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ReadWriteWeb
Top Spanish Web 2.0 Apps
Next in my series on top international Web apps is Spain. The previous countries profiled were Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom and Russia.
The information in this post comes from two people: Eduardo Perez Orue from the Spanish Virtual Desktop product EyeOS, plus a R/WW reader named Carlos (sorry I didn't get his last name).
An interesting fact about Spain's web apps is that most sites are presented with multilingual engines. Eduardo told me that Spanish Web entrepreneurs think that Spanish-only sites have a limited audience - "only 300 million people or so" (!) - so a lot of them create multilingual apps.
Also, Eduardo noted that the big three (Yahoo, Google and MSN) are a big part of the market. Almost everybody uses Yahoo.es and Google.es - and Google and YouTube are used for videos, etc. This may sound obvious, but remember that a lot of the international markets R/WW has profiled so far are not dominated by 'the big 3' - Russia and Korea for example.
Eduardo's Picks
Here are Eduardo's favorite Spanish apps (and Carlos' follow after that).
Tagzania - a geomapping site with excellent features; you can create your own "geoposts" and it automatically produces a KML file of your posts for Google Earth. Here is Eduardo's account and the KML of his videos (in the form of a travel videoblog).
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.flickr.com%2F36%2F217660978_ca98f6a425.jpg%3Fv%3D0)
MobuzzTV is an online video channel.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.flickr.com%2F86%2F217659790_9f76f35327.jpg%3Fv%3D0)
Bankinter is a banking website, which is an unusual thing in the web20 world. Eduardo said it's "not really a great web site, but the integration of the web with the SMSs (text messages on cell phones) is very good. You can set alarms in your web page to get an SMS when you get money, when you transfer money, when you reach a certain balance, etc. I have an alert every time my credit card gets charged, so when I go to a restaurant I can see inmediately how much they charge me in my phone - and if they charge only once! The alerts arrive sometimes before I get the paper to sign from the waiter..."
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.flickr.com%2F70%2F217659791_f8eaf9775c.jpg%3Fv%3D0)
FON is the new routing invention of an Argentinean entrepreneur living in Madrid. The Fon router shares your DSL or cable connection so that other people can use it. In exchange, you get to use other users' wifi. Eduardo thinks it's a great idea and notes that the developer got backup from Google and Skype.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.flickr.com%2F79%2F217659792_4a50bf61c2.jpg%3Fv%3D0)
Other Spanish Web Apps
Digg clone: Meneame.net is the biggest and most followed digg clone in Spain and Latin America. Eduardo says it's not a full digg clone, in that it has improvements in some aspects.
Slashdot clone: Barrapunto excellent site, now shadowed a bit by the digg clone Meneame (similar to what's happened in the Western world).
Podcasts: Comunicando and Triunfa en internet
Classifieds: Loquo is a copy of craigslist that has been having a bit of success lately. Eduardo has his own classifieds play, in the form of a new app called Zolow.com - which he says "is our version of a digital bulletin, the kind you find in a supermarket." I've looked at it myself and am intrigued...
Video channels: MobuzzTV is the best (mentioned above). Also see Cálico Electrónico, which despite its difficult name is an impressive Flash animation site. Eduardo says go to "capítulos" and watch one. They have thousands of subscribers. Also Eduardo mentions fresa.TV, another one he's involved with. He says that MobuzzTV is better, "but we are aiming at the non-geek market."
Blogger clone: http://www.lacoctelera.com/, which is popular in Spain.
Monster clone: http://www.infojobs.net/
Barradevoces / Barofvoices allows you to leave messages in your blog a la voicemail from Skype, Ekiga, etc.
QDQ has pictures of thousands of buildings in Spain, so you can search for an address and see what the building looks like (type Castellana 2 for instance in the street address in Madrid).
Endeve is an online invoicing system.
Video downloader to download YouTube or Google Video videos.
MMORPGs: La Prisión is the biggest one in Spain.
Xiclets (Eduardo is also involved in this - he's a busy guy!) allows you to create mini pages in seconds.
eyeOS is a virtual desktop service that (you guessed it) Eduardo is involved in :-) I can confirm though that it's not in this list to make up the numbers, as I reviewed it recently on ZDNet and it is without doubt one of the global market leaders in the small but growing WebOS space.
