Internet Globalization News

The World Is Flat For Twitter: User Growth Slowing Down

After growing exponentially from 10 to 20 million users in a couple of months, and doubling again to 40 million in just three months, it's got almost six months for Twitter to reach 60 millions users worldwide.

This slow down can be explained by many factors, most of them intertwined. In my opinion, the size of the "early adopters" audience around the world is one of them. Once the early adopters have been using the service for a while, and with all the main media starting to use it (as it's already happening), other users ("followers") will adopt Twitter -- maybe at a slower rate, but still in a positive trend.

via www.techcrunch.com

Twitter’s international traffic continues to flatten as the microblogging site’s number of unique visitors flattened in November. Twitter saw 60.3 million unique visitors in November compared to 58.3 million unique visitors in October. Though the site saw a rise of 2 million visits globally, this slight uptick in visitors only represents a 3.5 percent increase in traffic. Twitter’s November U.S. traffic has stalled as well; U.S. traffic rose by a little over 100,000 visitors, to 19.37 million unique visitors after seeing a 8 percent decline in traffic in October.

Twitter Growth: Total Unique Visitors (in Thousands)

Smart and Reliable: Skype Accounts For 12% Of All International Calls

The increase in usage of Skype to make phone calls (not just Skype-to-Skype, but from Skype to land lines and cell phones) has been impressive, and I can think of some reasons for this phenomenon:

- Pricing: Skype competes with great per-minute fees everywhere. The local competition does not come from local phone companies (all of them with higher prices than Skype), but from calling-card ones: in countries like Spain, calling-card fees are comparable to the ones offered by Skype, and there is no need for a computer (or an expensive smart-phone) to place the calls.

- Globalization and Localization: Skype can be downloaded and used almost everywhere in the World. They have also made a great job localizing the software, and making it a success in non English speaking countries.

- Product: Skype is easy to use, provides a reliable service, and solves a real need of customers.

via www.techcrunch.com

VoIP services juggernaut Skype has seen its share of international calling minutes jump to 12% in 2009, a 50% increase compared to the year before. And as you can tell from the pie chart below, 54 billion minutes out of 406 billion in total were accumulated by users calling each other Skype-to-Skype last year.

International Calls (in minutes) and Share of Skype (12% of total)

User Content Creation Around the World: Development Matters

Interesting research about what kind of activities Internet users have around the world. It is remarkable how the level of maturity of a market (measured in terms of Internet penetration) might explain what activities users perform. For example, while in mature markets like the US, Canada and the UK, blogging and microblogging are not as popular as managing a social network profile, in China these activities are much more important for local users.

via www.emarketer.com

In the US, a mature Internet market, managing a social network profile was the top online user-generated content activity, participated in by 44.2% of Web users. This was followed closely by uploading photos. Uploading video, blogging and microblogging were significantly less popular.

Users in the UK and Canada had similar rates of social network use and photo-sharing, and also tapered off dramatically when it came to more advanced user-generated content activities.

Japan,another mature Internet market, has markedly different participation in user-generated content activities. Much lower percentages of Web users manage social network profiles or upload photos, for example. The “Global Web Index” report notes that this is actually a sign of advanced behavior: The survey measured only activities conducted on a PC, and in Japan, many such activities are now mobile-based.  

Meanwhile,participation was generally high in China, where overall Internet penetration is only 29.6% according to estimates. A majority of users uploaded photos, and nearly one-half had a blog. More than one-fifth used a microblogging service, far ahead of the more advanced economies.

Users generating (mobile) content

Brand-Building Tips For (French) Entrepreneurs

Robert Scoble, a well known American technology blogger, visited Paris a few weeks ago, and seems to have disliked the approach (or lack thereof) of "brand-building practices" among the local entrepreneurs.

Although one could argue that Scoble's approach is too based on the "American way" of doing business, he does make a few good points about using new communication means like Twitter to build a brand, or using Social Networks to promote your brand, among other. One of the most interesting parts of the article is the long list of comments by Scoble's Blog readers.

via scobleizer.com

Some of (the French Startups met by the author in Paris), like Stribe, were very good. But overall they just didn’t measure up. In fact, they even got me to be rude to them, which caught everyone off guard. I’ve been thinking about why they got me so angry ever since, and that’s what this post is about.

An American and a French entrepreneurs, while talking about their business practices.

Google Korea: Adopting A New Design To Be More Local

If you have ever visited a Korean, Chinese or Japanese website, you will probably have noted that it contains a lot more information and images per square inch than other, more "Western" sites from the US, Europe or Latin America. And that is the way most users in Asia expect websites to look like.

I think that the Asian preference for what some Westerners would define as "cluttered" websites comes from their real, offline life and communication codes. A few years ago, when I was visiting Taipei, while waiting at a train station, I saw the building that is shown in the picture below, and immediately "recognized" a typical Asian website: full of small banners of different colors, with a very high number of communication elements with different messages. And the association was, for me, clear.

So the design change by Google in Korea (as, in the past by other companies like Yahoo!), does not put their "Corporate Brand" in danger -- on the contrary, it shows that they are willing to change in order to be recognized as a local player, not as the "American" one anymore.

via www.globalbydesign.com

The larger question is how far Google will go to localize itself for a market. This is a question every global company must answer. At what point does a company go too far?

Building in Taipei, Taiwan

Google Korea in 2008

Google Korea in 2009