Internationalization can be leveraged by fast growing websites to reinforce their lead globally and create a barrier to entry for copycat versions in other countries. What could be a great strength often ends up being a missed opportunity. Just visit some of the most successful sites on the web today: Digg, LinkedIn and Facebook. While each has built a strong user base, they all lack internationalization for the time being. So if you're a visitor to any of these sites but can't speak English, you're out of luck.
Take Digg for example: the Google Trends chart on the left clearly demonstrates that its following extends far beyond English speakers. People are searching for Digg in Norwegian, Catalan (Spain), Tagalog (Philippines) and Swedish. So, why not create a wiki-like platform so that all Digg users from around the world could translate popular news pieces into their own languages. This would allow local users who can't speak English to enjoy this great site as well.
Another case in point: Facebook. While it grew phenomenally in the US, it could not prevent its German competitor Studiverzeichnis taking the lead in Germany and Austria. Facebook has been around since 2005 and is 22nd most trafficked site globally (according to Alexa). Yet its German rival was able to rocket to Alexa Top 333 in less than a year, and is #13 in Germany (Facebook is #235 in comparison) [once again based on Alexa]. Contrast with Myspace, which is now available in 12 localized versions, and not surprisingly happens to be the one of the leading social networking sites in every major country.
Xing is one of LinkedIn's greatest competitors. While it's trailing LinkedIn in traffic globally, Xing is already available in no less than 16 languages which can all be easily accessed from its homepage. The German company managed to go public in Europe last December at a valuation (at the time) greater than 4 times LinkedIn's latest round of financing.
Google launched its first 10 international sites on June 2000, less than 22 months after it was started. While we used outside translation services for that first international launch, Google subsequently employed the user translation method, which was first made popular by the weather site Wunderground. It simply allows users to translate user interface strings into their own languages and even act as supervisors to oversee the quality of translation by others. This strategy allowed Google to expand a lot faster into more languages and more countries later on (at least until respective local offices were opened).
It could be argued that weaker international monetization and risk of losing focus may explain the hesitation with internationalization. However both can be managed. Google reported that 44% of its revenues in Q4 of 2006 came from outside the US. The advertising revenues from merely Google partners in Japan grew more than 60 fold between 2002 and 2004. The investment in internationalization paid off nicely for the company. As for staying focused: by putting its loyal users to task, Google managed to address internationalization with minimal resources and faster than anybody could have predicted.
Internationalization can be a great strength. It's at the very least a great opportunity. Don't let it become a weakness.
