Lots of Digg Clones
First off, Poland has a lot of Digg clones! wykop.pl gets the most traffic and Sebastian says it's probably the most popular web 2.0 site in Poland.
The other digg clones are: linkologia.pl, pr.org.pl, etapia.pl, linkr.pl.
Coca-Cola Poland's version of 43Things.com
http://cocacola.pl/UdaSie/ is a 43things.com clone prepared for Coca-Cola, which launched recently. It's a fully-featured social network integrated into Coca-Cola's Polish website. Now this one caught my eye, because to my knowledge no major commercial website in the US has integrated anything like 43things into its site.
It's a very well designed website, using the Coca-Cola global web imagery. Here's the frontpage - on the left (green) you have "what do you want to achieve" (actually "what you desire" or in polish "czego pragniesz"); and on the right (yellow) is "what you've achieved" (in polish "co ci sie juz udalo"). So you can share your goals and achievements with the community...
Here's the lower half of the homepage, a giant tag cloud:
The next screenshot shows a post. Sebastian says when you post information about what you've achieved or want to achieve, there is a comments box below the achievement and also community avatars on the right.
This is very very cool! Does anyone know of any major commercial websites elsewhere in the world that integrate a social network like this?
Other Polish Web Apps
Another interesting one is filmweb.pl, a popular community website for movie fans. Sebastian told me it recently had a Netscape-like transformation from old-style film portal to more 2.0 features (like blogs, user-contributed content features and so on).
Finally here are other categories of sites in the Polish web 2.0 world:
- fotosik.pl - photo sharing place (there's also slajd.net coming)
- biznes.net, goldenline.pl, ogniwo.net - business networking sites like linkedin.com
- grono.net, spinacz.pl - teenager social networking sites (grono.net claims to have 800,000 users!)
- blox.pl, bloog.pl, blog.pl - polish blogging sites (the most important are those connected with top polish portals)
- wiadomosci24.pl, ithink.pl - citizen journalism sites
- fotosik.pl, patrz.pl - photo/video hosting/sharing site (also streemo.pl is coming soon - it is currently in alpha)
- pytamy.pl - an askeet.com implementation (an answers site)
- wrocek.pl, miejsce.info - google maps mashups
- podaj.net - book exchange website
- 10przykazan.com, blogfrog.pl - blog aggregators (there are such functionalities in trendomierz.pl too)
Summary
Sebastian told me that Polish web20 sites are mainly clones and that there's few that are really unique. But he says the web 2.0 market is starting to grow in Poland and he hopes to see some more original sites soon. In June there was a conference called "Welcome Web 2.0 to Poland", so the interest and passion is obviously there.
I want to thank Sebastian for all the info he gave me for this post! I learned a lot from this discussion.
Once again, I'd love to get similar info about other international markets - so contact me [readwriteweb AT gmail.com] if you'd like to contribute your country's top web apps. I'd particularly like to know more about the Asian markets (China, Japan, Korea, etc).
See also: Top German web apps; Top Dutch web apps.
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