Twitter has raised $155 million to date. That’s enough to hire a few damned good translators. But, as it starts down the “localisation” path trodden by many a Valley startup, the service is instead asking its users to volunteer their translation services.
Twitter wants to translate its site to French, Italian, German, and Spanish (more languages may follow), co-founder Biz Stone wrote.
But – typical of many geeks, who will never take the easy route of hiring a contractor when leveraging a social graph will do – Stone says he’s “offering a simple tool for people with experience in other languages to suggest translations for the Twitter website”.
This is the same tactic deployed by Netlog in 2007 and by Facebook last year.
Speaking of which, Facebook has hired away Last.fm’s former German SVP Scott Woods to head its German biz dev and advertising operations, Kress reports (via TCUK).