Last week we reported on Frazr, one of Germany’s many Twitter clones (if you’re eager for more side-by-side comparisons, see Sloggen, Wamadu, Faybl or 1you, which all launched in March or April). Frazr is symptomatic for the state of Web 2.0 in Germany and to get a better understanding for the many international developments, this post starts a series of regional profiles on Web 2.0 around the world. I’ll start the tour with a closer look at Germany, home to Europe’s largest population of internet broadband users. Hype vs. Hesitate Just as this week’s Pew Internet Study stirred a debate on the view of Web 2.0 in the US, Germany has seen similar arguments on the size of the phenomenon locally. For a long time, several indicators had hinted that Germany was falling behind in broadband penetration compared to other European countries like Sweden or Norway. But a recent OECD study painted a very different picture: looking at the total number of households (as opposed to per-capita penetration), Germany comes out on top in Europe with 14.1 million subscribers in December 2006 (followed by the UK at 12.9 and France at 12.7 million). So the crowds are here, but where can they go? “Web 2.0” is a term that brilliantly translates around the world, but many of the sites that are commonly associated with it have a language barrier for international audiences (take MySpace for example: it officially launched its German version only in March of this year). While English certainly isn’t foreign to Germans, it has still slowed their adoption – and network effects, which have been a driving force, are often tied to language and reach as well. What’s been the consequence in Deutschland? A mushrooming of German copycats that have localized and copied their US role models, sometimes down to the last pixel. Copy/Paste Innovation Whether you’re looking for social bookmarking, photo sharing, video posting or a college social network, Germany’s clever entrepreneurs have done the translation for you and some even fared quite well. The best example by far is StudiVZ, whose name stands for “student directory.” Launched in October 2005, it now claims to house 2.1 million users. Despite a myriad of security problems and controversies, new users kept coming in, which only speaks to the universally strong demand for such networks among students. In January of this year, Germany had its mini-YouTube moment when → Read More
Mix open instant messaging protocol Jabber with mobile phones and you get Mabber, a new product from a team based in Cologne, Germany. The team at Mabber were early adopters of the Jabber protocol and with the lower mobile data charges in their home country decided to develop an application that would allow mobile users to communicate with each other using the protocol, thus save on SMS costs. Mabber is a product of New Media Management, a German company that runs some of the countries largest web properties such as neu.de and pkw.de, Mabber have put together a very experienced and solid team that totals six people, starting with Nico Lumma who runs the team and directs the business (he is also a very popular blogger in Germany). Other members of the team include Florian Holzhauer (who is a member of the Jabber foundation), Stefan Strigler, Jens Ohlig, Oliver Lauer and Christian Horchert. Mabber primarily uses the Jabber protocol but they also have support for the other networks such as MSN, Yahoo!, AIM – this is so that you don’t need to lose contacts or functionality with your existing IM provider in switching to mabber. Mabber supports all these protocols in-line, meaning that once you have the account setup you see your contacts on that network along with your other contacts from other networks and the primary mabber network. There are two parts to the mabber application. The first is the web application which can be accessed from any browser. As with Meebo, these guys have spent a lot of time on refining the user experience. The first thing I noticed was that the chat windows did not have any re-draw effects and seemed to work seamlessly – no weird delays with the client polling the server, just instant reactions. Second what I noticed is all the rich features. They have extended through all the popular features of desktop IM clients such as chat history (which can be fully searched later), grouping (and group chat), and context menu’s to bring up the options. The web interface on it’s own will give Meebo a run for it’s money, but the magic with Mabber is on mobile devices. To install the mobile application you go to the site and enter your mobile number, you in return receive an sms with a download link, you follow that, it installs, executes, you enter your → Read More
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