The English Douban
Douban, an increasingly popular Chinese website for sharing, discovering and managing books, movies and music collection which I had mentioned before has finally launched an English-language version of the website, recently renamed to Beantal.
Much has also already been said about this brand new Chinese-brewed web application. (See John's review and China Web 2.0's review.)
I can understand why the English version of the site is completely seperated from the Chinese site. There are plenty of good reasons for that. But as a user, I so wish I only have one master list to maintain. Right now, I have one list (a rather multi-lingual one consists of items in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, English and German) on their Chinese site and another one (English books only) on their English site.
Well, I read the Douban team is also thinking of whether to merge the sites or keep them seperate. So we shall see. In any case, it is not an easy decision to make and the longer it waits, the more complicated it gets if they want to combine the two sites into one.
Much has also already been said about this brand new Chinese-brewed web application. (See John's review and China Web 2.0's review.)
I can understand why the English version of the site is completely seperated from the Chinese site. There are plenty of good reasons for that. But as a user, I so wish I only have one master list to maintain. Right now, I have one list (a rather multi-lingual one consists of items in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, English and German) on their Chinese site and another one (English books only) on their English site.
Well, I read the Douban team is also thinking of whether to merge the sites or keep them seperate. So we shall see. In any case, it is not an easy decision to make and the longer it waits, the more complicated it gets if they want to combine the two sites into one.
