Great article on TechCrunch called Global Or Die: Is There A Future For Local Startups? by Michael Arrington, featuring his friend Loic who writes about the necessity for startups to avoid the lure of focusing only on local markets. 

If you’re in the Internet business, then there’s some good advice for you. I particularly liked:

Create an application that lets your community translate the site by themselves



the way Facebook translated its site in many languages using an application where members could do inline translation and then vote when there was a discussion on the best term to use. This was a brilliant way to come back with high quality and fast translation. It also helps you have languages you would have not even thought of launching. Do not forget what it takes to maintain them though.

Hat tip: Shawna Wolverton