The US behind Europe in Social Media Usage – or is it the other way round?

US behind Europe in Social Media?

This post refers to a blog post by We are Social, a digital marketing and social media agency based in London.
The reason this post caught my attention (I actually found it via Twitter), was a statement in the very beginning of the post which I am citing here:

„Europe is ahead of the US in terms of the consumer usage of social media, and yet little attention is often given to the nuances of what is on one hand is the world’s largest economy and on the other a collection of 48 countries with very different cultures.

Find out why the blogging scene in Paris is 2 years ahead of the US, the Brits are all a Twitter, the Dutch prefer Hyves to Facebook and the Germans will take any chance to give brands a hostile reception in social media.“

This statement by Robin Grant came as a surprise to me. Usually the latest marketing trends do come from the US, not good old Europe. And please not that I am saying marketing and not social media. The latter ist a branch of marketing, not a separate phenomenon. Anyways, I was fairly surprised to see that obviously something may have changed. But has it really? I do have some doubts that this is really true and that it can be stated that easily. German Facebook users may be the most active, England may be in the hand of Twitter but still the companies behind it are from the US. Also, can you name a Head of Social Media in the home of cars, Germany? We do not have a Scott Monty at BMW or Daimler or Audi. And even if we have someone in a similar position, he or she is not yet living up to his US counterparts. Now je ne connais the French blogosphere but I can hardly imagine les Francais are so much more active than the Americans.

I don’t want to take a definite position on this issue and I will leave you with some very nice presentations covering the European face of Socia Media. Please decide for yourself who is ahead in Social Media. Or if maybe it is not about being ahead but perhaps about employing Social Media more profitable…