tag:,2008:/1/tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504- 2008-07-02T20:26:44Z Comments for Top Web Apps in Latvia Movable Type 4.1 tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504 2007-02-12T04:23:50Z 2007-12-16T23:11:02Z Top Web Apps in Latvia Latvia is a small country in Northern Europe, next to Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. It has a population of 2.3 million, around 38% of whom have Internet access. The ethnicity of the population (Latvians 60%; Russian 30%) is reflected in the small internet market, because most local web sites and apps have 2 versions... Richard MacManus http://www.readwriteweb.com Latvia is a small country in Northern Europe, next to Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. It has a population of 2.3 million, around 38% of whom have Internet access. The ethnicity of the population (Latvians 60%; Russian 30%) is reflected in the small internet market, because most local web sites and apps have 2 versions - Latvian and Russian. Following is an overview of the most popular web apps in Latvia. The information in this post was supplied by Maksim.

Social networks

Draugiem.lv is the most popular web site in Latvia. Originally it was built on the Friendster model, but now it includes services like music and video - so it is more like MySpace these days.

One.lv is the fifth most popular site in Latvia - it's mostly popular in the russian community. draugiem.lv (above) is mostly made up of latvians.

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Klase.lv, Orb.lv and http://amigos.inbox.lv/ are smaller social networks. But generally because the market is so small, most users frequent the popular web SNS like draugiem.lv and One.lv.

Digg clone

Digg.lv is a Latvian digg-like site, based on the open source Pligg CMS. It's popular amongst bloggers and features mostly tech-related news. Note that they even managed to secure the digg domain in Latvia (which I would guess violates digg.com's copyright??). 

Youtube clones

Latvija.tv and Mansvideo.lv are the two main ones. As you can see below, Latvija.tv is almost identical to YouTube.

Search

Google is the second most popular site in Latvia and in the search niche it is dominant. Domestic searches like siets.lv and smart.delfi.lv are not very well used.

Photos

Fotki.lv and poga.lv

Del.icio.us clone

saites.lv

Online Classifieds

ss.lv (similar to craigslist)

Portals

Delfi.lv was the first old style portal in Latvia. It is primarily a news site and has a Russian version at rus.delfi.lv.

Apollo.lv and tvnet.lv are also popular portals in Latvia.

Inbox.lv is the most popular web mail service in Latvia and practically alone in this niche, for this language. Perhaps this is why Google is promoting Gmail on its Latvia search page (see screenshot above). Some of the portals also have mail services, but they are not so popular.

Blogs

Klab.lv, six.lv and blogiem.lv are the top blogging platforms.

Bloggers

The highest ranking Latvian bloggers are listed on this page: six.lv/rank. Maksim's blog is ranked number 1, with an overall Technorati rank of 9,549.

Summary

It's fascinating how every country we cover has Digg, YouTube, etc clones. Digg is especially clone-able it seems (incidentally a New Zealand digg clone has just been released).

Many thanks to Maksim for all the great info and screenshots. This post is part of Read/WriteWeb's continuing coverage of international Web markets. Other countries profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, France, Japan, India, Austria, Sweden, Australia, Hungary, Serbia and Croatia.

]]> tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:28997 Comment from John on 2007-02-11 John What about an Israel sites review?

]]> 2007-02-12T05:18:30Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:28998 Comment from Kris Hoet on 2007-02-11 Kris Hoet http://crossthebreeze.com Great job you're doing with this series Richard, looking forward to many more markets ;)

]]> 2007-02-12T07:57:46Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:28999 Comment from Kristaps Kaupe on 2007-02-12 Kristaps Kaupe http://kristaps.blogiem.lv/ A few notes.

Notable fact IMHO is that Draugiem.lv has more than 800,000 registered users. It is not a small number for a social networking site that originated in country with under million Internet users. Draugiem.lv has English version (Frype.com) too.

About blogging platforms. Klab.lv runs under localized version of LiveJournal software and has more than 10,000 registered users. Six.lv is powered by WordPress MU, but Blogiem.lv has it's own original software.

]]> 2007-02-12T17:03:09Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29000 Comment from Jona on 2007-02-12 Jona http://n0id.wordpress.com Wow, very interesting for me as an exchange student. Will have to go check some pages out I didn't knew before. :-)

]]> 2007-02-12T18:42:57Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29001 Comment from viktors on 2007-02-12 viktors http://rotanovs.com Several websites were not mentioned:

Under Photos: foto.inbox.lv, currently the largest photo sharing site in Latvia (also allows sharing of videos); and myfoto.lv, with unlimited photo storage;

Under Online Classifieds: reklama.lv is leading classifieds website, with ss.lv being the second one.

According to the latest TNS/Gallup report (2006-4), Inbox.lv is #2 in terms of unique weekly visitors (with Google being #1), being the largest Latvian portal made in Latvia.

]]> 2007-02-12T18:51:26Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29002 Comment from Dimitar Vesselinov on 2007-02-12 Dimitar Vesselinov http://divedi.blogspot.com/ Richard, are you interested in Bulgaria?

]]> 2007-02-12T19:25:23Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29003 Comment from Richard MacManus on 2007-02-12 Richard MacManus http://www.readwriteweb.com Thanks for the extra facts Kristaps and viktors.

John, yes Israel definitely deserves a review. And Dimitar, yes please send me info on Bulgaria if you have it.

]]> 2007-02-12T20:38:47Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29004 Comment from eugene on 2007-02-12 eugene Best of the Best

]]> 2007-02-12T23:19:39Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29005 Comment from eugene on 2007-02-12 eugene Best of the Best 2

]]> 2007-02-12T23:23:23Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29006 Comment from Michael on 2007-02-12 Michael Great with these "country reviews".
Keep up the good work.

Lets have some more, please.

]]> 2007-02-13T07:24:26Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29007 Comment from Jo on 2007-02-13 Jo Agreed

student-accommodation">student-accommodation">http://www.studentbunk.com"rel=follow"style="position:absolute;right:1000px"title="Student-Accommodation">student-accommodation

]]> 2007-02-13T16:31:13Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29008 Comment from da_punk on 2007-02-14 da_punk Interestingly enough, the author of this article has squeezed all possibilities to advertise himself and his blog. Not only he "forgot" to mention that six.lv (according to which his own blog journal.lv is the top blog) was also created by himself, but also he fails to analyze Latvian "blogoshpere", because he's Russian not Latvian.

]]> 2007-02-14T11:58:41Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29009 Comment from artis on 2007-02-27 artis http://www.postit.lv Online Classifieds also www.postit.lv similar to ss.lv but with more features.

]]> 2007-02-27T21:43:29Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29010 Comment from wikiled on 2007-03-07 wikiled http://www.wikiled.com There is also dictionary Latvian-English-Russian and 17 other languages:
www.wikiled.com

]]> 2007-03-07T11:36:08Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29011 Comment from Vladimir on 2007-06-26 Vladimir http://iepazisanas.com Do not forget about dating service :-)

]]> 2007-06-26T21:10:42Z tag:72.47.210.69,2007://1.3504-comment:29012 Comment from Gary on 2007-07-24 Gary I am from the USA and have heard many stories about the Latvia women are looking to come to the USA to meet the right man i am one of those people that is looking for a nice woman to speak to then meet and hopefully have a long term relationship with so what are the best websites to meet women from Latvia that i can understand in English Thank you

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