The Global Internet, Global Social Networks
There are now more internet users in China and Japan together,
than in the United States. If the trend of the last 5 years
continues, there will be twice as many internet users in China as
there are people in the U.S.60. The web will continue to
internationalize, and I’m going to need to learn more Chinese,
because the few social networking sites in China don’t have any
English on them.
Facebook has taken off among U.K. college students.
Multiply.com took a big investment from a Japanese company,
and is set to launch in Japan. Friendster and Orkut were big in
Asia and Latin America, so quickly that it hindered their U.S.
based operations. A Chinese knockoff of Facebook, Xiaonei, was
launched in 2005, but if it is taking off, it’s doing so slowly.
Perhaps it is a result of bad karma: the IP theft was so blatant that
they launched with the facebook stylesheet in its html source,
without even bothering to rename it.
Or perhaps it isn’t serving the right needs, because its rules are
different in very interesting ways: you can change your page
background and music, you can count and see everyone who has
looked at you and see how many hits someone else’s profile
received, any email address in China works to create an account
that can see all profiles.
Karel Baloun 79
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
60 detailed world internet usage statistics are at http://
www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
Even North America shows globalization - Canadian AirG has a 10
million exclusively mobile phone users, including a million strong
spanish-speaking community Conexion Latina. Korea’s largest
mobile phone operator just launched their Cyworld product into
the U.S. market, with clear global intentions.
Building a basic social networking site is not that hard: Zuck and
Dustin did it in a few months. The product needs to speak to the
needs of its users and gain their trust. Facebook is now, in
English, at (only) the most prestigious colleges in India. Just
speaking technically, it would be very easy to localize the site to
any language. I guess Facebook is trying to center its focus. The
day will come, but will it come early enough, or will a local
competitor dominate? Will it be you, either with a vertical or
regional adaption, with some twist?
There are now more internet users in China and Japan together,
than in the United States. If the trend of the last 5 years
continues, there will be twice as many internet users in China as
there are people in the U.S.60. The web will continue to
internationalize, and I’m going to need to learn more Chinese,
because the few social networking sites in China don’t have any
English on them.
Facebook has taken off among U.K. college students.
Multiply.com took a big investment from a Japanese company,
and is set to launch in Japan. Friendster and Orkut were big in
Asia and Latin America, so quickly that it hindered their U.S.
based operations. A Chinese knockoff of Facebook, Xiaonei, was
launched in 2005, but if it is taking off, it’s doing so slowly.
Perhaps it is a result of bad karma: the IP theft was so blatant that
they launched with the facebook stylesheet in its html source,
without even bothering to rename it.
Or perhaps it isn’t serving the right needs, because its rules are
different in very interesting ways: you can change your page
background and music, you can count and see everyone who has
looked at you and see how many hits someone else’s profile
received, any email address in China works to create an account
that can see all profiles.
Karel Baloun 79
I’ve found something to put here. Your turn.
60 detailed world internet usage statistics are at http://
www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.
Even North America shows globalization - Canadian AirG has a 10
million exclusively mobile phone users, including a million strong
spanish-speaking community Conexion Latina. Korea’s largest
mobile phone operator just launched their Cyworld product into
the U.S. market, with clear global intentions.
Building a basic social networking site is not that hard: Zuck and
Dustin did it in a few months. The product needs to speak to the
needs of its users and gain their trust. Facebook is now, in
English, at (only) the most prestigious colleges in India. Just
speaking technically, it would be very easy to localize the site to
any language. I guess Facebook is trying to center its focus. The
day will come, but will it come early enough, or will a local
competitor dominate? Will it be you, either with a vertical or
regional adaption, with some twist?
No comments:
Post a Comment