What do you mean Metafilter started in Russia?

November 20, 2010 4:07 AM

What websites that are well known in most parts of the world didn't originate from an English speaking country?

I've just come from watching the Social Network, and wondered... what sites that a lot of people use and love frequently started in a non English speaking country?

posted by Admira to Technology (17 answers total)

http://thepiratebay.org/
posted by jozxyqk at 4:19 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rapidshare is Swiss/German and Mininova is Dutch.
posted by bjrn at 4:33 AM on November 20, 2010

fubiz (French)

ffffound (Japanese)
 
posted by querty at 4:53 AM on November 20, 2010

Habbo hotel is based in Finland.
posted by SomeTrickPony at 5:11 AM on November 20, 2010

Not exactly a website, but the IM service QQ (qq.com) is unbelievably popular in China.
posted by tehloki at 5:22 AM on November 20, 2010

Do you mean websites that are really well-known in particular parts of the world, or websites that are used by a lot of people from all around the world? I haven't even heard of fubiz, ffffound, Habbo hotel, or qq.com...not to imply that if I haven't heard of them they can't be used around the world...

Would Al Jazeera count?
posted by bardophile at 5:39 AM on November 20, 2010

Megaupload originated in Hong Kong.
posted by Anima Mundi at 6:26 AM on November 20, 2010

Dailymotion is based in France.
posted by alligatorman at 7:54 AM on November 20, 2010

Orkut is an interesting case. It was originally developed in the U.S. by Google, but became wildly popular in Brazil, to the point where Google moved the entire operation there. Hardly anyone in the U.S. uses it.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:46 AM on November 20, 2010

2chan is Japanese and led to the creation of the (English-language) 4chan.
posted by adamrice at 8:53 AM on November 20, 2010

FML started out french.
posted by spr at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2010

Along the lines of what tehloki is saying, ICQ was founded in Israel.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2010

A little on the lewd and crude side, Youporn. I think it's nominally hosted in Texas at the moment, but it didn't start there, the owners are very hard to locate, and it's done some moving around in the past.
posted by Ahab at 12:39 PM on November 20, 2010

More and more anglophones start using youku.com and tudou.com for viewing videos online, they are both Chinese. (Well, youtube was created by Hong Kongnese, wasn't it?)

I use thepiratebay.org and downloads.nl. The latter is Dutch.
posted by easilyconfused at 5:47 PM on November 20, 2010

Chatroulette was started by a Russian!
posted by frecklefaerie at 11:28 AM on November 21, 2010

Skype was started by a Swede and a Dane, and Kazaa was developed by an Estonian (before being sold to the guys who started Skype).
posted by bjrn at 10:35 PM on November 21, 2010

IMDB was Welsh.
posted by genghis at 7:07 PM on November 24, 2010