Top Web Apps in Brazil
So far in
Read/WriteWeb's Top International Web Apps series, we've covered countries in Europe (Germany, Holland, Poland, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Italy) and Asia (Korea, China). We may
have some issues covering certain other regions, as worldwide Internet penetration is
still very low - 16% at
last count. That's a concern too for the subject of today's post, Brazil. It has a
national Internet penetration rate of just 14.1%. Even so, it is the 10th biggest country
in the world in terms of Internet usage - due to its large population of 186 million. And
Brazil Internet users are very community-minded and social, as we'll see in this
post.
My thanks to Fabio Seixas, who provided me with the details about Brazil's Web market.
Overview
Fabio told me that Brazil's web industry is an important one - he said they have many areas with low economic activity, but in the medium-to-big cities there is high Internet usage. In the late 90's, the Brazilian web industry was dominated by a few large web portals. But now he is seeing a growing number of independent initiatives.
An important point is that the 14% of Brazilians who can connect to the Internet, connect to it a lot! Recently Netratings reported that web users in Brazil connected for an average of 19 hours and 24 minutes per month. Japan was in second place with 18 hours and 7 minutes of connection time per month, followed by France. This behavior perhaps shows the potential of the Brazilian web industry.
A number of new 'web 2.0' sites started up in Brazil last year. But like many other countries, Brazil has a lot of web app clones.
Top Web Apps
Here are some of the popular web apps in Brazil:
Videolog.tv is a YouTube clone, which is very successful within the teenage demographic.
Gazzag is a friends community network. It was launched with all the hype that Orkut created in Brazil. Around 70% of Orkut users are brazilians. Fabio says Gazzag did a great job creating a brazilian version of Orkut, but it didn't attract as many users as Orkut.
Flogão is a photo community based site, just like fotolog.net. Another big player is Vibeflog, a photo community site for teenagers.
Camiseteria: This is Fabio's site and he says it is "probably the first web 2.0 project in Brazil, which launched in August 2005." Camiseteria is a tee-shirt store and community with some long tail and co-creation (DIY) concepts.
BlogBlogs is a blog directory and community tool, which has some aspects of Technorati. In BlogBlogs you can create a list of favorites and your online activities. It also has a ranking of brazilian blogs.
Wasabi: An RSS aggregation tool mixed with a community. You can set up your network of friends and aggregate their feeds from blogs, flickr, podcasts and many others. It's invite only currently - if you go to the homepage you'll just see a username/password screen, with the message: "To enter Wasabi you`ll need an invitation from someone who`s already in."
Overmundo is a collaborative blog about the brazilian culture. This project is backed by the brazilian government.
Linkk, Ouvi Dizer, Eu Curti: All of these sites are Digg clones. But in Brazil none of them have archived much success. Fabio thinks that brazilian users are very community focused and none of the above sites have used community features in a good way.
Aprex is an online office suite with calendar, contact list, tasks, virtual drive, notebook, blog and polls. This project was launched last month.
Blogger.com.br is a free blog hosting tool, just like blogger.com, controlled by one of the big Internet players in Brazil - Globo.com.
BarCamp is probably the only event with web 2.0 content in Brazil. Fabio says: "We lack some cutting edge events here, but we do have many web conferences."
Summary
Community plays a big part in a lot of the apps mentioned above. Fabio says that brazilian users have a special affinity for community:
"The Orkut effect was much bigger and faster here than the MySpace effect in the US - but not of quite the same proportions of course. Also our blogosphere is growing very fast, just like the rest of the world."
If there are other Brazilian apps you're aware of, please add them to the comments. Thank you Fabio for all the great information in this post!
15 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2750
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Wait.. Blogger.com.tr looks just like the early days of Blogger.com and the logo is the same.. Is this a venture of Google or a violation of copyrights??
Sorry, blogger.com.br... see http://web.archive.org/web/20010301212759/http://www.blogger.com/
Thanks for this write-up. As a person who has a need to keep an eye on L.America and Brazil in particular, this is a great list of sites to follow up.
Hello, Emre Sokullu!
I am brazilian and I can tell you that the Blogger.com.br is a legal product. In fact Ev himself came to Brazil when the product launched yoears ago.
About the list, preety neat! Nice job.
Dispite the "let´s-inflate-my-ego" moment when someone tells the world that they´re the first doing something when it´s kind of hard to tell it exactly, the list is very nice.
Congratulations!
Cheers from Brazil.
[caiocesar]
Just to update my previuos comment...
Here is the URL for the blog entry from Bernardo Carvalho´s blog (he is a former Globo.com employee. Kind of the responsible for the Blogger.com.br project) where he tells the world (in portuguese) how was the Blogger.com.br negotiation and launch.
The URL is: http://rawsocket.org/rtfm/arquivos/2002_08_01_arquivo.html#85365148
Hi Caio, I mean probably.. just probably... :)
Nice write-up.
Fabio,
I have been living in Brasil for a bit while I work on a project..in Sao Paulo. What city are you located. Nice site btw. It doesnt seem like anything is nearly as popular in Brasil as Orkut. I think everyone between the age of 13 and 30 has an Orkut profile here.
