I just came across an interesting article in the Globe and Mail regarding Facebook’s quest to expand internationally. Whether you like it or not, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with, consistently innovating and pushing its boundaries. For the critics out there that think Facebook is just a fad, I think it’s working really hard to avoid that particular fate and is doing a pretty good job at it. For one, it introduced the ‘newsfeed’ feature, that was initially ill-received by Facebook users; but after a sincere apology and a few modifications the newsfeed feature has become a staple of the Facebook interface. Similarly with Beacon, the initial launch of the project was arguably disastrous with users rallying against the initiative; again after an apology and a change from Opt-Out to Opt-In, it was business as usual again at Facebook. Most recently Facebook has integrated the social graphs concept through its privacy features. Users now have control over what each friend can see what and can essentially develop different profile pages for different friend lists (for more on this, see my previous post). Now in Facebook’s bid to go global it is turning to the wisdom of crowds to help create foreign language versions of its interface.

Facebook’s engineers have developed the Facebook ‘Translations’ application. The application provides a list of words and phrases that require translation, the user submitted translations are then voted on and lastly the translations are tested and verified. Users with the most accepted translations are featured on their language’s ‘Translations Leaderboard’. This is an ingenious way for Facebook harness its loyal user base to help it expand and grow since there will always be users willing to help translate (for free). This point is further reinforced since over 100,000 users have installed the Translations application. A key piece to the translations is ensuring the culture relevance with a tone that is consistent with local cultures. So what better group of people to translate your site than the people who are actually using it?

The main points of criticism addressed in the Globe and Mail article are (1) Why doesn’t Facebook pay for translators and why would individuals want to help Facebook make more money?… and (2) Concern over the quality of posts. Although I recognize these as legitimate concerns, they are separate from the points I’m addressing in my post. Facebook wants to grow and expand as quickly as possible, hiring translators is a slow process and it’s harder to guarantee that the translation will be written in the tone you want (this is opposed to the user submitted, voting and rating system). What’s more, there are users who are excited to be a part of the expansion process of a platform they use daily – helping to bring it to ‘their’ language. The voting system and reporting feature are designed to ensure a certain level of quality and there are other complimentary solutions Facebook can employ to deal with this issue such as hiring professional translators to look at the end product as a final copy edit etc.

Overall, I think using the wisdom of crowds to translate its website is a great idea and shows Facebook’s faith in the Web 2.0. Currently it’s building Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch sites. Spanish, French and German versions were launched this year. The Spanish versions took four weeks to complete while the German version took two weeks.