Plenty of media is devoted to Facebook and Twitter. But here is a lesser known, but equally important social networking website that moseys along just below everybody’s radar. Everybody, that is, except for its 17 million+ members.

The website is Skyrock – and, in case you were wondering, it’s where European young people play.

Despite being ranked by comScore as the world’s 7th biggest social network with 21 million visitors worldwide (2008 figures), Skyrock.com is less known than other social networks on an international scale. This is largely due to its origins as a French-language network, but also the fact that its target is young adults aged under 25.

Alexa consistently ranks Skyrock among the top 10 sites in France, in Belgium and in Switzerland.

Skyrock started life as a blogging site, Skyblog.com, founded by Skyrock CEO Pierre Bellanger in December 2002. Then, in May 2007, after abandoning the Skyblog.com brand, Skyrock.com was launched as a full-scale social network.

And to the stats (and they’re impressive) :

(as of today)

26,498,117 blogs.
17,024,403 profiles.
2,807 chatters online.
Visitors in the last 30 days: 28,232,000 (Traffic Estimate)
Ranked #1 in kids and teens websites (Source: Alexa)
Global rank # 58 (Source: Alexa)
Average dwell time on website: 30 minutes (Source: Alexa)

The Skyrock platform has been massively embraced by the younger generations. In fact, if you want to get really technical about the demographics of the website, here they are:

Its penetration into the youth market has led to commercially driven usage of the website.

For example, French politicians, from both sides of politics, have created Skyrock Blogs to stay in contact with the young generation. In addition, a few prominent French political institutions have opted to create a Skyrock Blog as a preferred tool to communicate with this group.

So check out Skyrock. If you’re part of an international brand looking to connect to young people in Europe, it is one platform that most definitely should be on your radar.

RELATED POST: How Skyrock made Social Media Profitable.

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