As Google continues to grow, it faces a mounting challenge. Where to find new content to search and index? Content apparently isn’t coming in as fast as Google needs. So it took it upon itself to create new content as this article describes. Google started a contest at universities in East Africa to promote the translation of Wikipedia articles to Swahili, a language with very little content online but a potential 100 million strong user base.
Does it really have to take foreign firms enticing us with prizes for us to generate new content? Especially in Swahili. Bloggers in East Africa, similar to this blog, have started to create some of this content, however the quantity is minuscule. The question is how can we promote ‘local’ and ‘original’ content creation? Should local universities start promoting this? Will print media companies see this as a void that they can easily fill?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave your comments.
