Belgium

Netlog

Netlog is a social networking site located in Ghent, Belgium. The platform has mainly European youngsters as active users and is available in over 25 countries and 37 languages with more than 73 million members throughout Europe as of early 2011. According to the company, the number of users is increasing every day.

In 1999, Toon Coppens started http://ASL.TO, one of the first social Web communities with European roots. Renamed Redbox, the Website focused on young Belgians. Redbox's focus was very unique, since other European countries only started to get their own online communities in late 2005. Similarly, Redbox's creators began to work on another platform called Facebox. In April 2007, the old and new architecture were combined into http://Netlog.com. Similar to other social networks, Netlog members can create their own Web page with backgrounds and photos, publish music playlists, share videos, blog posts, and create groups (formerly called clans). Furthermore, they also have the ability to add little Flash games to their profile.

Netlog has some unique aspects. A localization technology is available for geotargeting content. All content is provided with metadata such as profile information, privacy details, and geographical data. Hence, the profiles of each member are personalized. This technology gives a member the possibility of localized searches and overviews of the community, displaying only the profiles within the same region and age group.

Next to that, Netlog is not using a commercial team to run the 20 different language versions. By deploying foreign students from the nearby University of Ghent, Netlog quickly introduces new languages to their platform. The platform is coded in such a way that only tagged words have to be translated into the chosen language. When Netlog wants a new language to be added, freelancers are hired, mostly foreign students, to translate the tagged words, not the underlying code. For example, two Turkish exchange students created the Turkish version of Netlog. Only four months after launching this [Page 71]Turkish version, Netlog had already welcomed 2.5 million Turkish users.

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