Written by Sebastian Moser from Austria and edited by Richard MacManus
With 4.6 million internet users (a
penetration rate of 56.8%) and a broadband penetration rate of 61.8%, Austria is a little
bit above the average for the European Union in internet usage. Besides the Internet, 8
million people use a mobile phone - which means that just 200,000 people do not
use a mobile phone. However even though there are a great number of people using the
internet (or who own an internet-enabled mobile phone), there is no real Web 2.0 industry
in Austria. Nevertheless, this will change in the years to come - primarily because of
the immense potential of the mobile phone market in Austria.
Jajah provides a web-based telephony-service.
You don't have to download any software to use it, it is browser based and you use your
normal telephone or cell phone for the calls. Recently, they started to offer a mobile
version of their software, making telephoning via cell phones much cheaper. Few people
know that Jajah's founders are from Austria. After a Sequoia investment, their offices
moved to Luxemburg, the United States and Israel.
TwoDay is the biggest Austrian blogging
platform. The company is run by knallgrau, which
sells its platform to many companies in Austria.
blogr is a new blogging platform, also run by
knallgrau. It is ramping up with international versions - they've now
launched Austrian, German, Swiss, Mexican, Spanish, English, Finish and French versions
of the project.
Power Of Politics is an online game
in which every player is a politician for one of Austria's communes. After every
election, the parties have to find a coalition to create a government for each region,
state and the nation. Based on their work and their election campaigns, the politicians
try to get as many votes as possible during the weekly elections. The founders plan to
offer the service to the whole European Union.
In Austria, there is a healthy market for social networks which are a little bit different from MySpace, orkut, Facebook and the other major Silicon Valley SNS. We concentrate a lot on event-photography, which means authorized photographers who take pictures when they go out. These pictures are then uploaded to the respective websites. Around this, social networks are built.
There are dozens of projects. I know of at least 7 projects, but 5 of them are active in my region. The two biggest projects are Szene1 and EventShooters.
[Editor's comment: I checked with Sebastian whether this is a mainstream or niche activity in Austria. Sebastian tells me it is mainstream - and also that he runs a small Event-Photography SNS which has 8000 members. However he said he is not affiliated with either of the Event-Photography SNS mentioned in this post.]
Szene1 is Austria's biggest event-photography social network. They have partnerships with many companies, for example a big Austrian bank. Currently, they have about 150,000 registered users.
EventShooters is the second-biggest network. Like Szene1, they provide everything from event-calendars to video- and picture-sharing. They have 174,600 members (at the time of writing), but less page views than Szene1.
MySpace and other multinational social networks will have a difficult job entering the Austrian market, because there are many local networks which are difficult to simulate or replace because of their regional character.
This isn't by any means an exhaustive look at the web market in Austria, so if you have more info to contribute - please add to the comments.
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 and India.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Top Web Apps in Austria.
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What about Fluxiom, folks?
Posted by: Saul Weiner | October 13, 2006 7:13 AMInteresting, Fluxiom was the first app that came to my mind as well. However, it did create some buzz when it was launched, but that was mostly due to its outrageous pricing policy, attracting business clients rather than the usual web app user. And, while I don't know how valid it is to judge a DAM service by its Alexa rating, but that one really isn't to spectacular either (especially compared to the similar service box.net).
So, all things considered, it simply isn't a top web app in Austria, even though it was created by Austrians.
Posted by: Richard Hemmer | October 13, 2006 7:31 AMThe Austrian Blogosphere
Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | October 13, 2006 9:34 AMhttp://www.eu.socialtext.net/loicwiki/index.cgi?austrian_blogosphere
More useful resources on Austria:
Digital Media Europe: News by Country - Austria
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?CountryID=3
Austrian Media Landscape
Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | October 13, 2006 9:54 AMhttp://www.ejc.nl/jr/emland/austria.html#6
Need a top with Portugal since my our applications are in top :p
Posted by: Connecty | October 14, 2006 2:30 AMThanks for the names/links.
Sadly, there's no Austrian tech weblog that reviews this Austrian projects. I already got an interesting e-mail about another project, so don't hesitate to contact me:
sebastian.moser-at-gmail-dot-com
Posted by: Sebastian Moser | October 14, 2006 8:34 AMI know one big SNS community in Austria. It's called sms.at
Posted by: Honor Gunday | October 14, 2006 4:41 PMIt has been live since 1999 or so.
They also were related to one of the first mobile-to-web communities Uboot.com. Right now uboot.com seems to operate independently.
hi!
i also want to introduce an digg-like general news site called
http://lesr.info
you could call it an austrian web2.0 clone :-)
Posted by: stefano | October 15, 2006 12:20 AM@Honor Gunday
sms.at and uboot.com were popular in the past but lost importance (and visitors) over the years.
Also, it changed very much from a SNS to a place to buy ringtones for cell phones. It has not very much in common with a SNS, in my opinion.
@stefano
Posted by: Sebastian Moser | October 15, 2006 1:10 PMhttp://lesr.info/ uses Pligg CMS, right? Then, it's not really an Austrian project, but a version of an open source application, modified by an Austrian person :)
Whats with System One? http://www.systemone.at/en/technology/
Posted by: Stephan Mosel | October 16, 2006 5:15 AMOr does it have to be freely available on the web?
Not to forget about NEXTspace http://permalink.info/en
Posted by: Thomas | October 16, 2006 12:13 PMTwo more: retrievr from System One and shnitzl (the most delicious social events manager)
Posted by: Saurier | October 17, 2006 8:40 AMhttp://celumimagine.com is a big player in enterprise DAM, they're located in Austria as i saw them at web summit last month.
Posted by: Ron | October 19, 2006 4:21 AMThis is my favourite social networking site in austria:
Posted by: Discoplayer | April 4, 2007 10:57 AMhttp://www.7styria-events7.com
see my profile here:
http://www.7styria-events7.com/discoplayer
Looking for anyone in Austria who may know my husband's half sister he has never met. His mother's name was Ilsa Ida Yolas or Jolas. She was born on Sept.17,1928 in Leinz,I think. She married and divorced a German officer with whom she had a daughter born sometimes in the 1940's I think. Would just like to correspond with her. My husband is Michael Clover, Ilsa's youngest son. You may contact me at iteach1@earthlink.net
Posted by: Iris | April 6, 2007 9:16 PM@ #9: if you take a look on uboot.com you can see that this is of course a sns, sms.at not really, you are right...
what about drivetogether.at, a recent started car pooling project?
Posted by: chris | May 9, 2007 2:56 AM