Sanoma Magazines has identified seven potential synergies based upon our current digital assets. One of them is to assess the potential to internationalise NU.nl's successful news concept. We have started in March by launching a German edition, Dnews.de. Dnews' Chief Editor Antje Winter informs Village about the ins and outs.

In 2008 it was clear that ilse media had to change the content management system of NU.nl. It was getting less stable because of the strong growth in traffic. When we rebuilt it, we made it available for reuse for whole Sanoma Magazines, because we believe there is an opportunity to introduce the concept in other countries as well. The power of this news concept is that people get a quick overview of the most important news, and that's a strong need in our globalized 24 hour news world.

We have started in Germany with Dnews.de because there are no big differences between Germany and the Netherlands. A format that is successful in Holland often also works in Germany. The German news market is crowded, but also homogeneous. There are some big and highly qualified news sites, and they all share the same lay out with big pictures and a lot of background information. Dnews.de offers a different format.

Starting in Germany was also easy for us to organise. It’s not too far from Amsterdam, and it was relatively easy to recruit German editors in Amsterdam. They now share offices in Amsterdam with the NU.nl editors, so they can benefit from the experiences of the Dutch format.

In our first year we intend to find out if the concept works in Germany. Do people understand the profile of the site, do they come back to visit it again? In the six weeks since we started, we see signs that it is working. Without much marketing effort, we have reached our targets and are growing. There is a group of heavy users that grows steadily as well, which makes us optimistic that Dnews.de will find its way in Germany.

Our start generated a lot of attention in the German press. Being the ‘daughter’ of a huge Dutch news site, people take us very seriously. Many media blogs were interested because our concept is so unique in Germany. Also the fact that we have the popular media columnists Altpapier on our site (who previously wrote for another German news site) drew attention.

We believe that if a site's concept works and comes at the right moment, it will succeed. Visitors will ‘transport’ the success. It takes time, but it is possible. That's why a strong group of early adopters is very important for us. We try to serve them with RSS-feeds and widgets for iGoogle and Netvibes. Dnews already has a mobile site, and soon we’ll launch an iPhone and Android application too.

In Germany this year there are several big news events, like the European and most importantly the parliamentary elections in September. That traditionally creates a strong need for news - Dnews.de will be prepared for that.