RIGA — While membership on the social networking website Draugiem.lv has plateaued, an increasing number of Latvians are joining Facebook and using their Draugiem.lv accounts less and less.

Draugiem.lv currently has about 800,000 active users, which is about the same number of Latvians with internet access but the portal admitted to the Diena newspaper that the number of members which had closed their accounts and opened Facebook accounts had likely doubled over the past six months. Facebook has a total of 130,000 Latvian members.

Also the Latvian website’s management admitted to Diena that turnover from advertising was decreasing. However, Guntars Meluškāns, Draugiem.lv creative director said that the losses of membership to Facebook were being steadily replenished by new users and that Draugiem.lv users spent much more time on the website during their first month of membership (23 hours on average) than Facebook users (four hours on average).

Anda Rožukalne, a communication lecturer at Rīgas Stradiņš University told the Apollo.lv news portal that she does not consider Facebook a serious threat to Draugiem.lv because Latvians enjoy its sense of belonging to their country and because it will remain an effective advertising revenue for the foreseeable future given its large membership.

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