Conquering digital for
land and country

The Guardian frothily reports that the UK no longer languishes in the sun where dot-com is concerned. As Atlantic-side marketers flex their typing fingers, analysts list the top 10 dot-coms expected to make a mark outside of the Queen's England.

Despite the UK's haste to leap into the market, they are notably more conservative than they were in the late '90s, according to analysts.

British web 2.0 websites are also notably lacking in copycat websites, or websites that proffer the same services as sites that have already seen success, a near-epidemic in the Silicon Valley.

Last.fm, itself of British origin, was sold to CBS some months ago for $240 million. It is now among the leading internet radio sites, comfortable enough even to resist industry alienation when it chose not to participate in the day of silence demonstration recently lobbied by other internet radio sites in the wake of crippling new taxation.

And recent reports show that the UK is dipping heavily into Semantic Web research, meaning their online efforts today may factor heavily into user experiences tomorrow.

The Guardian's top 10 UK-based dot-coms were possessed of interesting business models or started by "industry veterans on their third or fourth company." Each is expected, perhaps ambitiously, to "hit the big time" in the next year or two:

1. Dopplr - Social networking for frequent travellers
2. Extate - Intelligent search of property websites
3. Garlik - Online identity management
4. MindCandy - Alternate reality gaming
5. Moo - Print on demand: cards, notes and stickers
6. OnOneMap - Map-based property search
7. Touch Local - Local directory services
8. Trusted Places - User-created local information
9. Zopa - Peer to peer lending
10. Zubka - Recruitment 2.0