Facebook plans new language skins

According to Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, Facebook plans to add language capabilities by manifesting itself in Dutch, Norwegian, Polish and Italian. Future strategy also spans over adding another 20 languages including Chinese.

Finally Facebook is gearing up to take on challenge to resolve cultural diversity through an innovative set of features. For any social networking system, bringing a "home feel" to its users in a manner that is coherent with their culture has always been a major challenge. Although MySpace captures over 80% of market share, we have yet to see the global acceptance of social networking system. A system that addresses diversity across regions in a consistent manner.

Facebook offers a one-click downloadable tool that translates Facebook into the user’s choice of language. Feasibility of this approach may come into spotlight,  especially into new markets where user’s eagerness will be put to test. MySpace on the other hand offers country specific sites, employing local staff to better understand and address the cultural diversity. Bebo uses a completely different user base for its polish version.

Facebook also aims at developing a localized database of culture specific jargons by introducing the concept of volunteered user participation in human translation. Facebook is not very clear on how it plans to do that. Data abuse is one real possibility.

It wont be an easy pill to swallow for Facebook. Fierce competition awaits in the form of Hi5 (huge acceptance in Central and South America), Orkut (Hot in south Asian regions and brazil), QQ (connecting china webspace).

via businessweek.com

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