Editorial: Poland's online explosion

And while MySpace may only have recently become the stuff of parents' nightmares, the website has been around since 1999. In internet-years, that makes the site roughly as old as Ford's Model T.

Even if Poland does lag behind its Western peers in some areas - or many areas, as the average disgruntled expat would have it - the argument that its online progress has been worse than others' is, in fact, specious. For one thing, the year or three difference between the rise of Web 2.0 in the Anglophone world and its ascent po Polsku can be partly attributed to the fact that Polish early adopters, who tend to be young and well-educated, likely embraced the original, English-language sites.

It also took time to adapt these ideas not just to the Polish language, but also to introduce them into the local zeitgeist. What could be portrayed as a "lag" was in fact a remarkably short time in which bold ideas were adapted, implemented and embraced. This is all the more apparent when broadband penetration, a key indicator of development, is taken into consideration.

According to the OECD's broadband statistics data, Poland's broadband penetration in 2006 stood at 21.6 percent of households, well below the EU-25 average of 31.7 percent. Data from MillwardBrown in 2007, meanwhile, put Poland's broadband penetration at 23.5 percent. Poland is thus exceedingly "plugged in" for a country whose broadband penetration amounted to a mere 8.3 percent of households in 2004 (OECD).

Critics might counter that this reasoning focuses narrowly on society and its interaction with existing technology and services, ignoring the key issue of innovation itself. Compared to the US, the world's foremost innovator, Poland's achievements in this sphere are indeed pale, but then so are most other countries'. Moreover, as with Web 2.0 and broadband penetration, there is visible and respectable growth here too, as Polish IT firms, products and services expand beyond domestic - and regional - borders. The country is capable of innovation and this fact is increasingly evident.

Poland is not behind the curve. On the contrary, it is setting a swift pace and proving a good example of how societal impetus and government initiative - as well as favorable economic conditions - can come together to speed up a country's development. Other emerging markets should take note.