This is an interesting collection of popularity statistics with regard to internationalizing websites.

This is an interesting collection of popularity statistics with regard to internationalizing websites.

For example, an huge majority of the internet population would write today’s date as “2012-09-10” or “10-09-2012” and only a small fraction would write it as “09-10-2012”. Another good one is replacing “$” with one of “US $”, “USD” to distinguish from “AU $” or “AUD” or one of the other countries that use “$” as their currency symbol.

Some of the other points are less important, like the paucity of “.us” domains. The early dominance of .com, .edu., .org, etc as US-centric addresses is just an artifact of history. Arguing against that is pointless. As .tv has shown, country codes are often more about marketing than geography or politics. The iOS “.com” button just reinforces this, for example.

Originally shared by Troy Hunt

Who likes being treated like they’re in a minority group? Unless it means you’re in that exclusive group of playboy (or girl) billionaires, “minority group” often ends up with you being unfairly discriminated against because you don’t represent the perceived majority. As with social discrimination, technology discrimination is frequently the product of ignorance; people often don’t understand the impact of their choices.

What a lot of this boils down to is culture, or more specifically, lack of cultural awareness. I’m talking about making assumptions based on what a developer may personally hold to be true but in the broader global context is incorrect and often marginalises their audience.

In the pursuit of a more globally harmonious online experience, let’s take a look at 10 lessons relating to aspects of web development with a cultural bent. Some of this may not be new to you, but all of it is relevant if you want to play nice with people from all cultural walks of life.

http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/09/10-lessons-for-uncultured-web-developers.html