French Facebook Engagement highest, as UK becomes no1 in Penetration

In France, 47.8 million internet users spent a total of nearly 1.2 billion hours online in December 2011. Google Sites was the top online property by unique visitors, attracting over 44.8 million people who spent a total of 137.5 million hours on the site. During December,  over 39.2 million users went to Microsoft Sites making it the second most popular online property ranked by visitors.. Facebook was the leading site in terms of engagement with over 32.9 million unique visitors spending 165.5 million hours on the site during the month.

One of the French companies ranking amongst the largest web properties was retailer Groupe PPR. Their audience increased by nearly 12 percent from October 2011 to December 2011, when most people shop for Christmas presents online.

 In October 2011, Social Networking reached more than 90 percent of the European internet audience, showing similar penetration across the 5 leading EU5 maook Penetrationrkets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK). Facebook ranked as the top Social Networking site, not just in Europe overall (68.4 percent) but for the individual EU5 markets as well, reaching nearly 7 in 10 Europeans online during the month.

While Spain showed the highest penetration for social networks in the EU5 (98.2 percent reach), the UK showed the highest penetration for Facebook (80.4 percent reach).