Linked-In and Facebook in Israel: A Buzzing Business Network

FaceBook is one of the more popular social networking destination for Israelis

Social networks are buzzing in Israel. Linked-In and FaceBook are two of the most popular destinations for Israelis. Linked-In is a strong entrepreneur and recruiting site with groups focused on technology in Israel. FaceBook is a used more for social causes and leisure activities (parties, social causes, group announcements.) The other sites gaining popularity is Meetup, a service to announce and reserve places in local events. Israeli techies are not new to digital social communication. Up to this wave of WEB20 services blogs and chat boards were the main form of group communication. Blogli.CO.IL is a free blogging service in Hebrew similar to Blogger.COM and WordPress.COM. Message boards like Ynet communities, The Marker Cafe (business and work related), Walla.CO.IL, tapuz.CO.IL (opinions and personal blogging) were the hot destination until today. Google also added a complete Hebrew support to Blogger.COM but that did not seem to attract participation from the other services or create a new set of followers. At this point in time most blogging services are similar enough and to move from one to another does not happen en mass. Israelis are great in following new trends and trying new products. But they are also finicky and tend to latch onto things in a completely unpredictable nature. Remember that these are trends, some come and stay, some go down in flames (quickly.)

If you have an Internet service, a new product or even an idea, think about testing it in Israel. Most Internet users read and write in English well enough to understand new ideas. There is a big Russian and smaller Arab speaking population. They tend to follow the mainstream Israeli (i.e. Hebrew) trends. Other European languages are also spoken here but not in as large number as the other mentioned (Spanish and German are probably the next languages in popularity here.) For the most part the Israeli digital market covers a great deal of professions and interest. Israelis have a good standard of living so many products like electronic gadgets, software and media (movies, music) are consumed in good amount. Finally, Israel has a large population of digital professionals, from designers, to software developers, business entrepreneurs to marketers, writers and editors. This makes the market which is small and manageable a good place to start and deploy ideas quickly.