Poles Apart: Finally, a Web 2.0 Portal That Actually Matters

I'm writing this at 32,000 feet on a plane flying back to New York from Warsaw. And despite the fact that I'm flying with LOT, the grimbo national airline of Poland, on a nine-hour flight, still trying to get my core body temperature back to normal after spending 72 hours huddled in the back of an ice-cold Eastern European van making a video documentary… I'm in a really good mood.

The reason for my unusually good humor? I found a diamond in the rough on my trip, something that I haven't come across anywhere in North America (other than the present venue, of course): a Web 2.0 portal featuring user-generated content that actually matters, run by people who don't make me want to throw up.

The site is called Wiadomosci24.pl, which translates to "News24."

News24 is a Polish language news portal, with a twist: The content is user-generated, sent in by Polish readers, who contribute stories from around the world every day either via browsers or as text from cellphones and PDAs. And it's pretty much revived my belief in this "Internet thing" as something other than just a way for VCs and other greedy, unpleasant people who live in California to make yet more money.

Partly because Poland is a country where no one takes a free press for granted, News24's Web 2.0 brand of citizen journalism has already proven to be hugely successful. The site receives about 300 news submissions from around the world every day, and publishes about 60 percent of them. It attracts an average of 600,000 unique visitors every month, according to Pawel Nowacki, the site's editor in chief and founder, and an all 'round nice chap who made me a tasty cup of Nescafe when I visited his offices in frigid Warsaw.

User-generated content? Sent in from browsers and cellphones? Sounds frightfully similar to what a bunch of companies in the U.S. are doing – including the egregious San Francisco-based Twitter – right?

Wrong. In fact, Web 2.0 in Poland and Web 2.0 in San Francisco are worlds apart (both literally and figuratively). News24 takes an outward facing approach to content. Its citizen journalists act as independent news gatherers both within Poland and around the world, collating information, parsing it into news, and then sharing it live with News24's readers. In doing so they ensure the continued presence of an independent free press in a country where such a thing hasn't always existed, providing a vital service not just for the 38 million Poles who live in Poland, but just as much for the 20 million Poles who live outside its borders.

Contrast this with Web 2.0 portals like Twitter, hotornot.com, or Friendster. These are inward facing – encouraging circle-jerk communications among often vast memberships who for the most part couldn't care less about the world outside their browser window, preferring to engage in mass navel gazing about critical issues such as where they're meeting the Biffster to drink a maccrappafrappo, Britney's latest underwear disappearance, or the best way to clean a bong.

In other words, the content on News24 matters – really matters – whereas the content on most Web 2.0 sites in the U.S. just doesn't.

So if the technology is the same, how come the end result (the content) differs so wildly?

History is one reason. Poland's past is a horror show. Its people have perhaps endured more hard times than any other Central European state. Now things are finally looking up: Its economy is growing at 6 percent or more per quarter, faster than any other country in the region. Despite this, no one's taking luxury items, such as Internet access or a free press, for granted. As a consequence, News24, which combines the best of both, is taken really seriously by its users, who see themselves as serving a vital function.

Contrast that with what's happening in the U.S., where the paucity of valuable user-generated content on social networking Web 2.0 sites simply reflects a bigger problem – decadent rot – as an army of bored and boring, entitlement-laden, "time on their hands" teens and twenty-somethings pollute services like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook et al. with a bunch of self-indulgent crap.

But back to Poland. News24 is already read by about 1 percent of the world's Polish speaking population, but that number would almost certainly be much higher if it weren't for Poland's absolutely terrible record on delivering broadband telecom service (actually, any telecom service) to its population.

Even compared to other Central European countries the stats for broadband availability in Poland are bad. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania will each have broadband Internet penetration of 17 to 20 percent in the next five years. Poland, despite the fact that it has the largest potential communications market in the region and the most robust economy, is predicted to only reach 15 percent coverage, less than half the expectation of Russia.

And herein lies another interesting, and little told, tale.

It turns out that the absolutely horrendous lack of Internet service in Poland is not really down to the Poles, but the French (obviously, being able to blame France for anything is another thing that's put me in a great mood).

What happened is that in 2000 Poland privatized its national telecom operator, Telekomunikacja Polska SA , and it's now majority owned by France Telecom SA (NYSE: FTE). And they've done an absolutely rubbish job of installing fixed-line networks. There's method in FT's Gallic indolence, however. In the absence of telephone lines, the Poles have become keen users of cellular technology, which they mainly buy from (guess who?) TPSA, owned by (yes, that's right) France Telecom. In other words, the Frenchies can't lose.

The fact that News24 has succeeded in spite of the best efforts of Johnny Continental to bollocks things up just makes it even more impressive. And it's not the only Internet success story in Poland – online retail is also taking off. It's true that right now, the numbers are tiny, with only 1 percent of retail purchases in Poland currently take place on line. But that number is increasing at a whopping 60 percent a year. And, according to traffic stats site Allexa, Allegro.pl, the country's largest auction site, is now the 51st most trafficked site on the planet.

Before going to Poland I had low expectations about the Internet's impact there, largely based on the numbers I'd read from The Economist. But to get the real story, you have to drill down past the numbers, and when you do you find that the social impact of the Web in Poland has been much greater than in countries in either the West or the Far East, which have much faster and more ubiquitous Internet connectivity.

That's exciting. And it's also restored a lot of my belief in the Internet as a force for social good, rather than as just a place for annoying people to twaddle on about rubbish.

— Stephen Saunders, Insultant