The Web is touted as the great equalizer -- a platform so important to education, global relations, and business that initiatives have pushed to bring computers with Internet access to even the most remote and impoverished places on Earth.
Why then is such a large part of the Web still geared toward the United States? When it comes to media sharing sites and "international" Web-oriented organizations, many are still largely based in and limit their customers to the U.S.
For instance, a regular complaint from potential users of media sites like Hulu and Pandora involves the "geotardation" of the sites; complicated license agreements with media sources limit many sites to U.S. residents only. Even online retailers often require a U.S.-based debit card if you don't have a major credit card.
The Online News Association's (ONA) annual conference just started in Washington, DC, and as Reportr.net noted, the schedule is weighted heavily with U.S.-based speakers. In addition, the list of nominees for the ONA awards, which are supposed to honor the best in online journalism, mostly include American journalists and news organizations. Aside from the Toronto Globe and Mail, the majority of non-English nominees appear in the "non-English language" category. The article also points out that ONA has a subcommittee called the "International Committee of the ONA." How can the "premier" organization for online journalists need a subcommittee as a reminder that it's supposed to be a global organization?
Commenter Rebecca MacKinnon stated that she let her ONA membership expire after realizing that all the group's activities (including the annual conference) were held in North America, reinforcing the U.S.-centric feel of the organization. ONA isn't alone, however, with many Web events held only in the U.S. The Webby Awards, supposedly recognizing the best the Web has to offer, is also held only in the U.S., and skews toward U.S.-based sites.
No matter the name, the Web really isn't a "world-wide" Web yet.
Disclosure: IDG, The Industry Standard's parent company, is a Webby Awards partner.
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Comments
Um, I think the problem is you don't speak Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc....and therefore aren't looking in the right places. There's numerous massive, immensely popular non-English websites out there that most Westerners haven't even heard of.
Previous commenter is right. The web is not US-centric, it just looks like that if your life is US-centric.
I agree with Matt and Euroman but.....couple of things:
First there's the obvious. The Internet began life as a US government network so the US has quite a head start on the rest of the world. Second, the US has 300 million people living a (comparatively) very high standard of living. That means huge amounts (again..relative to the majority of people on earth) of expendable income. Like it or not the Web has become the biggest bazzar the world has ever seen and so of course the majority of retailers and all that goes with that (advertising, opinion polls, graphic artists, etc) are going to be fighting for what is perceived as the biggest slice of the pie. The beautiful thing about the Internet is that the web presence of a 13 year old Korean girl is just as available as megacorp.com. The only place the Web isn't World Wide is in those places that can't afford to pay the toll at the onramp or where governing bodies (I see you China) restrict access.
Yeah - this article is barely worth reading.
I just wasted 2 minutes of my life.
Doh...no I've wasted 20 additional seconds...you bastards.
Well the english language is the offical world wide Airtraffic control langualge, and the international busniess language. The US created the internet with its own military funding. If you dont like the fact its US centric then create your own protocol, if not the STFU
As has been said, how much searching of the web did the author do in Japanese, or Spanish, or any language other than English? The single largest population of English speakers on the planet are the Americans. So yes, if you're only looking at English websites, you're going to see an American bias.
Try going to www.google.es and running a search in Spanish, and tell me just how many American websites get returned. Or www.google.co.jp, or any of the other non-English language versions of Google.
Al Gore was born in the US. Al Gore invented the internet. End of story.
GOOD. LORD. Cyndy! ! ! ! The only thing US Centric or ethnocentric here is you. I am sorry and I don't want to rant and point fingers at you but I lived in Japan for seven years and my wife is Japanese. She watches Japanese TV programs every night in Japanese on a Japanese website. There are more music streaming and video streaming sites in Asia than in the USA I can almost guarantee. PLEASE open your eyes before you write this kind of article!
Pwnt
I'm confused; is anyone reading the entire article or just commenting based on the headline? At no point did I say that there was not other Web content, did I? The point that I am making is that most of the major media sites as well as sites touted as "international" or "open to everyone" or "recognizing the best of the Web" are IGNORING that other content.
For some reason, the majority of the feedback that I'm getting is that I read only U.S. sites and am somehow blind to the fact that there is a plethora of non-U.S. content out there, which is simply not the case. I'm attempting to point out that the U.S. as a whole ignores both other countries' (wah, too hard to license) as well as other countries' content (we'll stick everything non-U.S.-based into an "international" or "non-English" category.
Dave, the point I was making about sites like Pandora and Hulu is that if the Web really is such a great equalizer, why do we even HAVE separate sites for each country? Why wouldn't we have sites where we can access everything from Britney Spears to gamelan to Rain? The Web is just as segregated as anything else.
Consider these technical facts
90% of all the ROOT DNS Servers that control all the traffic on the net are in the US,
the DOD, and US Universities create and internet.
