In July 2006 Read/WriteWeb posted the first in what was to be a long and fruitful series on International web apps. The first post was on Germany, inspired at the time by The Museum of Modern Betas. This was when German social bookmarking site Mr Wong had a controversial cartoon logo! [they recently announced the finalists in their search for a new, less politically incorrect, logo] So it’s fitting that we look again at Germany now, nearly 1.5 years later. It’s also kind of ironic that The Museum of Modern Betas creator Markus Spath is now blogging for Blognation, which I’m sure took some inspiration for their network from RWW’s International series – which ran for about a year, ending with Canada in June ’07. It’s a virtuous circle of influences!
In his latest post for Blognation Germany, Markus rounds up The 100 Most Popular Web 2.0 Sites From Germany. Following is the top 20 — what struck me about it is that most of them are local sites and haven’t got a global audience (or if they have then it’s in a tiny niche market). The obvious exception is Pageflakes, but they are now based in Silicon Valley. So what does this say about the Internationalization of the Web? Are companies in Germany and elsewhere content to capture a sizeable local audience, and not go for the global market? Interested to read your thoughts… and we may re-start our International series again, to explore that theme.
