A Localized Facebook: Further Benefits of the App Platform
We got word recently that Nestoria (a housing search tool) released a Facebook app designed exclusively for Spanish speakers. The app itself (there’s an English-language UK version as well) seems to do what it claims to, though I’m personally unsure what advantage potential users will see this Facebook-integrated version of housing search as having, over simply visiting external sites.
More interesting to me is that this Spanish app looks like it’s the first of its kind, in terms of its being an app developed specifically for a language that Facebook doesn’t officially support. Seeing as Facebook has not bothered to make localized versions of its entire interface (although it appears they are planning to do so, according to an Internationalization Team job description), foreign users have had to deal with an essentially Anglophone social network. Since social networking in general is largely about creating a virtual identity and connecting with others via that identity, it seems restrictive for it to be housed in a foreign linguistic structure, however much the content is freely modifiable.
With the advent of the Platform, it becomes possible to have what are essentially almost-fully-localized versions of Facebook, and without any effort on the part of Facebook itself. A Spanish iLike, A German “Extended Info”, A Greek “Top Friends”–even the exact same apps being released with different names corresponding to different languages could be a powerful way to draw a more global demographic into the Facebook community. Developers could even add a simple “Language Preference” to their apps, using all the same code logic, but simply giving the user the choice of which language to see the various app text in.
I believe (and hope) we’ll see many more applications marketed to speakers of various languages, as it seems that such development can only be a win for the user (via increased “identity accuracy” or what have you), for the developer (larger audiences), and for Facebook (more users around the world seeing Facebook, because of the openness of the Platform, as a potential home for their online identity).
[tags]facebook,apps,facebook-app,language,international,localization,nestoria,platform,spanish[/tags]
July 6th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Thanks for spotting our Spanish version. Your insights about i18n look like good predictions: apps with language preferences will appear soon. As for the logic behind a specialized search engine added to Facebook: well, we try to increase the reach of the real estate listings that we manage, for all means possible, we promote our webs at .es and .co.uk but try to be in all other fronts: Google Earth, offering an API for other to build…
We loose nothing being in Facebook. Some users will find it useful, others not, it’s not one of those app of a viral kind (no invite-all-friends page), but we’ve tailored a little bit so that the default search in Facebook is for renting, rather than buying as in the web versions.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:10 am
[...] a final note, we very much appreciate all the positive feedback on our applets: Inside Facebook, Future of Real Estate Marketing, Tecnología Inmobiliaria, Facereviews. We’ll of [...]
August 10th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
[...] Apps are getting translated – Facebook-focused blog Inside Facebook, points to an application, Nestoria, that’s entirely in Spanish, possibly the first non-English app. [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
[...] también tuvimos nuestra pequeña parte, y la presentará Mónica González. La de Nestoria fue la primera aplicación hecha en español para Facebook, quizás la primera en un idioma que no fuera el inglés.El evento es el lunes 18, a [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:34 pm
[...] Unfortunately, a some of my Greasemonkey scripts that depend on Facebook content stopped working, including a cool script that highlights todays birthdays. Facebook developers, including those making apps and scripts, are going to have to deal with internationalising (i18n) and localising their applications. [...]
May 30th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
[...] A decade ago, Ted Castronova identified Norrath as having a GNP per capita somewhere between that of Russia and Bulgaria, higher than that of China and India, and noted that a unit of EverQuest currency was worth more than the Yen or Lira. Given the inevitable rise in the populations of places like Azeroth and Norrath, and their booming economic footprint, for how long will the terrestrial nation-state remain our de facto unit of political sovereignty? I have a complex basis for this question that involves Plato, poetry, and the invention of the alphabet, but let me elide that in favor of a few observations. Go to Google, and type in the letters “AZER,” and what do you see? The first suggestion is Azerbaijan, a Republic in Caucus mountains of Eurasia. The second suggestion is Azeroth, which is of course the world of world of warcraft. Ted Castronova has done a good job of discussing this from a public policy perspective in his book Exodus to the Virtual World. But I think that you saw it this morning in the opening talk of Arjun Sethi, who repeatedly suggested that national boundaries were largely banal, and instead built products that addressed linguistic, cultural, and social affinities. [...]