

Why Facebook is destined to beat MySpace outside of the U.S. - ilamont
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/16/facebook-vs-myspace-battle-global-social-network-dominance

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aston
If there's one rule about getting uptake of your social networking site, it's
that there isn't one rule about getting uptake. If there were a clear cut
strategy for growing internationally, everyone would be doing it.

Most of the time stories like these are written retroactively ("of course the
best way to grow a social network among colleges is to open up slowly and in
tiers!"). That way, the author is always "right." Here's the rare exception
where the author might be eating her hat soon as it's revealed that Myspace's
plan was better all along. It's way too early for analysis.

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AndyKelley
Way too early? Using Facebook's own audience to translate it into their own
languages sounds like a pretty dang good one. They don't have to do any work,
and their number of translations will keep climbing. I think you can make some
legit guesses based on that.

~~~
aston
I'm not disagreeing it's a cheap way to get your site translated. But how's
that help your user numbers? The point of the article is that the author
thinks it'll fuel growth, even without any evidence that that's true.

I know from personal experience that just having a site in x language does not
make it popular in x's country of origin. OkCupid has been doing the "users
translate the site" idea for a while now, and still has to put in work beyond
that to promote the site beyond the US.

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randomhack
Why the hell do people assume that there are only 2 social networking websites
? There are tons of social networking websites and ones popular in the US or
europe arent necessarily going to gain traction internationally. They may or
they may not. There is just no way to know right now. In India for example
Orkut is far more popular than Facebook.

