Global by Design

I read at Design Across Cultures that Facebook is planning to use “crowdsourcing” to allow its users to create translated content.
Crowdsourcing is a hot new buzzword that is best illustrated by Wikipedia — you take a lot of motivated volunteers, give them access to your Web site, and let them go crazy. I’m simplifying things [...]

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I often point to Web sites like Google and Wikipedia as great examples of multilingual Web sites.
Google supports more than 120 languages and Wikipedia supports more than 150. Few other companies come close to supporting that many languages.
And yet there are thousands of languages in existence on this planet, most of which are not about [...]

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What separates good global Web sites from great global Web sites? Is it just the number of languages a Web site supports? Certainly languages are essential.
Although every Web site is global by nature, few Web sites support enough languages to be understood by the majority of the world’s Internet users.
But translation is just one aspect [...]

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Okay, so I finally got around to reviewing 2006 stats for Global by Design. My goal is to install a real-time “most popular” sidebar; until then, here are the most popular entries:
Baidu vs. Google: Round Two
The World According to Wikipedia
Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
China and Japan: So Close But Yet [...]

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In our 2006 Web Globalization Report Card, the top two global Web sites overall were Google and Wikipedia. Both organizations support more than 100 languages and a fast-loading, flexible global design template.Which is why I was interested to read that Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, is planning to develop a Wiki-based search engine. Of [...]

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I was happy to see a press release from comScore Networks illustrating in raw numbers what many Webmasters have been telling me privately over the years — that more than half of their Web traffic is coming from outside of the US.
The comScore study found that “14 of the top 25 U.S. Web properties attract [...]

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