Carlos' Picks
Carlos from Spain also sent me a great list of local apps. Some of these are repeats of what Eduardo's list, but Carlos has some good notes - so I've left his list pretty much as-is.
First here are some Spanish apps that are available in english:
The following apps are mainly Spanish language ones, although I'd be interested to know how many of these are multilingual (as per Eduardo's note above). Perhaps some Spanish-speaking people can let us know in the comments to this post?
Comments below are by Carlos...
Social Networks
http://www.econozco.com/ (business networking, like LinkedIn)
http://qdamos.es/ (social, just contacts)
http://www.egrupos.net/ (for some, the MySpace of the Spanish world - from the same Zoom developers (see above), this is probably the most prolific 2.0 company in the Spanish world so far.)
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.flickr.com%2F85%2F217659793_288522d3e1.jpg%3Fv%3D0)
Blogging platforms:
http://www.bitacoras.com/ (oldest and probably the largest blogging platform in Spanish)
http://www.blogalia.com/
http://www.blogia.com/ (not as plentiful but many good & popular blogs live here)
http://www.zoomblog.com/ (yup, the Zoom guys again)
http://www.compareblogs.com/ (some really cool experiments on blog stats)
Aggregators and Digg-like:
http://www.feedness.com/
http://www.meneame.net/ (like Digg but in Spanish, very popular - yes you can feel the "meneame" effect in the Spanish world just like the Digg effect in the US but at a smaller scale of course)
http://www.fresqui.com/ (Meneame runner-up, nicer UI, 1/4 of the success)
Others:
http://www.caleio.com/ (Online calendar, in English)
http://www.mirablog.com/ (blog search engine)
http://www.ataja.es/ (like tinyurl but in Spanish, not sure this would be considered a web 2.0 app)
http://www.mytv0.com/ (add TV to your site/blog/etc. The service sounds interesting but I haven't tried it)
http://www.magnatuneasy.com/ (a sleeker UI and RSS feeds for magnatune.com)
http://www.eventtos.com/ (create & keep track of events)
Thanks to Eduardo and Carlos for the excellent info here. As with the other international web apps posts, I encourage people to add any Spanish apps that weren't listed. But more importantly, tell everyone what the Spain Web industry is like - what's happening there that's different to Silicon Valley or other places? I got some fantastic comments on the Russian post (a few of them challenging it, but that's fine too). So feel free to comment on this post if you're from Spain or speak Spanish and know the apps that come from there well.
Update: Antonio Fumero points out an excellent list of Spanish apps at Loog(ic). There are also additional apps being listed in the comments of my post here.
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Hi!! We are involved in one very local mashup which happens to be a big success in its home town, Bilbao:
Bilbao.bi
Posted by: Jose del Moral | August 17, 2006 7:15 AM
Hey Richard, I must say I really love your top international web app posts so far. My job involves working with markets like Russia, Netherlands, Spain, ... and this is good stuff. Keep it coming.
Posted by: Kris Hoet | August 17, 2006 7:29 AM
Thanks for this great list of web2.0 apps of Spain. For the spanish educational sector I would add docencia.es (a kind of meneame-clone of the digg-clone).
Posted by: Markus Trapp | August 17, 2006 7:41 AM
You can find a more comprehensive list at loogic,
http://www.loogic.com/index.php/web20/
Posted by: Antonio Fumero | August 17, 2006 10:23 AM
I put this popular webs linux site:
www.linux-party.com
A popular Extremadura Web Site:
www.ajuca.com
A popular forojob site:
www.forojob.com
Posted by: XinXer0 | August 17, 2006 12:39 PM
Don't forget www.tusecreto.es, is a cool and funny web 2.0
Posted by: Manuel | August 17, 2006 1:53 PM
vivirama ( www.vivirama.com ) is a housing listings website for all cities of the world. It's not in Spanish (yet), but it's made by myself in Spain (specifically in Barcelona).
Posted by: xavi | August 17, 2006 4:50 PM
Best Spanish Podcast is "Punto y aparte" in http://topopardo.com.
