Kloop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; suggestions are available. (February 2009) |
 |
|
| 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.
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.
Contents |
[edit] Features
The news section of Kloop is mostly focused on the events that happen in the Kyrgyz Republic. Two main sections of the website are the news and blogs. All articles at Kloop are written by young journalists aged 15 to 25, according to the educational program of the Kloop Media Foundation. It is reported that Kloop has the youngest journalist in Kyrgyzstan ever accredited in the local Parliament: 15-years old Timur Toktonaliyev[2].
Since June 2009 Kloop has been publishing video news along with the text ones, while in July 2009 the first official podcast was published on the portal[3].
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[1]. Kloop has got its own blogs rating system. Currently there are more than 700 blogs on Kloop, which makes it the second biggest blogging platform in Kyrgyzstan after blogs at Diesel.Elcat.kg[4].
Kloop is reported to be one of the most popular websites for bloggers in Kyrgyzstan[5].
[edit] Features for local users
While LiveJournal is the most popular virtual community among Russian speaking users[6], Kloop authors plan to attract users from Kyrgyzstan with cheap Internet expenses[1]. 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[7].
The other feature for Kyrgyzstani users is the ability to publish news posts from their blogs onto the main page of the portal[8].
[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[1].
[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[9]. In January 2008 Timur Rayimkulov – a Kloop-based blogger – was announced the "Best Central Asian Blogger" in a contest held by neweurasia, while anonymous blogger Real Uzbekistan took the third place[10].
[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[1].
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e Interview with Bektour Iskender
- ^ Бектур Искендер: «Наш 15-летний корреспондент Тимур Токтоналиев стал самым молодым журналистом, когда-либо аккредитованным в ЖК» (Russian)
- ^ Теперь на Клоопе есть подкасты! (Russian)
- ^ Kloop blogs rating main page (in Russian)
- ^ Kloop Media Foundation
- ^ LiveJournal Demographics
- ^ Price rates of the SaimaNet ADSL connection (in Russian)
- ^ Публикуйте свои новости на главной! (in Russian)
- ^ V Форум молодых журналистов «Поколение.KZ»: ИнтернетиЯ в Караганде (in Russian)
- ^ Best Central Asian Blog 2007 Results
