Italy’s undeveloped web market has a wealth of opportunities
Story byGuest blogger
This article is written by a rather interesting person who was kind enough to share his/ her views on the next web.This article is written by a rather interesting person who was kind enough to share his/ her views on the next web.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
Related Articles
More TNW
About TNW
That’s so six years ago
Internet usage in Italy is extremely low compared to most other developed economies. Thepenetrationrate was only 36 percent in 2007. The Italians that use the web still see it mainly as a communication/information tool. The most visited websites include news sites and blogs.
E-commerce is rising, but still far from the average. In 2007 e-commerce represented 0.49% of retail sales, while this figure is around 6% in the UK, the top performer in Europe. Take a look at theInternet Book Shopto see a clear example of how young this market still is. IBS is the top e-commerce site in Italy with over 1.3 million uniques per month in 2007 and with €30 million turnover. The site’s graphics and layout are horrible by current standards, but there’s a simple explanation for this: the site hasn’t changed in thepast 6 years! For a country known for its design and style this is outrageous, we can and should do better than this.
Computer lessons on the chalkboard
There are several reasons for the slow growth of the web in Italy, but I can certainly mention some major ones:
There are some exceptions
Though they’re not brilliant, the Italian web scene has some interesting cases. I will mention a few good ones.
Beppegrillo.itBeppegrillo.itis probably the best known Italian blog (ranking #20 on Technorati). This comedian has understood the power of the web and is fully exploiting it. Through his blog he managed to gather 50,000 people in a square for a demonstration last year. Not bad…
Beppegrillo.it demonstration
BabelgumA free Internet TV platform supported by advertising,Babelgumoffers professionally produced programming on-demand. Babelgum is a creation ofSilvio Scaglia, former founder and CEO of FASTWEB a major italian cable television-internet provider.
Crosscast-system.comThis isanother video startupthat aims at competing with the likes ofJoost. A good review with screenshots can be found atWebTvWire.Not sure what they will manage to do in the long run, but seems very promising…
Big potential
The Italian market is largely underdeveloped which, in my opinion, leads to a simple conclusion: huge opportunities. Sooner or later, the Italian market will catch up with the rest of the world and, given the population (60 million people), it has a big potential.
Personally, I believe that the web can bring bring a positive disruptive change to the Italian market, a market that is too often dominated by “dodgy” practices. There’s still time to enter this market, you just need to get the ingredients right. For example: get some decent graphics and you will already have a competitive advantage!
If you know some interesting Italian startups. just drop me a line. It’s time to show internationally what the Italian web scene can produce…
