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May 16, 2007
NottaClone.de or Web 2.0 Originals out of Germany
Who knew that the original source for software for managing content of Wikipedia's massively popular onlilne encyclopedia was German? We didn't (University of Cologne was the source, the story goes). It's something we learned after following up the comments to a post by German blogger and entrepreneur-in-residence at Hasso Plattner Ventures, Gregor Hochmuth, on TechCrunch.
Hochmuth's analysis of the region's Web "copy and paste" phenomenon shook a few original Web 2.0 startups out of obscurity and onto our radar.
We take a look at the non-clones below. (Hochmuth also takes beautiful photographs, like the Berlin shot below, via his webpage Dotgrex )
The copycat phenomenon sees German entrepreneurs take a successful concept from another market and hone it for their own. A couple of examples of Internet ventures that serve got their start serving the German market and that are now €100M companies include Xing, Tipp24, and Interhyp. A lot of people think that with 14M broadband users it has a good sized market ... to make your first fortune on.
MyTv.de - a "TV Guide" for the Internet video couch potato - Original and with a very well designed user interface. We like this one a lot and it deserves a longer analysis than what we can do this morning. MyTV.de provides good information and details on the plethora of video blogs and video clips that are uploaded each day. The UI supports bookmarking, forwarding, chat, and the ability to vote on the content. And it claims some serious tech: a crawler that processes 100,000 new pieces of content a day. About 500 of which get vetted by the sites crew of 35 to 40 freelance editors, mainly students. This is something that they can fairly easily internationalize and we can imagine a few ways to make money with this one.
Partnr.de A web to SMS platform for lovers. It is not a Twitter clone. Express your desires in a post and they're sent to you partner (both register to use partnr.de) by SMS for free. It's a private project from a Lycos Europe executive. It's not a twitter clone says the founder, but getting called one by a couple of bloggers has give partnr.de a whole lot of free PR.
dealjaeger.de Original ecommerce platform from savvy founders. (we profiled them back in December)
jogmap.de - a website for runners from Germany that launched before the Nike plus website, serving Germany’s biggest running community. Its fans say that not using buzzphrases, like Beta, may have kept it below the web 2.0 radar.
Plazes - Location application popular with techies. We've got some posts about plazes
YouMix - Youmix is not a MySpace clone. The site was down when we tried to view this morning, but the folks that supplied its content management system describe it like this: a Web 2.0 social networking site for musicians and fans, featuring user profiles, friends, mp3s, photos, groups and forums. Youmix builds relationships by connecting artists and listeners. Using the embedded Flash player, site visitors can listen to music and watch videos uploaded by bands and can add songs to their personal playlist.
JoinR - is not a MySpace clone says a Techcrunch commenter. It looks like one to us. But then again what do we know, we still think pillow-talk with a "partnr" is more sexy than sending an SMS. JoinR does have a fine UI with some handy mouseover info features and a map search feature to find JoinR's in your neighbourhood. It makes myspace's UI look a like a prototype.
Read Web 2 in Germany Copy Paste Innovation or More
Posted on May 16, 2007 05:29 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | Permalink
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