Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

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mechanical_fish

Well, one obvious reason is sample bias. I've always assumed that the reason the English-speaking web seems so much larger, to me, than the Chinese or French or Hungarian web is that I don't speak Chinese, French, or Hungarian so I don't spend much time browsing their websites. If there were 10 times more Chinese web pages than U.S. ones, I would never even know.

This article doesn't address that, of course. It talks about sites like Hulu and Pandora, but answers its own question (international law and licensing make it difficult and expensive to legally deliver media in many different countries). And the rest of the article is about a single organization -- the "Online News Association", whatever that is -- and its deplorable tendency to be US-centric. Whatever. Perhaps the members of the ONA like to think that it is a vital organ of "the web", but in fact the internal politics of a handful of organizations doesn't constitute a problem with "the web". (Unless those organizations are, say, ICANN.)

I was actually discussing Web awards in general, and included two examples: ONA and the Webbys, but there are certainly a LOT more. There is a great deal of focus on U.S. audiences; how many sites are there that do what Pandora or Hulu does for non-North American audiences? How many awards/recognition programs are there that allegedly cover international audiences and truly do that? It has nothing to do with me speaking only English (which isn't the case, at any rate).

The TIS Innovation award has an international category. That being said, one challenge in recognizing international sites is simple user awareness. Our award is user-driven. 85% of our users are from the U.S. Thus, most of their submissions reflect that reality.

For other award programs offered by other companies, unless their judges are incredibly diverse, I imagine that their awards are an obvious reflection of themselves and their attendees.

In terms of conferences, I have to say I was blown away at this week's DEMO by the massive international presence there (Taiwan, Israel, France, Italy, India, etc.). Not sure if that's perceived as a strong suit, or a weakness, when compared to TC50.

Eric, I'd agree, but at the same time, why is the U.S. so unaware of sites in other countries? It can't just be a language barrier, since there are tons of great English-language sites that aren't American. I get the feeling that the U.S. is so wrapped up in itself that the rest of the world is just passing it by.

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