In spanish: es el mejor Podcast en español y no se puede olvidar
Posted by: Ordago | August 17, 2006 6:00 PM
A Galician Aggregator & Search Engine (still in development)
Posted by: Ramon Antonio | August 17, 2006 9:52 PM
The "only 300 million people or so" quote is not quite correct.
There are in the world around 420 million people for whom Spanish is their first language. And out of those 420 million, only around 72 million are connected to the Internet today (18% of the total population).
Needless to say, the percentage of penetration is growing rapidly (and the margin for growth is huge), and so is the population. So it's a very interesting market to be in - but in terms of current audience, it's still a far cry (perhaps not that far) from that "300 million" quote.
PS: Looks like we've got 4 sites in the list :-) Thanks Richard (and Carlos too)!
Posted by: RBA | August 17, 2006 10:15 PM
Manuals, www.instruccionesymanuales.com i´m not sure this would be considered a web 2.0
Posted by: pesmer | August 17, 2006 11:40 PM
The link for www.instruccionesymanuales.com.
Sorry
Posted by: pesmer | August 17, 2006 11:41 PM
What about "blogging webware"?
www.webmediaexplorer.com
Posted by: Marc | August 18, 2006 12:22 AM
Slashdot clone: Barrapunto excellent site, now shadowed a bit by the digg clone Meneame (similar to what's happened in the Western world).
Yeah, Spain is the core os the eastern core, right between North Korea and big old China.
Posted by: Desayunando | August 18, 2006 12:24 AM
A date reminder that sends email & sms:
hora y lugar
Posted by: Ramon | August 18, 2006 12:38 AM
Hello,
We have launched a mash-up for surfers in spanish.
Surfers can add their on surf spots and surf spot information. Find more here:
Surfkultura
Posted by: surf kultura | August 18, 2006 12:38 AM
Check out also Neurona an online social network of more than 600.000 professionals that we are developing from Barcelona.
Posted by: Tomy | August 18, 2006 1:55 AM
Ok, since nobody seems to be interested in talking about the "web industry" in Spain, I wrote a very long article here but since it's in Spanish, let me try to summarize it here as much as possible.
In Spain there is little to support the creation and development of web services and the companies behind them.
* The media (old and new) would rather report on whatever is the latest stupid auction on eBay than the launch of a new promising company. Don't count on them.
* Venture capital does not exist for Internet companies. The hangover from the bubble is still strong there. Don't even bother. Also, if you're lucky and travel to Sand Hill Road, be prepared to face folks who have no clue about this market and the most they'd say is "oh yeah there was this company called Starmedia that...". And no clue often means no funding. That's in California, a state with millions of Hispanics, by the way.
* Educational institutions and universities don't prepare to-be-enterpreneurs and would rather train future MBAs to get a good job at big companies, and teach engineers that they'll be working for the suits, instead of telling them they may be the creative minds that'd drive innovation.
* Consumers often would praise "imported" services instead of homemade ones (hence the big success of sites like Yahoo or MSN). Some native services do succeed, though, in niche markets, often of local nature or very culturally or language oriented.
* Unlike what Eduardo says, I feel that most services (at least the successful ones) would rather give a shot in becoming important in Spain, than risking being nobody in the US. Heck, many of them don't even bet on Latin America nor the Hispanics in the US (such a great market waiting to be hugged)
* In general, it's hard to find someone who would trust startups, especially Internet startups: lawyers don't want them as clients, landlords don't want to rent to them, people don't like working for them, and so on.
Many of these things don't not only apply to Spain but to many other countries in Europe and around the world.
It's a circle that is hard to break. I believe that a good first step would be to see a native company build itself from the ground up (no high-profile enterpreneur founding it, truly someone starting from zero) and becoming something others may look up to.
In the Silicon Valley many are looking for the next Google, the next MySpace or even the next sound acquisition (Flickr, etc). In Spain there is almost no one to look up to, and so the bubble hagover keeps...hanging over. So kudos to any and all who take on the difficult task to build a sustainable service, because I believe that while there is plenty of competition (just see how many sites are being mentioned) at the same time, the environment around them is anything but friendly.
