Facebook wins battle of clones in Europe

Facebook Inc has broken the language barrier.

For years, the US company’s dominance in the $10-billion social media industry was limited outside the English-speaking world by local copycats. Those sites are now losing traffic, as Facebook’s global reach, games and music drive membership.

Hyves, which, like Facebook, started in 2004, was overtaken as the biggest Dutch social network in August, with its 7.2 million visitors topped by the US rival’s 7.7 million, according to researcher ComScore Inc. In Germany, the number of users for VZ Netzwerke, formerly known as StudiVZ, more than halved to eight million in September from a year earlier, while Facebook visitors rose 43 per cent.