THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE.
1200 Brussels
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Seite 30
01.11.2007
How Netlog bridged the language chasm
Europe's diversity
presents challenge
to Internet start-ups
of some 300 million residents. International expansion usually
BY LEIu ABBOUD
ers in North America. But MySpace
Belgium—From a loftlike office in this medieval town, a
start-up called Netlog has built one
of Europe's largest social-networking Web sites on a shoestring budget.
By relying on some clever techGHENT,
comes later. News Corp.'s MySpace
and Facebook, the biggest U.S. so-
cial-networking Web sites, still
have about two-thirds of their ushas been on an aggressive interna-
tional expansion in the past 18
months and has launched in 12 languages and 21 countries including
Japan, China, France and Germany.
Facebook has said it will hire more
mented," acknowledges Netlog's
Mr. Bogaert. Netlog doesn't disclose its revenues.
One way Netlog keeps costs
down is a novel tool the software
developers came up with to make
the site easy to translate. While
writing the code that underpins
the site, they labeled each word
that would appear as text with a
tag. All the tagged words—such as
staff overseas over the next year.
the headings of the fields in people's profiles like "age" or "location"—are then automatically fed
nology and a ready supply of foreign students at a nearby univer-
"The reality is that European
start-ups have to extend beyond
into the company's internal translation system.
sity, Netlog has become a veritable
Tower of Babel. It counts 28 million
members and has versions in 13 different languages, including French,
their comfort zones and globalize
much sooner than U.S. ones," said
The system allows the core of
the site to be language indepen-
Neil Rimer of Index Ventures,
dent. When Netlog wants to launch
which invested €5 million ($7.2 mil-
in a new language, it just hires
freelancers, usually foreign stu-
German and Italian, as well less
common tongues like Romanian
and Norwegian. Polish and Russian
versions are nearly finished and an-
other dozen languages including
Catalan, Estonian and Arabic are
on the way.
That is a notable achievement,
because outside of North America,
many Internet start-ups are
hemmed in by linguistic barriers
that limit their ability to attract users and generate revenue. The Euro-
pean market, for example, is theoretically huge—with a population
of 800 million and 320 million Internet users. But Europeans speak
more than a dozen languages, and
many countries have only fledgling
online-ad markets.
The fragmented landscape
means Europe's Internet start-ups
can't just focus on their domestic
markets if they are to succeed. "We
have global ambitions but only limited resources," said Lorenz
Bogaert, who founded Netlog with
his partner Toon Coppens in 2000.
"So we have to design the right
tools."
By contrast, U.S. Internet firms
usually focus first on the massive
English-speaking domestic market
lion) in Netlog in April. "It's a totally different mind-set." Index Ventures is one of Europe's leading ven-
ture-capital firms, having backed
Internet calling service Skype and
dents at Ghent University, to translate the words, not the underlying
computer code.
Compare that with what My-
post profiles, meet people and
Space had to do when it wanted to
launch in non-Western languages
like Japanese and Russian. The site
had to rewrite the code of its entire
share photos and videos.
Web site, a Herculean task that
TV firm Joost.
Netlog's users are typically
14-24 years old and use the site to
The challenge that all social-net-
working sites, including Netlog,
face is how to monetize user traffic
by selling online ads. Giants like My-
Space have large staffs to sell ads
and work on cross-border marketing deals with everyone from Holly-
wood studios to sneaker compa-
took MySpace's 40 developers six
months. "It was pretty controversial internally," said Travis Katz,
MySpace's managing director for
international. "But we thought this
was the right thing to do; international growth is the key to our future."
nies. MySpace, for example, has 18
Turkey is an example of how
people managing its French-language site, plus 80 people in Europe just to sell ads.
Netlog's resources are skimpy
quickly Netlog can move. In July,
by comparison. Netlog has no sales
Mr. Bogaert decided to launch a
II
.. ••..
I
—
—
.
I
.
staff yet, and many countries
where it has launched remain undeveloped online-ad markets. Its
35-person staff manages everything, including the 13 different languages.
"The most difficult thing about
being in Europe is that the online-ad market is very frag-
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE.
1200 Brussels
Auflage 5 x wöchentlich 100'216
1077237 / 229.28 / 43'630 mm2 / Farben: 3
Seite 30
01.11.2007
_______________
Turkish version after noticing that
Turkish immigrants living in Ger-
many were congregating on the
citing debates over the place of Islain in Turkish society and the Kurdish question. 9jsually 1 email them
Gennan site. He found two Turkish
and tell them this isn't a place to
exchange students to translate the
site. Four months later, the site has
2.5 million users, Mr. Bogaert estimates that it cost about €1,000 to
iaunch. "We never thought it would
Total world-wide Internet audience for selected sociakrietworking sites
in September
MySpace.com
Based in U.S. in English, and owned by News
Corp., now available in 23 local versions
Facebootcoqi
Based in U.S. n English
hi5.com
Based in U.S., available In 10 larguages
including Spanish, Polish, Turkish
lenges, however. Netlog came up
Netlog hired Melike Tugha Yener, a
25-year-old Turkish student studying rmance at the university, to be
1070
73.5
351
Friendsteccon One of the oldest social networks, founded
the community manager" for the
Turkish site. She answers queries
from users in their native tongue,
polices the site for illegal or inflammatory content, such as posts of
flags from groups calling for an independent state for the Kurds.
People sometimes start to
fight on the site," said Ms. Yener,
Total unique
visitors (in mUl(or,s)
Comony Desciiptio
Growing so quickly into such ji
with another low-cost solution,
again drawing on foreign students.
friends."
Social networks go global
take off this fst," he said.
verse places can pose cultural chal-
talk politics, but to hang out with
26 5
in U.S.. now available in English and Chinese
orkut
Founded and owned by Google, strongest
in Latin America and India
Bebo.com
Based in U.S. In Enghsti, biy in U.K., Ireland •
Netlog.com
Founded in Belgium, now In 13 languages
246
I 12.6
*unIue usm .o.d is., e.Oudes refnc from public computers such 85 IntKlwI oftsoc (esc horn mobile
phones or POAs.
Source. con.Sco'e Woqid Metr'x
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