2 ms·

Geni Clone Growing A Lot Faster Than Geni

12 points by nickb 19y ago

pg 19y ago
Maybe startups should take the trouble to offer localized versions within a couple months of launching. The Samwers are taking advantage of the fact that startups are ignoring something that's probably trivially easy.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  I haven't dealt with it before, but I'm told i18n is a pain -- not close to trivial. A good system would be automated though -- making adding the Russian language equivalent site at startup.ru scalable in software.
  - downer 19y ago
    Isn't this Unicode support? Something that has been somewhat lacking in Ruby but present in Python. Technically it shouldn't be a problem, it's just a matter of getting translators :)
    - herdrick 19y ago
      It's a hassle. Every string displayed in your site (aside from the user created stuff) now becomes a bundle of strings, one for each language. Also, how are you going to organize the different versions of your site? Will you just use the same URL for each page and just have some global user language preference that makes each page render accordingly? Now the smallest change in the text of your site will now require consulting with your translators, which in practice means that you no longer do small changes. You accumulate lots of changes and send them off to your translators in one chunk, then update them when all the translations get back to you. Slowing down the iteration cycle can be fatal to a startup. To avoid this, you can instead maintain a different site for each language and bring your non-English (well, non-whatever you're comfortable with) sites up to date with the English as you do translations. Now you have forked your code. Hassle.
      - downer 19y ago
        URLs aren't a big deal. Most people bookmark anyway, they don't type them in. I mean are we going to complain about the character set for domain names next? I surf sites that are natively in other languages and seeing words in URLs that aren't in English doesn't bother me. It reminds me the world is a big place :) > Every string displayed in your site (aside from the user created stuff) now becomes a bundle of strings, one for each language. That's good practice anyway, from the standpoint of being able to make changes without touching the code. > Hassle. Web development is a hassle in the first place. But being able to handle other languages isn't any more complex than separating presentation from code.
        herdrick 19y ago
        I'm not sure what you're talking about with URLs. I was talking about the implications of implementing this in different ways and saying that there's no easy way.
        downer 19y ago
        Re: "Also, how are you going to organize the different versions of your site? Will you just use the same URL for each page"
        herdrick 19y ago
        It's not the unicode. That's easy. It's "how are you going to separate the English, French, Hindi, etc. versions, from each other?" Will you have different URLs or the same URLs with a global preference, or something else?
- davidw 19y ago
  It's not trivially easy though. Part of growing a market is also having connections in that market. For instance, the i18n of reddit would have been trivially easy in terms of programming (I think, at least - there aren't too many strings there). This has been around for a while: http://it.reddit.com http://it.reddit.com But they've been absolutely beaten by a localized clone: http://oknotizie.alice.it/ http://oknotizie.alice.it/ In part, because the guy behind it, Salvatore "antirez" (on this site, too) Sanfilippo already had a popular Delicious clone, and was able to get significant traffic from that from the outset, in addition to being reasonably well known amongst Italian hackers on his own.
iamelgringo 19y ago
Part of it depends on the language and framework that you're using. Not to start a flame war, just pointing out a simple fact: RoR doesn't handled i10n and l8n nearly as well as Python/Django does, for instance. If your language doesn't support Unicode strings well, you're kinda screwed when it comes to setting up your site in Russian. I agree, though. We in American startups tend to be rather myopic when it comes to different languages and cultures.
bdr 19y ago
I always thought Geni's interface kind of sucked. There could be a lot of reasons this one is taking off while Geni is stalled.

12 points by nickb 19y ago

pg 19y ago

Maybe startups should take the trouble to offer localized versions within a couple months of launching. The Samwers are taking advantage of the fact that startups are ignoring something that's probably trivially easy.

ivankirigin 19y ago
I haven't dealt with it before, but I'm told i18n is a pain -- not close to trivial. A good system would be automated though -- making adding the Russian language equivalent site at startup.ru scalable in software.
- downer 19y ago
  Isn't this Unicode support? Something that has been somewhat lacking in Ruby but present in Python. Technically it shouldn't be a problem, it's just a matter of getting translators :)
  - herdrick 19y ago
    It's a hassle. Every string displayed in your site (aside from the user created stuff) now becomes a bundle of strings, one for each language. Also, how are you going to organize the different versions of your site? Will you just use the same URL for each page and just have some global user language preference that makes each page render accordingly? Now the smallest change in the text of your site will now require consulting with your translators, which in practice means that you no longer do small changes. You accumulate lots of changes and send them off to your translators in one chunk, then update them when all the translations get back to you. Slowing down the iteration cycle can be fatal to a startup. To avoid this, you can instead maintain a different site for each language and bring your non-English (well, non-whatever you're comfortable with) sites up to date with the English as you do translations. Now you have forked your code. Hassle.
    - downer 19y ago
      URLs aren't a big deal. Most people bookmark anyway, they don't type them in. I mean are we going to complain about the character set for domain names next? I surf sites that are natively in other languages and seeing words in URLs that aren't in English doesn't bother me. It reminds me the world is a big place :) > Every string displayed in your site (aside from the user created stuff) now becomes a bundle of strings, one for each language. That's good practice anyway, from the standpoint of being able to make changes without touching the code. > Hassle. Web development is a hassle in the first place. But being able to handle other languages isn't any more complex than separating presentation from code.
      - herdrick 19y ago
        I'm not sure what you're talking about with URLs. I was talking about the implications of implementing this in different ways and saying that there's no easy way.
        downer 19y ago
        Re: "Also, how are you going to organize the different versions of your site? Will you just use the same URL for each page"
        herdrick 19y ago
        It's not the unicode. That's easy. It's "how are you going to separate the English, French, Hindi, etc. versions, from each other?" Will you have different URLs or the same URLs with a global preference, or something else?
davidw 19y ago
It's not trivially easy though. Part of growing a market is also having connections in that market. For instance, the i18n of reddit would have been trivially easy in terms of programming (I think, at least - there aren't too many strings there). This has been around for a while: http://it.reddit.com http://it.reddit.com But they've been absolutely beaten by a localized clone: http://oknotizie.alice.it/ http://oknotizie.alice.it/ In part, because the guy behind it, Salvatore "antirez" (on this site, too) Sanfilippo already had a popular Delicious clone, and was able to get significant traffic from that from the outset, in addition to being reasonably well known amongst Italian hackers on his own.

iamelgringo 19y ago

Part of it depends on the language and framework that you're using. Not to start a flame war, just pointing out a simple fact: RoR doesn't handled i10n and l8n nearly as well as Python/Django does, for instance. If your language doesn't support Unicode strings well, you're kinda screwed when it comes to setting up your site in Russian. I agree, though. We in American startups tend to be rather myopic when it comes to different languages and cultures.

bdr 19y ago

I always thought Geni's interface kind of sucked. There could be a lot of reasons this one is taking off while Geni is stalled.