Ukrainian Blogosphere 2010: Still Enough Room for Everyone · Global Voices
Tetyana Bohdanova

To mark the end of 2010, Blogoreader.org.ua, an analytical website created to follow the developments on the Ukrainian Internet, has published its annual overview of the Ukrainian blogosphere. Below is a translation of the author’s major findings [UKR]:
Blogosphere
[…] The Ukrainian blogosphere remains the only Cyrillic blogosphere that is still growing. However, sooner or later this must stop, and the growth will be slowing down gradually. When this process would stop is yet unknown, as the penetration of Internet in our country is rather low. That is why the potential for growth remains.
This year the Ukrainian blogosphere has not obtained strong media resources able to beat other sites with their popularity. For example, in every key topic area it is impossible to name 2-3 indisputable leaders. The objective resources for identifying such leaders are absent as well – in Ukraine, the market of specialized services for bloggers remains weak. Most [Internet] services that remained open by the end of this year had been created mostly due to the enthusiasm of their authors.
Microblogs
Twitter remains among the key trends of the outgoing year. If in 2009 the growth rate of the number of its users constituted “only” 200%, in 2010 it jumped to 400%. […]
During the last year Twitter gradually turned from a blog replacement into a social media instrument. If earlier speculations about it becoming the “killer” of blogs and a great attainment of lazy people who do not want to write anything longer than 140 symbols were common, now such talk is unheard of. Every blogger may have a Twitter [account], but use it not to the detriment of his/her blog, but, on the contrary, as an additional source for [attracting] traffic.
Social networks
Together with a turbulent growth of Facebook in Ukraine (this month, the millionth Ukrainian is expected to register), Vkontakte [Russian social network service] began to “awaken.” […]
Just as Twitter, Facebook and Vkontakte stopped being lookalike “boards” with your photo and a short bio. Due to handy widgets and instruments, integrating social networks into one’s website became an easy task even for beginners, and the amount of “likes” (re-tweets, […], etc.) – turned into a real indicator of the website’s popularity.
[…]
The state and blogs
Ukrainian authorities continue a policy based on little or no understanding of new media. So far state officials have not realized that attempts at manual regulation of new media would not help, but rather push the situation to the critical point. This is especially clearly demonstrated by this year’s interrogations of famous blogger Olena Bilozerska and summoning Oleh Shynkarenko [an LJ user and journalist] to SBU (the Ukrainian state security service). Both situations were publicized widely in the blogosphere and social media, after which law enforcement authorities were forced to justify the legality of their actions.
Open space
The Ukrainian blogosphere remains nearly empty. By this I mean that quite a few interesting niches are still vacant. Although it seems that there are many blogs about tourism or photography in Ukraine, could you name at least one that holds indisputable leadership in its field? Unfortunately, in 90% of topic areas you would not find one. On the other hand this opens appealing perspectives to those who are experts in their fields and would like to reach even higher level of professionalism by becoming bloggers. […]
Other facts about the Ukrainian blogosphere
Yandex, a popular Russian search engine, provided the following statistics about the age of Ukrainian bloggers and the number of blogs:
Age (included are only those who indicated age in their profiles):
Below 15 y.o. – 10%
16-20 y.o. – 32%
21-25 y.o. – 25%
26-30 y.o. – 16%
31-35 y.o. – 9%
36-40 y.o. – 6%
41-45 y.o. – 1%
Over 45 y.o. – 1%
The youngest of the Ukrainian bloggers who indicated their age is a 9-year-old, the oldest is 75 years old.
Number of blogs and microblogs
The number of Ukrainian blogs has grown from 500,000 (in 2009) to 700,000. In general, Yandex knows of 20 million Cyrillic blogs.
120,000 Ukrainian blogs are active (in comparison with 75,000 in 2009). In general, it is a unique case: in RuNet the number of active blogs declines, while in Ukraine it has grown (from 15% to 17%).
The Ukrainian blogosphere has grown by 40% in 2010.
According to the Yandex data, there are 80,000 Ukrainian Twitter accounts. To compare, the neighboring Belarus has only 18,000 accounts. In general, Yandex knows of 460,000 Cyrillic accounts on Twitter.
Out of 80,000 Twitter users, 23% (or 29%) occasionally tweet in Ukrainian; 10,000 (12.5%) users tweet exclusively in Ukrainian.
Conclusion
The situation in the Ukrainian blogosphere has been summarized [UKR] well by Serhiy Pishkhovtsiy, the author of Blogoreader.org.ua:
Regardless of the fact that the Ukrainian blogosphere is several years old, in 2010 it remains open to everyone willing to join. It is enough to select the right topic, work hard on one’s popularity and move confidently towards achieving the goal. And that is what I wish to all of you :).