It’s common wisdom in the online world to say that the 1^st mover has a definitive advantage, all the more if it’s competing against a foreign player.

That’s what anyone close to Seznam (Czech #1 search engine), Yandex (Russia) or Baidu (China) will tell you. Social networks also have their regional champions, such as Vkontakte in Russia, Skyblogs in France or StudiVZ in Germany.

Now, what happens when the foreign competitor benefits from network effects? Well, if you happen to have friends or relative outside of your home country, chances are you’ll want to switch to the global leader.

I’ve looked at the Google interest (i.e. searches) concerning Facebook and the local leading social network in some countries. Apart from Hungary (iwiw.hu) and Lithuania (one.lt), all local players seem to fold under the power of the new giant: Facebook.

What happens? It seems like everyone is slowly switching to Facebook as more and more people gets on board worldwide.

That’s particularly striking of Vkontakte, which started as a Facebook-clone. At first, it won its home-market, but the growth of Facebook incentivized people to switch network and move to FB. People in the capital cities are the first to make the switch, as the Moscow curve shows, probably because they’re the most likely to know people abroad. I’m pretty sure that once the local elite have converted to FB, most people will follow.

If Facebook pursues its strategy of aggressive growth worldwide, as it seems it will, that spells very bad news for Holtzbrinck’s €85m investment in StudiVZ or for Vkontakte’s contextual advertising plans.

When will Facebook overtake them?

* indicates estimates.

The graph below shows the diminishing interest in local champions over the past 2 years. It measures the difference in the number of Google searches for ‘facebook’ and the local leader. Looking at countries already overtaken by Facebook (Bulgaria, Slovenia), we know that Google interest and traffic go hand in hand.

The Russian and Czech projections are probably most inaccurate, as Google only have a 34% and 29% market share, respectively. Not dominant but hardly a hideout for geeks.