Social Media Tendencies Around the World: Bulgaria

by Nicky Nikolaev | @Socio_Saurus Bulgaria's social media landscape offers several copycat social networks and bookmarking sites that allow you to find information and latest news on everything that is going on in the country like upcoming events, important articles, etc.

The BIG 4 social bookmarking sites are as follows:

#1 Svejo.net (Svejo means 'fresh’ in Bulgarian) The most visited social network in Bulgaria is Svejo.net. It is probably the first active network in Bulgaria. It allows you to share sites – video, content, pictures and more. All you have to do is register. Once registered, you can start making friends right away and comment on shared content. When the content you share is interesting, it becomes FRESH! This means your content makes it to the first page on the site and gets traffic to your blog or social network profile.

#2 Dao.bg The .bg domain name is a top level domain name that has the country code in it according to the domain name system for Internet in Bulgaria. When people are trying to focus on the local market they usually go for that domain name. Dao.bg started early in September 2007.

#3 Lubimi.com (Lubimi means 'favorites' in English) Lubimi.com is a social network of a different kind compared to Svejo.net and Dao.bg. This is a social bookmarking network suitable for publishing articles from corporate blogs. Everyone can share favorite links or article addresses. The good thing here is that the links are do-follow.  This is very important because the do-follow link is actually a hyperlink inclusion that tells search engines to pass on any credibility or influence to an outbound link.

#4 Ping.bg Ping.bg is the newest network in Bulgaria. The nature of this network is pretty similar to the one of the above two networks but it also has several new options and features.  It will most probably take a year or two to see how these networks will evolve, whether they will have any impact and influence on people. It won't be a surprise to anyone if new ones come up on the stage.

Honorable Mentions include: Qko.be, 2p2.us, Favi.info, Slamka.com These sites are similar to Twitter in that users share updates with one another about what they are doing in a the moment.

No wonder social media is one of the hot topics in the local PR market; Here is a list of some more social oriented sites and networks: - Twist.bg allows the users to make friends and share sites, news, videos and event listings. - vbox7.com - The Bulgarian YouTube - Idi.bg – (idi means "GO" in English) - The Bulgarian tourism social network

New social networks clones of Identi.ca include: crazythings.net, egg.bg, telegraf.bg, 359bg.net, and internetbulgaria.org

An interesting fact is that some 2 million Bulgarians (the population of Bulgaria is around 7 million) are on Facebook. Yet another thing to mention is that a lot of people are flocking to the corporate social network site LinkedIn during the global recession. They see a great opportunity to market themselves and they see it as a platform that can help them find a better job.

And believe it or not, people are still using forums to exchange information tips and tricks with one another. Some use them as an advertising channel in order to promote a brand or a specific product. Check out these relevant examples: Webmasterbg.org, Predpriemach.com ( predpriemach means "entrepreneur" in English) and Developix.net

And let's not forget about the Blogs! The following link is a sort-of 'Blog Directory' of the most popular blogs in Bulgaria - TopBlogLog.com

We can acknowledge that all the social media sites and networks in Bulgaria are following the global trends with emerging media and communications continuously. Bulgaria takes second place in Europe when it comes to Internet usage amongst the youth demographic according to recent case studies conducted by “EU Kids Online”.

According to the statistics: 51% of teens in Bulgaria have a profile in a social network which is a little bit below 57%, the average number for the EU. Some 51% from the demographic between 9 and 16 have a profile on Facebook, Myspace and Impulse.bg. Approximately 1/3 of these profiles use a public status. This means that they could be seen and are visible by everyone. 1/10 lists personal information in their profile like an address, telephone number, etc.

Bulgaria will certainly be a country to watch in the coming year when analyzing international emerging media trends on the global stage.