The energetic Amanda Lorenzani, blogger and portal manager at Excite, launched today the italian version of the new Blognation network, a "global river of news" created by Sam Sethi:
Blognation is certainly a "Go Big" ambitious project set to cover the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, China / Taiwan / Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, South America with the help of 16 editors who are ready to start writing and raring to go.
A key differentiator for blognation is the fact that all of these blogs will be written in English and collectively all of these blogs will form part of an advertising network aimed at promoting the startup community.
And proving that I must be totally mad but certainly not lacking in ambition, I am currently close to confirming a further nine more prospective editors to cover Canada, Russia, India, South Africa, South Korea, South-East Asia, Poland, Turkey and Greece.
There is of course one noticeable absentee from this list. That is of course the USA aka Silicon Valley. I took the decision some weeks ago not to cover the USA, simply because there were already enough excellent blogs reporting on the start-up ecosystem over there and one more wouldn't make the slightest difference.
I deeply believe there was a real need of a stronger connection between local (european and asian) markets and the UK/US world. Language was often a major barrier and a lack of international visibility was a second cause. Now this is over and european startups have a relevant common ground to be presented eventually gaining global exposure, feedbacks and contacts.
Hats off to Amanda for his crystalline, complete and insightful first post. The bottom line for Italy seems to be a live ecosystem struggling to fill the gap with the international scene, a number of startups and groups supporting this change of perspective and big guys waiting to learn more about what is happening. More about my thoughts inside the post (Amanda interviewed me).
This is the same feeling I got from Web2.Oltre, the major web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 conference in our country that I helped organizing for Reed Business Information. I saw managers and companies with a sincere interest and large opportunities for the future.
Goodbye Vecosys, welcome Blognation!
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