Last week we reported on Frazr, one of Germany’s many Twitter clones (if you’re eager for more side-by-side comparisons, see Sloggen, Wamadu, Faybl or 1you, which all launched in March or April). Frazr is symptomatic for the state of Web 2.0 in Germany and to get a better understanding for the many international developments, this post starts a series of regional profiles on Web 2.0 around the world. I’ll start the tour with a closer look at Germany, home to Europe’s largest population of internet broadband users.

Hype vs. Hesitate
Just as this week’s Pew Internet Study stirred a debate on the view of Web 2.0 in the US, Germany has seen similar arguments on the size of the phenomenon locally. For a long time, several indicators had hinted that Germany was falling behind in broadband penetration compared to other European countries like Sweden or Norway. But a recent OECD study painted a very different picture: looking at the total number of households (as opposed to per-capita penetration), Germany comes out on top in Europe with 14.1 million subscribers in December 2006 (followed by the UK at 12.9 and France at 12.7 million). So the crowds are here, but where can they go?

“Web 2.0” is a term that brilliantly translates around the world, but many of the sites that are commonly associated with it have a language barrier for international audiences (take MySpace for example: it officially launched its German version only in March of this year).

While English certainly isn’t foreign to Germans, it has still slowed their adoption – and network effects, which have been a driving force, are often tied to language and reach as well. What’s been the consequence in Deutschland? A mushrooming of German copycats that have localized and copied their US role models, sometimes down to the last pixel.

Copy/Paste Innovation
Whether you’re looking for social bookmarking, photo sharing, video posting or a college social network, Germany’s clever entrepreneurs have done the translation for you and some even fared quite well.

The best example by far is StudiVZ, whose name stands for “student directory.” Launched in October 2005, it now claims to house 2.1 million users. Despite a myriad of security problems and controversies, new users kept coming in, which only speaks to the universally strong demand for such networks among students. In January of this year, Germany had its mini-YouTube moment when StudiVZ sold for €85M ($100M) to the German media conglomerate Holtzbrinck Group.

If the screenshots look familiar, you won’t be surprised to hear that StudiVZ’s early versions of the site were using filenames like fbook.css or poke.php. (Facebook was in talks with StudiVZ but it walked away because of scalability and security concerns about the platform. Instead, Facebook is now working on its own strategy – let the battle begin).

Another success story is Xing (formerly OpenBC), a professional network like LinkedIn. In December 2006, it became the first Web 2.0 company to go public and is now traded at the Frankfurt stock exchange. Xing’s rapid growth among the German business community came rather unexpected after it launched in November 2003, especially in a country that isn’t typically known for its culture of business networking. The site now boasts 2 million members and about 13% of its users pay for a monthly premium subscription of €5.95. With revenues of €10 million in 2006, Xing’s performance at the stock market has been somewhat lackluster and the real test for the company will come as both Xing and LinkedIn expand beyond their original markets (LinkedIn now has 9 million registered users and $10 million in 2006 revenues; it recently raised $13 million more).

The Brighter Side: What’s next
Of course there are creative and innovative startups to be found (and growing any multi-million user base is a feat in itself regardless). For some inspiration, take a look at our previous coverage of Plazes (currently a sponsor) and SellABand; last week also saw the launch of MindMeister, a promising online mind mapping collaboration tool. Other notable services include blauarbeit.de, a growing reverse-auction site for jobs and services, and we have yet to wait for a successful US counterpart.

In short: Germany is buzzed right now and the biggest question for the startup scene is how the many look-alikes will develop over the next year. You’ll often hear that investors are hesitant to invest in ideas that “haven’t been proven in the US yet” but there are several other factors at work here: Germany is generally more risk-averse, the bureaucracy is more cumbersome, and entrepreneurial networks like Silicon Valley aren’t as strongly developed.

Nonetheless, the country’s business angels and media conglomerates (Holtzbrinck Group, Burda, Axel Springer) are eager to invest with rapid-fire pace at the moment but the majority of German internet users have yet to be convinced that there is a land beyond eBay, Google, Wikipedia and some online news sites.

Meanwhile, German and other European startups are in a prime position to tinker with mobile applications and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more innovation in this space soon. The continent is covered with advanced data networks and the UK has already seen the introduction of flat-rate data plans at reasonable prices. Germany’s market is sure to follow and the boon of the mobile web will start in Asia and Europe sooner than in the US. You also want to watch out for innovations around IPTV as subscriptions are expected to reach 2.6 million in Germany alone by 2010.

Until then, let’s see how Facebook and StudiVZ duke it out

Curious fact: Google’s market share for search is near 92% in Germany. And yes, it’s a verb here, too.

Gregor Hochmuth is an analyst and entrepreneur in residence at Hasso Plattner Ventures. He runs zoo-m.com and his own homepage at dotgrex.com.

Mix open instant messaging protocol Jabber with mobile phones and you get Mabber, a new product from a team based in Cologne, Germany. The team at Mabber were early adopters of the Jabber protocol and with the lower mobile data charges in their home country decided to develop an application that would allow mobile users to communicate with each other using the protocol, thus save on SMS costs. Mabber is a product of New Media Management, a German company that runs some of the countries largest web properties such as neu.de and pkw.de,

Mabber have put together a very experienced and solid team that totals six people, starting with Nico Lumma who runs the team and directs the business (he is also a very popular blogger in Germany). Other members of the team include Florian Holzhauer (who is a member of the Jabber foundation), Stefan Strigler, Jens Ohlig, Oliver Lauer and Christian Horchert.

Mabber primarily uses the Jabber protocol but they also have support for the other networks such as MSN, Yahoo!, AIM – this is so that you don’t need to lose contacts or functionality with your existing IM provider in switching to mabber. Mabber supports all these protocols in-line, meaning that once you have the account setup you see your contacts on that network along with your other contacts from other networks and the primary mabber network.

There are two parts to the mabber application. The first is the web application which can be accessed from any browser. As with Meebo, these guys have spent a lot of time on refining the user experience. The first thing I noticed was that the chat windows did not have any re-draw effects and seemed to work seamlessly – no weird delays with the client polling the server, just instant reactions. Second what I noticed is all the rich features. They have extended through all the popular features of desktop IM clients such as chat history (which can be fully searched later), grouping (and group chat), and context menu’s to bring up the options.

The web interface on it’s own will give Meebo a run for it’s money, but the magic with Mabber is on mobile devices. To install the mobile application you go to the site and enter your mobile number, you in return receive an sms with a download link, you follow that, it installs, executes, you enter your username and password and you are online. From that point you are able to access all your IM contacts and communicate with them using a standard mobile keypad. This will save people a lot on SMS costs (which are just blatant robbery in most countries at the moment) and allow people to communicate more effectively. I know that this is not the first mobile IM app, but the combination of this team, the protocol they have chosen, their simple application and both mobile and browser based interfaces means that Mabber stand a strong chance of success.

I have been using Mabber for almost a day now and I am currently evaluating if this is my Meebo replacement. Nico has been talking about a few features they have due during the course of this week including tabbed chatting windows, content delivery to mobile devices and other improvements. These guys are releasing very frequently and their private beta has been going well to date. They intend on going out strong in the German market and I am sure they will do well in other markets especially if ordinary consumers find the service as easy to install and use as I did.

Use Mabber Now: Mabber have been kind enough to give away 50 beta invitations for Techcrunch readers. If you would like to check out a really cool IM app that works on mobile devices then send through an email to info@mabber.com with the subject line of ‘TECHCRUNCH!!!!!’ and you will be sent an invitation in return.