Last week we wrote about Netlog, a successful European Social Network that lets members translate its service into different languages. They are currently offering 8 different local versions of their service and is close to reaching 30 million members and 4 billion page views every month. They built a Turkish version in less than a week which grew to 2.5 million members in only four months.
It seems that Facebook came to the same solution recently when it was searching for a way to start offering localized versions of its service. Mashable reports that Facebook will launch a new app titled Facebook Translations (link wasn’t active when I published this!) that will help members translate Facebook into different languages. Facebook wants to make Facebook “available to everyone, everywhere, in all languages”.
They claim to have more than 800 translators working on several different languages right now. In recent years we have noticed that simply translating a service isn’t enough to claim a local market and users often prefer an existing local product over an imported and translated foreign one. Still, Facebook is not just a social network but a great platform with more benefits that just networking.
It is going to be an exciting year for European Social Networks as Facebook comes available in more languages.
The facebook translation app is now working. I was down for a few hours this morning. You can see a complete review with multiple screen shots here.
http://facereviews.com/2007/12/27/facebook-is-language-translation-crowdsourcing
Cheers!
Rodney Rumford
I don’t think a version of Facebook translated into other languages will help them for becoming more popular. After all, all the applications will still be in English. People will prefer to continue using the English language version, or use a completely different site. The same problem with MySpace, you can’t really distinquish between the different langugae versions, because the site has been designed originally for one language. Facebooks internationalization attempts will not bring it significant success.