Willkommen to blognation Germany

Today, blognation Germany starts, together with blognation Italy, to bring you news about everything Web 2.0 from Germany, what is new and what is hot, as well as covering some of the existing but internationally unknown German companies.

You would think that with a nation of over 80 million people and with more than 60 % of the population being online, Germans would make a bigger splash in the Web 2.0 scene, just by the pure economic size of the country and number of people.

But when you think of Germany, you probably don’t of think of impressive startups and innovation but more along the lines of nice cars and efficient engineers. Therefore one of blognation’s key goals, especially with countries like Germany, will be to breakdown the existing language barriers and bring you news about our emerging Web 2.0 space, by writing in English only.

In fact if you want to learn why any big, non native English speaking country/company struggles to get any attention in the US-centric blogosphere, Germany is a good example to understand.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch or why localization matters in Germany

Germans are brought up with everything being in German. With very few exceptions, every TV channel, every Radio channel, every movie or DVD, every book and magazine is in German. If it is not in German, it is probably not on the radar.

To make matters worse access to English content is difficult. Ever since Amazon came along, it has become much easier to get your hands on English content, such as movies and TV shows, but it is expensive and still not easy enough.

But how about using the Internet where you can access anything in any language from anywhere?

Well, why should you? Why should you go through the hassle of having an English user interface and English information when you can have the same information in German, get the same kind of functionality (or a bit less) but in the language you are comfortable with?

But don’t all Germans (Europeans) speak very good English and aren’t they comfortable with it!

This misconception is not only limited to Germany. Sadly not every German speaks good English and it’s only those who are comfortable with the English language who will regulary reach out to talk or write in the blogopshere.

So this is one of the main reasons why, instead of competing with the mainstream Web 2.0 applications, German entrepreneurs often create localised or “copy cat” sites to address the vast native German speaking audience.

Not enough fresh air in the ecosystem

With this in mind, unsurprisingly the coverage of the web in the German media is more focussed on the internal German market and reports from the outside are rare, if at all, and they are mainly focused on the major IT companies.

Basically if a person doesn’t reach out and seek external input, they will only continue to receive the same limited information. For example: books and articles about new development languages, frameworks are only translated into German after some time – if at all.

So if you stay in the pure German ecosystem, you only have access to a limited amount of resources. If you want to grow for example as a developer, you have to go “English”. And if you do so, you seldomly go back and “play” in both languages because nearly all information is made available “better and faster” in English.

Furthermore Germans are not know for their strong entrepreneurial spirit and you get an idea why startups do not have it easy here.

Germans are online!

The good news is the web marketspace may be different to what you are used to and challenges may be different than you thought they are, but Germans like online. In a Web 1.0 way, but they like it.

DSL is growing strongly, mainly due to the fact that this is pushed very hard in advertisements; it often comes with a voip flatrate and is mostly the only way to get a data flatrate. Right now 14.7 million broadband connections make up over 60% of the market share of online connections.

The challenge – no focus point

Although Germans love to buy online and are the second biggest nation both on Wikipedia and SecondLife, oddly one of the first Web 2.0 booms – blogging - never really took off. It may be due to the lack of really good German blogging applications, but honestly, it must also be part of the mentality if you compare it to the French blogging success.

For free email, we use web.de or gmx.de, instead of facebook we use StudiVZ, you may have a user on LinkedIn, but actually we use Xing - and the list goes on. Also one of the most used messenger applications is still ICQ – due to major TV channels using this in a branded version. And if we do use a non German application like Twitter we do it with our German friends in German.

These are just some examples which show over and over again that Germany is an island which lacks fresh input from the outside. The second biggest issue is that there is no real focus point, no hub so to speak which makes it difficult to connect.

Meet the growing Web 2.0 sphere

The dotcom crash hit the German economy hard, and the results where devastating in many cases. However, over the last 6-12 months we have seen a new bloom of startups and a renewed spirit; best observed by the emergence of web sites covering Web 2.0 exclusively, like Deutsche Startups .

The biggest trend of the moment seems to be “communities” for all kind of different niches as well as social shopping and meeting / dating. Many startups may look just like copycats, but as you will see over time on blognation, they bring something specific to the local ecosystem which makes them much more successful than their international competitors.

Though VC money doesn’t flow as easily as in some other areas of the world, it is available, and Media companies invest heavily in Web 2.0 properties in order to transform their own products for an online world.

But Startups on the other hand, especially when coming from younger entrepreneurs, do look more for networks than for cash, and innovative ideas like Seedcamp in the UK could be a good idea to do over here in Germany as well.

Don’t be mistaken: The German ecosystem – even in its “restricted” form – is a huge market. Most of the teenagers are on mobile and online, and the silver surfers are coming online as well. Germany is healthy, growing and worth watching.

Suggestions? New startups?

Feel free to leave a comment, send us a note or ping us about your new startup.

The blognation Germany event page lists all kind of interesting events in German’s Web 2.0 sphere and you will be able to meet us there as well!

Below are some more examples of German Web 2.0 companies.

Studi VZ: A social networking service mainly for students. Impressive 2,8 billion page impressions and 87,8 million visits. (as tracked by IVW numbers)

Xing: leading German Business social networking service, available in a variety of languages, successful IPO in 2006, strong expansion into the spanish speaking market recently.

Mr. Wong: social bookmarking service, to be launched internationally, claims to be more successful than delicious in Germany

Hitflip:Online exchange for DVDs, CDs, Games, half a million articles

Qype: review site, recently launched in the UK, results are delivered to Google as well, strong community

Mabber: instant messaging via web and mobile, gateway to all major IM clients , corporation mobile provider eplus.