The Ultimate Authority over the internet is the US Dept of Commerce (who has contracted PART of management to ICANN)
The US has the Largest Percentage of its population as net users (over 70%)
of the 101,846,049 domains names, 65,430,227 are to US bases persons or companies. the next largest is Germany with 5,775,843 names..
That is why the web is "US Centric"
have you considered that most of the organizations/corporations you are concerned with are themselves US Centric. The "web" itself is actually pretty neutral I think, it is that those organizations that choose to participate (or actually control the data/information) are biased to a US (or at least North American) audience.
As others have pointed out, there is a wealth of information that is NOT based in the US or even in English. I don't know for a fact, but I would think there are equivalent organizations to the ONA that just don't get the press in the English speaking world simply because they are not based in English. I would also think that the ONA does not get the attention in the non-English regions for the same reason.
Multiculturalism is great, but I find I quickly lose interest in foreign web sites because of language and cultural differences. I find most foreign news reporting biased against the US, and while sometimes that is a good thing, especially if they are reporting facts that the US news does not cover, the bias tends to turn me off.
Geotardation? Awesome. Other than that, this article is a little weak on the sauce. Seriously, do some research in another language or maybe consider more than where awards are given for your criteria (it was about half your rather skimpy "article" btw). Maybe someone is mad about not getting a web award (is there really such a thing?). Bah, lame article, awesome new word - geotarded.
One complaint I do have that coincides with this article is yes, many corporations, especially ones that are very COPYRIGHT-ORIENTED, are US only. One big pet peeve I have is that the US has minimal options for their businesses to ship to Canada. For instance, Amazon.com will not ship video games to Canada. WTF?
But the web is not just US-centric. Some media is restricted to their respecting countries. Only yesterday I tried accessing a youtube video that was restricted to UK IP addresses. I circumvented it, but the fact is it's a major pain in the ass. The internet should be connecting the world, not restricting it.
And don't get me started on Net Neutrality. Things need to change.
"...the point I was making about sites like Pandora and Hulu is that if the Web really is such a great equalizer, why do we even HAVE separate sites for each country? Why wouldn't we have sites where we can access everything from Britney Spears to gamelan to Rain? The Web is just as segregated as anything else." - Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
Why do we have separate sites for each country? Because we have separate countries. This argument is logically equivalent with "Why doesn't my local book store carry just as many Tagalog books as English books?" People want content, search results, and products that are culturally relevant to them. At the end of the day, the internet is market-driven, and if people really wanted foreign results and content, providers would have figured that out by now and developed means for them to get it.
You raise a good point on US Credit Cards/Debit Cards being required for a lot of online transactions. In many cases, there are sound reasons for this requirement, not all of them seemingly "fair." Even in the US, Credit Card companies are known for vying to be the sole, or one of few, authorized purchasing agents for stores, restaurants, etc. Couple that with the complexities of international trade, shipping laws, national tax variances, exchange rates, and (again) regional tastes when it comes to product selection, and it's not hard to see why retailers target specific markets and deal in the local currencies according to the local laws.
Also consider industry-centered regulation. Commenter "Dann" brought up the issue of Amazon.com not shipping videogames to Canada. Software sales, movie sales, videogame sales, and other similar areas are often subject to industry-imposed restrictions that prevent cross-border trade at non-local rates. The thinking behind this is that they can make Americans pay $15 for a movie that they may only be able to make Indians pay $2 for. Regional coding provides one way of making sure that they're charging each market with the highest amount consumers are willing to pay for, but they also have the ability to insist that the retailers they sell to only sell to the target markets for each version of the product. Also, with movies and videogames, there are government regulations that come into play, as well. Some countries' censoring boards may not allow the sale of a product (or age-restrict the sale of a product) that other countries allow freely.
The point is, all of these issues and region-targeting decisions are very complex and ultimately government- and market-driven. Insisting that there's some kind of systemic anti-culture "Geotard" conspiracy is in itself an uninformed and ignorant argument.
This is, without a doubt, one of the most frustrating comment threads I've ever had on a post. Let me try one last time. The point was not that I'm unaware of non-English sites (false) nor that I don't understand licensing, financial incentives for credit card companies, or other languages. The intro to the article read:
"The Web is touted as the great equalizer -- a platform so important to education, global relations, and business that initiatives have pushed to bring computers with Internet access to even the most remote and impoverished places on Earth. "
If the Web is a truly global platform, then it would seem to indicate we wouldn't have segregated country-specific sites. We wouldn't have huge development efforts relating to just one country's citizens. My argument is that it IS NOT A GLOBAL PLATFORM... it's merely many separate entities with tiny bridges in a few areas. I'm not unaware of other cultures, nor am I ignorant, as I've been repeatedly called.
Jeremy is smarter than the author. We are owned.
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