Social media: Czechs prefer Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate

Brno, Czech Republic – The most widely used chat applications in the Czech Republic are Messenger and WhatsApp – both owned by Facebook – according to the AMI Digital Index Survey of Czech Social Media, conducted this year by AMI Digital in cooperation with the STEM/MARK agency.

While the number of Messenger users has increased by 13 pp over the last year to reach 76% of Internet users, WhatsApp has also recorded a significant hike (8 pp) and is now being used as one of the main tools to communicate by 41% of Czech Internet users. It’s particularly popular among both undergraduates and adults (30-44 years old).

Despite a slight drop, Skype remains the third most popular digital app Czechs use to communicate with one another (36%). According to AMI Digital director Vladan Crha, quoted by Czech daily Lidovky, Skype is slowly following the downhill path of once-dominant players, like ICQ or Myspace, and is bound so see its market share decline year after year.

While Viber remains at a relatively low, but steady level and is used by 16% of Internet users, Snapchat, a widely popular tool in many other European countries, seems to be on the verge of disappearing from the Czech social media landscape (7%, down from 12% the year before).

The Czech social media market has been growing steadily for many years. Last year, approximately 80% of Czech Internet users were considered to be active on social media, a 10 percentage points increase from the previous year. While the social media penetration rate is particularly high among women and people between 15 and 29 years old, the average Czech citizen spends, according to the latest estimates, approximately 2 hours a day on social media.

With almost 5 million users, Facebook is the most popular network, far ahead of LinkedIn or Seznam. Twitter, on the other hand, is particularly widespread among certain groups of people, including politicians and journalists, and can nonetheless boast around half a million users in the Czech Republic.

Instagram, finally, has been the fastest-growing social network during these last few years, and is becoming more and more prevalent among young Czechs.