And yet, the Spanish market on the Internet is probably one that today is very overlooked despite the numbers:
- 420M population.
- Only 18% Internet penetration.
- 4th most spoken language on the net (78 million)
In the US:
- 44M spanish speakers
- 735 billion acquisition power in 2006
- Internet advertising is the fastest growing space
- 80% of large US companies plan to at least double their advertising budget in Spanish.
And many other surprising stats. I should stop here I think :-)
Posted by: RBA | August 18, 2006 3:06 AM
Hi.
Trabber is a travel metasearch engine that we have developed in Spain. It is currently available also for Germany and the US:
http://www.trabber.com/
Óscar.
Posted by: Óscar | August 18, 2006 5:35 AM
There is a lot of meneame.net clones, http://meneame.wikispaces.com/Clones
Posted by: Albo | August 18, 2006 6:35 AM
Helo people
Try Blogspy, a diggspy-like tool for realtime stats.
http://spy.foxcorp.org
Posted by: Juan Xavier Larrea | August 18, 2006 8:05 AM
Hi,
Nice list of spanish web2.0 apps. I'm the authour of one of them (theadcloud.com) and just wanted to note that although theadcloud.com can be considered an spanish web2.0 app, it's from Chile as you can note on business2.blogs.com
Posted by: Roberto Alamos | August 18, 2006 8:35 AM
www.Pricenoia.com,
an Amazon (and only amazon) international Price comparison engine is one of the few spanish apps that you can find in those 'web2.0 sites' lists (may be a good reference seeing the number of 'never heard of' sites in your post comments ;) ).
Posted by: Al | August 18, 2006 10:38 AM
http://www.vootext.com
Using VOOTEXT you prune to share your texts yet the world, to read texts of other authors and build a relationship with them thanks to its social tools
Posted by: Mauro Rondinelli | August 19, 2006 10:49 AM
Hi!
I'd like to add Trovit.com to this list.
It's a vertical search engine, for houses, cars and jobs with presence in 4 countries in Europe (Italy, France, UK and Spain), and developed in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid).
Thanks!
Mario
Posted by: Mario | August 21, 2006 12:45 AM
www.beon4u.com
They make downloadable desktop widgets for the pc. They are foacuse around 2.0 bubble sites; flicikr, wifi, and others, check em out (if you speak spanish)
Posted by: John | August 21, 2006 8:55 AM
La Coctelera = Blogger clone?
No way!
You gotta be kidding! La Coctelera is way better and easier to use than Blogger
Posted by: Coctelera user | August 23, 2006 9:26 AM
http://wwwhatsnew.com
blog in spanish about web 2.0 applications
Posted by: diego | August 24, 2006 4:35 PM
Nireblog.com is another blogging plataform in Spanish, Basque, Portuguese, English and Arab and soon in Chinesse a Japanesse
Posted by: David | August 28, 2006 3:10 AM
talkconmigo.com is a site for people wanting to learn languages to hook up and do "intercambios" - language exhanges
Posted by: David | December 1, 2006 5:58 AM
Maybe here's a place to ask...
... does anyone know where one could find out the number Internet capable Spanish language website surfers in the world at this point?
Does anyone track this by chance? I would love to make a case for translating our website into Spanish, if we could find just how large current market is of Spanish language surfers.
"Huge" is not going get the powers that be to accept my proposal, what I need a study or some kind of reporting service that we could refer to.
Thanks in advance!
Posted by: BarEditor | January 3, 2007 11:25 PM
pleased i like to work with you, if there is any thing to do pleased let me know
Posted by: kingsley ofangbon | January 12, 2007 9:26 AM
pleased how can i get what am looking for, pleased i like to know
Posted by: kingsley ofangbon | January 12, 2007 9:28 AM
Estoy interesado en comprar una cámara de vídeo
JVC GY-DV5100
Posted by: Eugenio García | February 5, 2007 4:36 AM
All interesting information and nice posts (apart the spam one!) I have been using a lot http://www.www.qdq.com as it allows you to travel in major spanish cities from your chair... it will be very interested once plugged with mapping service!
