This has turned into a very enjoyable series, profiling web products being built all
over the world! The latest list is for Poland, courtesy of Sebastian Kwiecien – who runs
a blog at web20.pl. Sebastian sent me a very detailed
list of Polish web apps, including information about an intriguing social network integrated
into Coca-Cola’s Polish website. More on that in a moment.
Lots of Digg Clones
First off, Poland has a lot of Digg clones! wykop.pl gets the most traffic and Sebastian says it’s
probably the most popular web 2.0 site in Poland.
The other digg clones are: linkologia.pl, pr.org.pl, etapia.pl, linkr.pl.
Coca-Cola Poland’s version of 43Things.com
http://cocacola.pl/UdaSie/ is a 43things.com
clone prepared for Coca-Cola, which launched recently. It’s a fully-featured social
network integrated into Coca-Cola’s Polish website. Now this one caught my eye, because
to my knowledge no major commercial website in the US has integrated anything like 43things into its site.
It’s a very well designed website, using the Coca-Cola global web imagery. Here’s the
frontpage – on the left (green) you have “what do you want to achieve” (actually “what
you desire” or in polish “czego pragniesz”); and on the right (yellow) is “what you’ve
achieved” (in polish “co ci sie juz udalo”). So you can share your goals and achievements
with the community…
Here’s the lower half of the homepage, a giant tag cloud:
The next screenshot shows a post. Sebastian says when you post information about what
you’ve achieved or want to achieve, there is a comments box below the achievement and
also community avatars on the right.
This is very very cool! Does anyone know of any major commercial websites elsewhere in
the world that integrate a social network like this?
Other Polish Web Apps
Another interesting one is filmweb.pl, a popular
community website for movie fans. Sebastian told me it recently had a Netscape-like
transformation from old-style film portal to more 2.0 features (like blogs,
user-contributed content features and so on).
Finally here are other categories of sites in the Polish web 2.0 world:
– fotosik.pl – photo sharing place (there’s also slajd.net coming)
– biznes.net, goldenline.pl, ogniwo.net
– business networking sites like linkedin.com
– grono.net, spinacz.pl
– teenager social networking sites (grono.net claims to have 800,000 users!)
– blox.pl, bloog.pl, blog.pl – polish blogging sites (the most important are those
connected with top polish portals)
– wiadomosci24.pl, ithink.pl – citizen journalism sites
– fotosik.pl, patrz.pl –
photo/video hosting/sharing site (also streemo.pl is
coming soon – it is currently in alpha)
– pytamy.pl – an askeet.com implementation (an answers
site)
– wrocek.pl, miejsce.info – google maps mashups
– podaj.net – book exchange website
– 10przykazan.com, blogfrog.pl – blog aggregators (there are such
functionalities in trendomierz.pl too)
Summary
Sebastian told me that Polish web20 sites are mainly clones and that there’s few that
are really unique. But he says the web 2.0 market is starting to grow in Poland and he
hopes to see some more original sites soon. In June there was a conference called “Welcome Web 2.0 to Poland”, so the
interest and passion is obviously there.
I want to thank Sebastian for all the info he gave me
for this post! I learned a lot from this discussion.
Once again, I’d love to get similar info about other international markets – so
contact me [readwriteweb AT gmail.com] if you’d like to contribute your country’s top web apps. I’d particularly like
to know more about the Asian markets (China, Japan, Korea, etc).
See also: Top German web apps; Top Dutch web apps.
