereas French people tend to spend more time on communication and entertainment.
Overall, search and social media activities account for almost a third of internet visits in France (27.57%) and almost a quarter in the UK (22.77%). Bearing in mind the latest industry announcements this week, with the search giant Google going into social, with Google Buzz but also with the acquisition of Aardvark, whilst Facebook is about to launch a fully featured webmail product with its Titan project, let’s have a bet that these market shares will only get bigger.