Thank goodness for Google Translator. The service over the years has gotten so good at automatically translating Web pages from one language to another that it long ago replaced Alta Vista's Babelfish for me, and has opened up the opportunity to see how others outside the United States are extending the conversations we've launched or participated in through blogs.Of note, yesterday I caught a story in "Innovablog" discussing what they termed the "Myth of User Generated Content". In this detailed post, they touched on my analysis of Alexa traffic showing traditional media's losing out to new social media or blogs.
As they wrote: "En quelques graphs (de source Alexa), Louis Gray compare les audiences des sites sociaux les plus connus aux plus grands mass-media traditionnels."
Even the URL looks better in French.
Réflexion : le mythe du User Generated Content ?
http://innovablog.com/le-web/user-generated-content-mythe/
Other times, a simple recap of news we'd discussed makes it into blogs in non-English tongues, such as reaction to my Feedheads article last month:
Google News como aplicacion Facebook
http://www.error500.net/google-news-aplicacion-facebook
When they ask, "¿Qué podría aportar a Google News el ser social?" I have to say I was wondering the same thing. Right?
With Google's universality, when the company has hiccups, the reactions are felt just about everywhere. Back in June, when Google Reader stopped updating, the cries were in many different languages.
Google Reader zeigt keine neuen Feeds
http://www.whywerock.com/artikel/google-reader-zeigt-keine-neuen-feeds/
"Ok, scheinbar werden nach einer kurzen Downtime die neuen Feeds gequeuet und irgendwann im Laufe des Tages freigegeben. Weitere Infos in der Google Discussion Group und in diesem Blog."
"In Diesem Blog". That's me! Of course, given my four years of Spanish in high school, I think I figured out the headline of another one, which wrote simply: "Google reader con problemas".
http://www.maestrosdelweb.com/actualidad/google-reader-con-problemas/
"De acuerdo a reportes publicados en varios sitios web, el problema arrancó desde el día de ayer por la noche."
And another...
Google Reader im Leerlauf?
http://mitra.ch/?p=554
They add: "Spielt Google etwa gerade ein Update auf den Server? Hab grad entdeckt, dass ich tatsächlich nicht der einzige bin mit dem Problem."
Obviously.
I've said many times that blogging opens up conversations and new ways of communicating. Clearly, as you can see above, we are no longer limited by borders or even languages at this point. As technologies improve outside of the English-speaking world, the international blogging community is set to grow further and become a significant force. That I can use available tools to share ideas or react with my international peers is extremely exciting. Gehe hin und Blog!