Facebook has a friend in Southeast Europe

08/03/2010

As interest in social media takes off in the region, even presidents are getting into the act.

By Natasa Radic for Southeast European Times in Zagreb - 08/03/10

If you have a computer, you have a friend. [Getty Images]

With 400 million members around the world, Facebook is likely the most popular social networking website of all. Huge in the United States, big in China and reaching to all continents, it offers translations into more than 70 languages. Many of those languages are found throughout the Balkans, where Facebook -- along with youtube.com and a host of imitators -- has garnered several million users.

So popular is Facebook that the new Croatian president, Ivo Josipovic, has his own profile page. The musical composer and attorney turned politician -- elected in January -- has 5,000 online "friends" who regularly comment on his public and private endeavors.

He is joined on Facebook by nearly 800,000 other Croatians -- fellow politicians, a range of celebrities, actors, artists, athletes and everyday folks. It's not all fun and games, however, as people also use social media tools to raise funds for earthquake victims in Haiti or for sick children who need medical care in other parts of the world.

Connect with SETimes on Facebook!

Websites of newspapers, wire services, television and radio are of keen interest to Balkan internet users. Top sites include koha.net, gazetaexpress.com, telegrafi.com and B92.net. On those sites, debates take place with topics ranging from ethnic rivalries to literature and the arts.

In Bulgaria, Facebook has grown tenfold since 2009 to become the second most popular site on the web, according to Alexa Internet Inc, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that tracks information on the web. More than 80% of all Facebook users in Bulgaria are under the age of 40.

Also big in Bulgaria is the general top blog svejo.net -- ranked 25th and more popular than both Twitter and myspace.com in Bulgaria. The country, however, has the lowest percentage of households connected to the internet at about 30%, according to data from the EU data agency Eurostat.

Serbian political parties have been rushing to take advantage of a burgeoning interest in social media. [Nikola Barbutov/SETimes]

The nations of Macedonia and Serbia have internet user rates of 42% and 37% respectively.

At the end of 2009, Romania was ranked fourth in the world for fastest internet connections, according Akamai, which publishes a quarterly "State of the Internet" report. The US firm placed Romania after South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong for internet speed.

The Balkan nation, however, only has 38% of its households wired for the web. A close second to Facebook in Romania is a homegrown social networking site called neogen.ro.

Two years ago, the Romanian version of youtube.com -- known as trilulilu.ro -- sold 41% of its shares to a French businessman who has also invested in an online strategy game called eRepublik.com.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, research by the polling agency GfK BH shows that 52% of all BiH citizens age 15 and older are using social networking on the internet. Half of them are on Facebook and more than 50% are women. According to the GfK BH firm, very few of the male Facebook users in BiH are older than 45.

In Kosovo, social media have become a daily tool of measuring public reaction to a wide range of events -- political, cultural and mundane. Facebook is home to discussions on such topics as "Kosovo in the EU", "Republic of Kosova" and the "Miss Kosova" beauty pageant.

In Serbia, Facebook rules. There, folks connect with old friends both at home and abroad, find new ones and go to work for political campaigns after their interest is piqued online.

Nearly all Serbian political parties have Facebook pages and naturally traffic to those sites heats up during elections. The most active Serbian political sites on Facebook belong to those with the youngest members. They include the Democratic Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Serbian Progressive Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia.

Millions of Southeast European citizens have Facebook profiles. [Getty Images]

Facebook gained particular prominence when one of the opposition leaders -- New Serbia President Velimir Ilic -- was attacked on February 5th while speaking to reporters during a street protest.

A suspect named Dejan Stojadinovic was held in the assault. When journalists discovered Stojadinovic's Facebook page they found numerous threats to a variety of state officials, including Serbian President Boris Tadic.

In Greece -- a country of more than 11.2 million people -- well over half of the population owns a computer. According to a pan-Hellenic survey of internet use in 2009, 76% of Greeks use the Internet from home and most of them do so daily. Most are seeking answers to various questions -- from medical information to the best place to get good produce -- while some 62% go on-line to send emails.

Only 42% of the Greeks surveyed use the Internet for social networking. Still, in the past five years, Greek residents between the ages of 18 and 15 have made Internet use part of their daily routines with Facebook use skyrocketing to some 2 million users.

The most popular sites in Greece are Google, which gets 96% of all Hellenic internet traffic followed by youtube.com at 67.8% and yahoo.com a distant third at just below 50%. A hometown social network site -- www.zoo.gr -- has been growing steadily.

In Greece, blogs are especially popular -- be they individual, political or social as citizens turn to the internet to make their views known. Some bloggers are participating in what is known as "online activism" in which public actions, such as protests against current austerity measures, reach a much larger audience than the old way of putting up posters.

One social awareness site is “No More Wildfires", a Facebook community created after devastating fires ravaged the country several years ago.

People are also beginning to trust news blogs more than commercial TV stations, as posted information can be fact-checked by the community at large. Indeed, it wasn't many years ago that the Greek government ordered two blogs shut down after they uncovered political scandals.

SETimes correspondents Svetla Dimitrova in Sofia, Paul Ciocoiu in Bucharest, Maria Paravantes in Athens, Manjola Hala in Tirana, Bojana Milovanovic in Belgrade, Jusuf Ramadanovic in Sarajevo and Linda Karadaku in Pristina contributed to this report.