San Francisco Frontiers - European minnows bid to challenge social media giants

Founders nevertheless see opportunity in the disillusionment and distrust of major platforms that have spiked alongside transatlantic tensions under Donald Trump's second presidency.

"We think the timing is perfect, in a context where relations between Europe and the US are still deteriorating," said Gregoire Vigroux, co-founder of Croatia-based network eYou.

"It's time for Europe to equip itself with its own social networks," he added.

Opening to users on Tuesday, eYou is one of a number of efforts on the old continent, including W -- a would-be competitor to X announced in January -- or Eurosky, a platform for accessing independent social networks launched last month.

Bulle (French for "bubble") also launched in January promising a "healthy social network" while Monnett -- a hybrid of TikTok and Instagram -- is set for full release in July.

"The rejection targeting the (American) platforms is still stronger today" than in the past, said Romain Badouard, a researcher at France's Inria computing institute specialising in social networks.

He suggested that a "conservative turn in Silicon Valley" had proved unpopular with European users seeing the likes of X owner Elon Musk or Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) chief Mark Zuckerberg cosying up to Trump.

- 'Enormous graveyard' -

At W, "the idea is to bring back what was once Twitter in the good old days," said founder Anna Zeiter ahead of the Saturday launch.

Some interest is apparent among investors and users in the new crop of networks.

In a second fundraising round, eYou garnered 300,000 euros ($353,000) in late 2025, while Monnett claims more than 65,000 users on the beta version of its app.

But such figures would be rounding errors to the giants of the sector, who count in hundreds of millions of users and billions in revenue.

The dominance of incumbent players has left little space for challenge beyond niche offerings like Mastodon or BeReal.

"The world of social networks is an enormous graveyard," eYou's Vigroux acknowledged, adding that "99 percent of European social networks launched in the last 10 years have fallen flat."

Badouard pointed to the so-called "network effect" that powered the snowballing of major platforms' user numbers as a factor now shielding them from competition.

For users on Instagram and TikTok, "all the people they know and the accounts they follow" are on the existing networks.

But the "technological maturity" of the latest wave of challengers could still count in their favour, he said.

"They're answering to a lot of the expectations users have," Badouard said.

- Out of the algorithm? -

There is a familiar litany of criticisms levelled at the big players, including sorting users into "filter bubbles", unevenly-enforced moderation and addictive design.

European would-be competitors see those as openings to vaunt their own virtues.

W promises to keep all but verified human users from posting, while eYou says it will "promote users sharing content considered trustworthy".

"It's really important for us that it's not an algorithm that determine what's on your screen, but yourself," said Christos Floros of Monnett, which is aiming to hit a million users this year.

Such commitments could steepen the path to profitability for the new arrivals, in a market where financial success is still largely determined by raking in advertising sales.

Zeiter said W would have "no crazy hyper-targeted advertising".

"Right now we are all trying out different business models and different approaches," she said.

"Maybe in one or two years we see what's most successful and then we can team up."

C.Diaz--SFF