Abraço
I´m a brazilian interface designer happy to see my place 'in the map' here!
I´ll be also happy to help with information about us. :)
Hi Eric. I´m in Rio. You can find me at http://blog.fabioseixas.com.br
I really like the visuals of these sites. Looks clear, properly spaced out, and colorful. Brazilian've done a good job! I think there must be much more out there, but I dont speak spanish (is it spanish?）
You forgot to mention TempInbox.com
http://www.tempinbox.com/
Terry, it´s portuguese here, not spanish.
Videolog rulez... :D
http://www.videolog.tv/blog/
http://www.brunodulcetti.com/blog/
A YouTube clone, a Fotolog clone, a lot of Digg clones, a Technorati clone, an Orkut clone... we do not have much original apps here in Brazil, unfortunately.
There´s also: www.elefante.com.br that´s a good service! www.admarket.com.br (like Adsense)
and also please visite my webblog about gadgets: www.antenando.com.br/tecnologia
thx ;-D
Hi guys, I'm Manoel Lemos from BlogBlogs. Thanks for the reference. I'm preparing big changes and new features on BlogBlogs for the next weeks. Keep in touch.
maybe you'd like to check out co-link:
http://www.co-link.org
it's a tool for the creation of multi-directional links by communities. co-link was developed in the federal university of rio grande do sul (UFRGS), but so far has not achieved much sucess.
actually, it's being (slowly) re-developed to add community applications.
Where is Syxt.com.br ?
Why isnt it here ??
Shame on You!!
Orkut is not on the list? Surprising!
Orkut is not actually a Brazilian app, it was made by a Turkish guy from Google. But Brazilians make up 70% of the user base, according to Fabio.
Marcos, care to tell us what Syxt.com.br is and why it should be on the list? That would be a lot more helpful...
Syxt.com.br is great too!
it´s my favorite "brazilian digg"
Great list! I was doing one list myself after reading R/W's international web apps series and came out with mostly the same ones.
Regarding orkut, as already mentioned, it's an American webapp, so it shouldn't be listed. It would be part only if the list was about all popular webapps. In this case, we would have to separate in 3 categories: a) internacional (with or without brazilian version); b) portal functionality (UOLK, Terra Gaia and the recent Terra Sonora) and c) independent.
Fabio's list just missed the following:
. Mlive.com.br: business community and networking
. NaViagem.com.br: travel destinations and experiences
. Syxt.com.br: business community and networking (commented above, but not a digg clone as mentioned)
. TalkAndWrite.com.br: skype collaboration tool (app, but not web-based)
. old-school webapps - on the user and not technology point-of-view: ivox.com.br (product/service/company reviews); beltrano.com.br (social networking) and parperfeito.com.br (dating, sold to europeans).
that´s a great lesson for those one who think that brazil is way behind other countries in terms of technology.
Interesting, no social bookmarking sites? Over on Simpy I noticed the recent rise in 'pt' (Portuguese) visitors. Must be Brasilians! They are ahead of 'zh' visitors currently.
Nice to see some Brazillian web apps. Though I'm from Brazil, I did not know almost any of these!
And, in fact, Orkut is everywhere these days. Some months ago, during a criminal outbreak in S√£o Paulo (a Brazillian city), the police commander urged citzens to stop spreading hoaxes and paranoia through Orkut. Live on TV!
While some sites are based on the same concept, we can't say that are all clones.
Google video is not a clone of youtube for example.
If we begin talking about clones, google,msn,yahoo... they all clone each other applications like messengers,shoppings and all kind of services.
In the end, the best service or application get more users no matter who had the idea.
Also, some websites clone features or ideas from the brazilian sites too.
What i'm trying to say is that there's no evils or angels, even with some websites trying to act like angels...
Hello All,
Actually, top web app in Brazil is MSN messenger. That makes MSN the top destination in the country, together with Google+Orkut.
And by the way, "pt" is not brazilian visitors, but portuguese. Brazil is "br".
i m from india. i love brazilian too much for ther dance, music, and they r much enjoing then rest world.......but take care from AIDS.....YOUR"S
i m from india. i love brazilian too much for ther dance, music, and they r much enjoing then rest world.......but take care from AIDS.....YOUR"S
Hi guys, I would to indicate a big brazilian dating site (namoro)
Namoro Meu Desejo
http://www.meudesejo.com.br
Thanks :)
That is a list of brazilian web 2.0 sites.
Look at: http://lista2.0br.com.br
My best regards,
Richard allow me to correct you www.ouvidizer.com is Portuguese (Portugal) not Brazilian.
Brazil has a great potential for web 2.0 apps, you should do a "Top Web Apps in Portugal" and start with our project, Origo (www.origo.pt) ;)
Thank you
Hi, there is a new and much better version of the BlogBlogs available. Take a look...
Im originaly from Brasil and live in Florida
and am checking things out over here
Really Brasil is developed in computing