---
title: "The Euro Startups Quiz – What’s Your Score?"
date: 2007-05-09
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# The Euro Startups Quiz – What’s Your Score?

Interesting reaction over at [The Guardian blog](https://web.archive.org/web/20110519163102/http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/05/08/europes_top_web_20_sites_1_out_of_15_is_that_bad.html) to [our post yesterday](https://web.archive.org/web/20110519163102/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_15_web_20_startups_europe.php) about the StartUp2.0 competition for European web 2.0 sites. Guardian blogger Jack Schofield said that he only recognized 1 out of the 15 finalists. Jack wrote:

> “What I find amusing is that I’ve only actually used — or even heard of — one of them: SlideBurner.
> 
> Can you do better?”

Hmmm, well I’m never one to pass up a challenge (particularly if it involves testing my web 2.0 knowledge!). So how many of the 15 Euro startup finalists did I recognize? Er…. \[cough\] 2. I guess I can console myself by saying that I’m not European! For the record the two I knew were Properazzi (property search engine) and Men√©ame (Spanish digg clone). Both of which we’ve posted about before on Read/WriteWeb.

One of the commenters on The Guardian post. renaissancechambara, pretty much summed up why even web 2.0 experts hadn’t heard of most of these sites:

> “…the combination of open source software and the free flow of information online means that it is easier for services to be created. These can be financed on a few credit cards and a personal loan. So there can be a deluge of products that look much the same as each other.
> 
> Many of the services mentioned are me-too products or iterations on existing web 2.0 products.”

A little harsh, but true. One of the main themes in [Read/WriteWeb’s series](https://web.archive.org/web/20110519163102/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cat_international.php) on top international web apps is how many Silicon Valley clones there are. Digg, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, eBay, craigslist, etc – all of the top US sites have multiple equivalents overseas. Having said that, another main theme of our top web apps series is that of localization – and in the case of many European countries, that means *language*. So it’s natural that english-language speakers haven’t heard of sites that run in (for example) Spanish or French. However a number of the 15 finalists are either multi-lingual or in english…Thirdly, it could also be an echo chamber thing – most of the tech news that gets attention in blogs and news sites is US-centric.

It should be mentioned that a few commenters on our post noted that the StartUp2.0 list is not a definitive list – e.g. it was missing last.fm and reevoo.com.

Still, what’s your score? How many of the 15 Euro startups did you recognize?

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_euro_startups_quiz.php))*