The most successful social-networking site in the U.S., MySpace, has landed in Europe and in less then two years, it has catapulted to the top in terms of page views and unique visitors leaving its competitors (FaceBook, Bebo and Ringo) in the dust. How they went about accomplishing this feat is the purpose of this blog entry.

MySpace entered the European continent via the United Kingdom and this proved to be a low risk move for the company, since English is the official language in the UK, which required fewer changes to the MySpace site. Soon after, the company rolled out country-specific sites across Europe in countries such as Germany, France, Spain and hired in-country staff that was empowered to localize the sites to fit the local culture. MySpace’s key move for success was not to bring to Europe the American model that was successful for them in the U.S, but instead come up with a new model for each country.

How successful has this strategy been for MySpace? BusinessWeek reports the number of unique visitors to MySpace online properties in Europe has grown at a rate of about 72% in the past year alone, bringing the number of monthly unique visitors to about 26 million (source: BusinessWeek.com, 07/10/2007, “How MySpace Conquered the Continent”).

I would say MySpace’s international strategy in Europe has been very successful given these numbers. Whether they went into Europe alone, or partnered with local companies via joint ventures to share the risk, MySpace is getting it right. They are reaching their intended audiences by leveraging the local know-how of managers that have been empowered to make decisions at the local level without the meddling of corporate folks back in the U.S.

To learn more about about MySpace on what they’re doing, visit the Times Business PodCast