Facebook localization sends out strong message

Over the last decade the internet has experienced a dramatic roller-coaster of a ride. Looking back at when the .com bubble burst seems like an age ago, and ever since people, businesses, investors, all of them had their doubts about the internet. Business models and strategies were rewritten overnight, not to mention the value of the companies which were wildly over exaggerated. Today the internet is a somewhat different story. Compare the internet now to ten years ago. The first thing that might come to mind is having to dial up using your 56k modem and wait an eternity for any kind of progress. Nowadays you are either jumping on a wireless network or perhaps in an office they may be using Ethernet connections. With both, getting online takes a second. However this is not what the internet is about. The connections speeds were inevitably going to improve, and will continue to do so. Now internet providers in the UK are offering fibre optic internet connection which will give users lightning fast speeds. In addition to this more people are using the internet as their primary medium for entertainment and broadcasters are making more content available online, such as the BBC’s iPlayer or 4OD. Since the bubble burst a lot has been learnt. The capability and dynamism of websites has improved dramatically and has lead to certain websites becoming synonymous with the generation of today. Sites like FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, to name a few, are more than websites now, they are part of many people’s lives, daily routine, and consciousness which has altered the way we interact with each other. To imply this is how everyone feels about FaceBook wouldn’t be accurate but ‘generation Z’ is growing up with the internet and their experience and expectations are very different to those of a decade ago. Kids and teenagers around the world are accessing the web and sites like FaceBook are in high demand from people around the world which includes many languages. It was just over a year ago that FaceBook started localizing itself for the world. The company utilized outsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, FaceBook has done an impressive job of going global. Some recently reported key stats from FaceBook’s global expansion efforts include:

• 40 percent of FaceBook users are not using English.
• More than 70 percent of FaceBook users are outside the United States.
• It reaches more than 10 percent of the total national population in 26 countries.
• FaceBook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
• 25,000 volunteers helped translate FaceBook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for FaceBook.

In conclusion, we have seen FaceBook recently overtake Google in the USA as the most popular website. Does this mean sites in other countries will be knocked of the pedestal? At this stage it is hard to say. In the UK the most popular website is Google, but not too far behind is FaceBook, which will continue to grow and chase. But this is not the optimum acid test for FaceBook; instead it will be to see how successful FaceBook are in non-English speaking countries by the year 2012.