Kloop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kloop | |
|---|---|
 |
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| URL | http://www.kloop.kg/ |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Blog Social Network |
| Owner | Kloop Media Foundation |
| Created by | Bektour Iskender, Rinat Tuhvatshin |
Kloop is a news website and a virtual community, where every registered user can keep a blog or post news. Kloop is owned by Kloop Media Foundation based in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic. The news section of the website is prepared only by young journalists, mostly high school and university students[1].
Kloop and all its blogs are run on the WordPress open source software. At the moment only the Russian language version exists.
Contents |
[edit] History
The idea of Kloop was developed by Bektour Iskender and Rinat Tuhvatshin in late 2005. In July 2006 the project was presented to the Dutch-based Hivos Foundation, which agreed to support it. The website was started in June 2007.
On August 3, 2007 Kloop suffered from the hackers attack, which destroyed most of the blogs of the virtual community. However, all the active blogs were restored during 30 hours after the attack[2].
[edit] January 2008 Blackout
Kloop stopped working for one month in January 2008. The website administration later explained that it was a consequence of the Kloop server failure[3]. In February 2008 Kloop doubled its server space, and recommenced its work, though with new users registration problems[4].
[edit] Features
The news section of Kloop is mostly focused on the events that happen in the Kyrgyz Republic. The creators are planning to implement the citizen journalism service by Autumn 2007, which would let every registered user submit the news either through the individual dashboard or via SMS and MMS messages[5].
The blogs platform has been working since the very beginning of the website existence. The idea of Kloop is to bring all the features for free, which means there are no paid skins, and no paid plugins[6]. In an interview to neweurasia in August 2007, Bektour Iskender mentioned that Kloop's blogs section would face significant redesign by Autumn 2007 to become more user-friendly[7]. The changes started being implemented in September 2007 with the introduction of the blogs rating and Kloop blogs search engine[8].
[edit] Features for local users
While LiveJournal is the most popular virtual community among Russian speaking users[9], Kloop authors plan to attract users from Kyrgyzstan with cheap Internet expenses[10]. Kloop servers are located in Kyrgyzstan, a country where the use of internal web traffic is in many cases much cheaper than the use of the external one[11].
[edit] Education
In cooperation with the Bishkek Children’s Media Centre, Kloop staff holds regular free journalism workshops for the youth of Bishkek. In the future, Kloop plans to hold similar workshops in smaller towns of Kyrgyzstan that have a worse access to the Internet[12].
[edit] Awards
Kloop took the second place in the Pokolenie.kz Youth Websites Competition in September 2007, where it competed with websites from Kazakhstan, South Russia and Uzbekistan[13]. Kloop is also registered to take part in the International Weblog Awards.
[edit] Criticism
Though based in Kyrgyzstan, Kloop does not have a Kyrgyz language version. According to authors, it will be launched later, after they set up the Russian version[14].
[edit] References
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ Kloop attacked by hackers
- ^ Внимание (in Russian)
- ^ Регистрация пользователей временно приостановлена (in Russian)
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ Kloop attacked by hackers
- ^ Kloop blogs rating main page (in Russian)
- ^ LiveJournal Demographics
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ Price rates of the SaimaNet ADSL connection (in Russian)
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ V Форум молодых журналистов «Поколение.KZ»: ИнтернетиЯ в Караганде (in Russian)
- ^ Interview with Bektour Iskender
