Macedonia: Use Facebook If You Want to Flirt With Politicians
A few days ago, national newspaper “Vest” published a cover page article titled “Flirting with politicians online,” in which it said that if Macedonians wanted to speak with the politicians they could do that only on some of the social networking sites:
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If you are not able to find Macedonian politicians in their offices, ministries or party headquarters, you will certainly find them on social networking websites. Many of them have their own profiles on Facebook – the world’s most famous social networking website. It is one of the most addictive social networking websites in the world and most of its users are young people, but there are also many other users of various profiles and ages.
Macedonian politicians, too, are not immune to the “Facebook virus.” Vice Prime Minister for European Affairs Ivica Bocevski is a member of this global social network, as well as Minister of the Interior Gordana Jankulovska, Minister of Information Society Ivo Ivanovski, former SDSM leader Radmila Shekerinska, Minister of Foreign Investments Vele Samak and his former colleague Gligor Tashkovik. The negotiator in the name dispute – Nikola Dimitrov – is also a Facebook user, the leader of DPA – Menduh Thaçi, former Minister of Interior Ljube Boshkoski, Macedonian ambassador to The Hague Shpresa Jusufi, former Minister of Environment and Physical Planning – Imer Aliu – from DPA, former Prime Minister Ljubcho Georgievski, the head of NSDP Tito Petkovski, and former MP Filip Petrovski, who is one of the most inventive Facebook users.
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Some Macedonian bloggers re-published the article and let their readers comment on it. The media blog Komunikacii reacted (MKD) to the article, writing:
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- The traditional media based on centralized principles still don’t see the decentralized nature of the new media, and they don’t plan to speak on these subjects. That’s why we have this article, “Politicians on Facebook”! Big deal that they are on Facebook. […]
- The topic that should be covered by one serious newspaper is how our politicians don’t use the potentials of the new media for communication with the population. How, besides so many financial opportunities, advisers, successful examples from abroad and similar things, the usage is still very humble, as if we are waiting for a benchmark from the EU for usage of social networks.
- And finally, last but not least, one useful analogy: while [Greek minister of foreign affairs Dora Bakoyannis] is using social networking sites for promoting her politics, our politicians are using them for friendships. The information that Dora Bakoyannis is a very good surfer (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Web Page…) was published in several places in our online sphere, but no one thought it was a big deal, but I say au contre, au contre…
On the Antiblog of Filip Petrovski, who also posted the article, Gjurovski left this comment (MKD):
Most of the politicians’ “profiles,” “blogs,” “accounts” are updated by political servants, and any interaction with them is silly and absurd.
So, don’t fool yourself and don't get yourself worked up over anything because instead of Shekerinska or Brother Ljube on the other side there is some guy who is certainly laughing and saying to himself – “The idiots I have to deal with!” while doing his job.
On Kajmakot there were even some suggestions (MKD), inspired by the article, for the name dispute with Greece:
Maybe Macedonia 2.0 is not such a bad name suggestion? ;)
3 comments
Do not use face book for anything. It is a closed source application that makes hundreds of millions of dollars on the back of members and community content creators.
Face Book sucks the life out of members and communities, stop feeding Rupert money, he does not need it…and it is your content…Maybe the revenue model should put members and communities first….Facebook continues to follow their stale old act of creating large amounts of revenue on the backs of members and their content.
Facebook is easily worth at least a billion, and where is the value coming from other than members/the communities content and activities.
How much ad revenue is Facebook sharing with members that generate ad revenue for them ? Are they giving anything back to the community that has put them where they are ?
I am technology consultant, and this summer I became so feed up with the share cropper mentality of sites like Facebook that I decided to build an application that shares the wealth that is created with the community.
We also have a stand alone ad service and we have a granular micro revenue sharing service that allows members to share their revenue with Friends, Groups, or Causes.
And unlike Facebook and the rest we will be releasing most of the service to the open source community because we know we are not the smartest guys in the room.