Global Voices Online » Eastern & Central Europe

Ukraine: Flu and Politics

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:03 +0000

Jamestown Foundation Blog and Ukrainiana - on the politics around the flu situation in Ukraine.

Russia: Major Search Engine Closes Its Blog Rating

Alexey Sidorenko — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:35:32 +0000

Yandex.ru, Russian most popular search engine, announced on November 3 that it would close its blog ranking service Yandex Blogs Top (YBT) [RUS] by the end of the month. A spokesman for Yandex.ru said the reason for closure was that the blog rating “had become a specialized media platform.” Bloggers accused the company of giving in to political pressure from the Russian government.

Anton Volnukhin (aka Ya.blogs user Antonme), a spokesman for Yandex.ru, wrote on the company blog [RUS]:

We noticed that service, which had been initially created as a mirror, a reflection of the blogosphere, became an amplifier, a media tool. The effect of a positive feedback took place: many bloggers started to write, comment and include links with a purpose to “bring a post to the top.”

Just about everyone started to use this tool - from the disseminators of the links “please help collect money” to radicals of any kind. As a result, radicals of one kind started to accuse Yandex of helping radicals of another kind and vice versa. Journalists got into the habit of looking through the blog ranking, bringing posts to the top became a paid service and now the authorities perceive the ranking as vox populi.

Transformation of the blog ranking into a specialized media platform doesn't allow us to develop this service as a part of Yandex portal. We don't see any perspective to make it a mass service - and the development of Yandex is mainly focused on mass services. This is why we decided to stop supporting the service and, at the same time, simultaneously provide everyone with the technical ability to create their own ranking of popular blogs, their own version of the answer to the question “what do popular bloggers care about?” Similar rankings already exist on different sites of RuNet. We hope that the usage of data from Yandex Blog Search will create many similar services and will help everyone find a suitable ranking.

Artemiy Lebedev (aka LJ-user tema [RUS]), one of the most influential and controversial personalities of RuNet, is the first who started using Yandex Blog Top RSS on his Web site [RUS]. Lebedev claimed that the ranking was shut down due to the reasons not mentioned in the official statement from Yandex:

Well, to be short, Yandex got completely fed up with complains about the blog ranking which has always been the most crystal clear and honest rating in the world.

This is why rating will continue to exist on the Web site of Artemy Lebedev's Studio…

Because it is written in the studio charter that politicians and priests can f…k themselves, the director of the company will not hesitate to tell any politician or pries to f…k themselves.

First, let f…k themselves […] anyone who is not OK with the fact that the ranking is created by a robot on the basis of objective parameters.

The other version of Yandex Blog Top RSS also appeared on the site Whoyougle [RUS].

Yandex.ru has bigger audience than many cable TV-channels in Russian (20 million visitors in September 2009 [RUS]). Bloggers used the popularity of the site to bring many controversial topics to the attention of the Russian audience by including links and adding comments to the posts. Some believe this led to political pressure resulting in the elimination of the blog ranking.

Habrahabr user SSE [RUS] claims [RUS] that political pressure on Yandex wasn't a secret:

It became known as early as in October that someone “at the top” wasn't very happy with the free ranking of alternative points of view.

Andrey Malgin (aka LJ-user avmalgin[RUS]) explained [RUS]:

A pleasing picture that we saw in TV newscasts was very different from the things that bloggers, especially politicized ones, were writing about. Now this has been ended…

Roman Ivanov (aka LJ-user kukutz [RUS]), Yandex “chief Lulz officer” (Yandex virtual spokesman), argues [RUS] that the Yandex blog ranking did not attract a large audeince and had only 7 thousand visitors a day. At the same time, the amount Yandex Blog Search monthly visitors in September 2009 was around 2,5 mln visitors in September 2009 [RUS] or 12,5 percent of the total monthly visitors of Yandex.ru. Many RuNet users strongly disagree with this statistics and claim that the blog ranking was much more popular than Yandex officially announced.

Additional info

Yandex.ru dominates Russian search engine market. According to Vedomosti newspaper [RUS], it is accouned for 54,5 percent of the Russian search traffic. In July 2009, ComScore research [ENG] stated that Yandex is among top 10 world's search engines with 1,5 percent of the world search traffic.

Serbia: Sinisa Boljanovic Wins Climate Change Blogging Contest

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:10:54 +0000

Sinisa Boljanovic, a GV author and Lingua Serbian editor, became one of the winners of Round 1 of TH!NK2: CLIMATE CHANGE blogging contest; here's Sinisa's winning entry: Black Point of the Danube Basin.

Hungary: Genetic Research on the Origin of Hungarians

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:57:52 +0000

Hungarian Spectrum writes about genetic research on the origin of the Hungarian people.

Russia: Markelov's Alleged Killers Arrested

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:49:54 +0000

Russia Blog reports on the arrest of the alleged killers of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova.

Russia: Calling Abkhazia Via Russia

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:46:15 +0000

Eternal Remont reports that “as of November 16, Abkhazia will adopt Russian area codes for telephone service. This means than everyone trying to reach Uncle Bagrat in Gagra will have to call Russia and not Georgia.”

Belarus: Webmaster and Politics

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:43:03 +0000

Andrei Khrapavitski reports on problems faced by a Belarusian political party following the election of a new leader: “According to the Belarusian blogosphere, a webmaster, loyal to the previous leader, is refusing to pass passwords and website requisites to the new team. Thus they can’t update the party website. […] What if Bush web team refused to pass control to Obama’s team over whitehouse.gov?”

CEE: Social Networks and the Media

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:36:03 +0000

Information Policy links to a BusinessWeek/TOL article on social networks and the media in Central and Eastern Europe.

Poland: Graffiti

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:30:57 +0000

Polandian writes about and posts photos of the Polish graffiti.

Albania: Giving Directions

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:28:08 +0000

A Nevada Yankee in King Zog's Court writes that “Albanians are so poor at giving directions that it's easier just to take the lost soul directly to his destination than it is to give directions.”

Ukraine: “Political Flu”

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:22:42 +0000

Today's updates on the flu situation: Greetings from Kyiv chronicles Day 5 and Day 6 of the epidemic; Chernobyl and Eastern Europe writes about the precautions taken at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant; Foreign Notes, What's up, Ukraine? and Wu Wei discuss president Yushchenko's address to the nation and other political aspects of the epidemic.

Kosovo, Hungary: More on the Tisza River Tragedy

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:02:05 +0000

A Fistful of Euros discusses the story of tragic death of 15 Kosovo Albanian illegal immigrants, who were trying to cross the Tisza River into Hungary and the EU. More about it - in Marietta Le's Oct. 28 GV post.

Ukraine: Ruslana and Science Fiction

Veronica Khokhlova — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:50:23 +0000

Science Fiction Observer writes about a science fiction dimension of Ukrainian singer Ruslana's 2007 album.

Ukraine: New Documentary on Holodomor

Veronica Khokhlova — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:46:30 +0000

Nash Holos writes about Yury Luhovy's new documentary on the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33.

CEE: “20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall” - a Poll

Veronica Khokhlova — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:42:17 +0000

Foreign Policy Association's Russia blog writes about the results of a Pew Research Center's poll on poverty, wealth and attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe “20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.”