Ah, if only I knew Dutch

[charmian]

Was randomly flipping around and found this Dutch article on the CEO of SUP, Annelies van den Belt. I can't speak Dutch (know anyone who does?), but it seems (from what I can gather from the magic of Google Translate), that SUP's Russian advertising revenue is growing quickly, that LJ will launch new mobile features in 2010, and that 40% of LJ's traffic is from the US (so higher than what Google Trends said), and that 50% of LJ's US revenue comes from subscriptions. (So I assume the other fifty must come from advertising and virtual gifts) Assuming this is not a completely inaccurate translation, this sort of surprises me. I had thought the vast majority of the revenue came from subscriptions, and that the advertising was very unlucrative, but apparently not.

If you know Dutch, I'd be curious to know if anything interesting was said in this interview with her (done while she was attending a Dutch conference entitled "Show Me the Money," about monetization.

In other news, Google Translate is far better than the other machine translators out there.

Comments

[charmian]

Thanks!

BTW, does that extend to being able to understand spoken Dutch?

[yvi]

Often, yes. If they speak slowly most Germans I know (at least those who have heard Dutch a few times before) get the meaning :) At least for me, Dutch sounds very much like a mix of German and English.

Now speaking is a completely different issue, unfortunately.

[charmian]

Wow, I had no idea that Dutch was that close to German. I was watching the video I linked in the post, and at some points, some of the phrases or something about seemed almost like English, but of course, I couldn't really understand anything. (I speak French and Japanese, but not German)

[matgb]

I had no idea that Dutch was that close to German

All the Flemish speaking countries were part of old imperial Germany for centuries, Germanic tongues are further apart than most Slavonic languages but not by much.

If it weren't for TV/Radio, odds are good that by now US English and UK English would be formally different enough to be called separate languages.

From observation, the more drunk people from similar linguistic groups are, the easier they manage to understand each other, it's a very strange effect.

I'm guessing LJ is either making much money from US advertising or paid account takeup has plummetted, wonder which it is?

[charmian]

I have no idea, really... I wouldn't be surprised if fewer people were doing paid accounts, though, because of the amount of stuff you get if you choose Plus. But then, I have no evidence either way as to which is the case. Maybe they are using more lucrative ads as well. It's difficult to say, really.