Posted by: Fred Valencia | February 8, 2007 6:56 AM
Don't forget the newest social network in Spanish http://www.tuwebonada.com that is growing in giant steps and quickly. Very well put together site, this really could be the Spanish counterpart to myspace (not to mention taht is 85% a clone of it).
Posted by: David | February 13, 2007 8:12 AM
I want to present a new option for WEB 2.0 in spanish:
http://www.hispanito.com
"Hispanito – la red de amigos más grande del mundo hispano"
www.hispanito.com es el lugar mas divertido para hacer amigos, participar a grupos de intereses y comunidades. Registra tu perfil en un paso sencillo, descargas tu foto e invitas a tus amigos. Preséntate y haz nuevos amigos. Creas tu grupo de interés e invita a tus amigos. Participas en debates sobre vida de barrio, actualidad, mascotas, famosos, política y mucho más. Añade y vota tus ligas favoritas para crear el directorio interactivo mas completo del mundo hispano.
Palabras claves: Hispanito , hispanos , hispano , Latino , latinos , español , amigos , amigo, amistad , amistades , gente , gentes, contactos , contacto , links , link , ligas , liga , amor , grupos , grupo , comunidades , comunidad , Directorio , hacer , conocer , Forum , Chatear, Debate , Chat , discusión , música , TV, Show , programa , Aficiones , afición , Arte , entretenimiento , Automoción , motos , auto , coches , Comida , bebida , Culturas , comunidades , Deportes , Educación , Familia , Famosos , Historia , ciencia , Internet , Juegos , Animales , Moda , belleza , Música , Negocios , Países , ciudades , Política , Gobierno , Religión , Romances , Salud , Viajes , Otros , Seleccione , país ,Argentina , Bolivia , Brasil , Canadá , Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cuba , Ecuador , El Salvador , Estados Unidos , USA , US , Guatemala , Honduras , México , Nicaragua , Panamá , Paraguay , Perú , Puerto Rico , República Dominicana , Uruguay , Venezuela , España , Radio , Periódico , radios , radio , periódicos , medios de comunicación , viaje , turismo , Aficiones, Amistades , Arte y entretenimiento , Automoción , Comida y bebida , Culturas y comunidades , Deportes ,Educación ,Familia ,Famosos ,Historia y ciencia ,Internet ,Juegos ,Animales ,Moda y belleza ,Música ,Negocios ,Países y ciudades ,Política y Gobierno , Religión ,Romances , Salud ,Viajes ,Otros Tópicos
Posted by: Juanito | February 17, 2007 2:32 PM
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Posted by: timmy | February 18, 2007 11:27 AM
Well: http://www.arearh.com, the new Human Resources Portal
Posted by: Tono | February 28, 2007 4:34 AM
Hi,
We've just launched Quomon in spanish.
It's a website for IT and Graphic design professionals, to collaborate about problem solving. It has a point system which incentivices quick responses and let's experts gain prestige in their areas of knowledge. It's inspired by Web 2.0 ideas uses a tagging system and some AJAX.
Kind regards,
David Givoni
Posted by: David Givoni | March 2, 2007 7:52 AM
We've launched a new multilingual social bookmarking website called Kontrib.com (http://www.kontrib.com). You can post content in one of four languages at the moment (Arabic, English, French, or Spanish) and our software will automatically translate the content into several different languages using automatic machine translation. We hope this will help people communicate more effectively across different groups and regions. Feel free to try it out!
Posted by: Felix | March 15, 2007 12:19 PM
I think tencent should be mentioned as a Top Spanish Web Apps.
Posted by: Moda a los 50 | March 19, 2007 11:09 AM
I think tencent should be mentioned as a Top Spanish Web Apps.
..sorry double
Posted by: Moda a los 50 | March 19, 2007 11:12 AM
No understanding of the history
Posted by: Schweinfurt | April 8, 2007 4:07 PM
We have recently launched www.anunciatupiso.es and we think that this web could be considered 2.0, because it mades use of asynchronous calls to made the visitors not to surf along many pages.
Posted by: tecnopyme | April 14, 2007 10:46 AM