Glogster
 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (September 2009) |
Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or glogs.[1] Glogster was founded in 2007. Currently this social network has hundreds of thousands registered users. The majority of the Glogster community is teenagers.
Glogster provides an environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio (MP3), videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation.[2] Glogster is based on flash elements.[3] Posters can be shared with other people. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats. [4]
Each visitor can integrate dynamic multi-sensory resources into traditionally text-oriented tasks.
Apart of Glogster, the Glogster EDU education project was launched to serve in the educational environment. Education Glogster allows teachers and pupils to use glogs as instructional aids. Users have the option of choosing the freedom of complete expression with Glogster or Glogster EDU with teacher controls.
History
Glogster was launched in December 2007.
Since its founding, Glogster has experienced rapid growth and now has users in more than 200 countries. Even though the portal is targeted primarily at young people, many of the users are aged 25 or over. At present, there are almost 1 million glogs on the website (more than 450,000 are publicly accessible glogs).
In 2009 Glogster has offices in Boston, Prague and Colombo.
Glogster EDU
The growing popularity of Glogster helped spawn Glogster EDU to assist teachers in providing dynamic and interactive teaching experiences. The EDU Glogster project is intended primarily for pupils and teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Teachers privately register their students and may create a safe virtual class with as many as two hundred students. Teaching glogs are private and are made accessible to others at the discretion of the teacher.
Glogster EDU is currently being used by more than 30,000 teachers with about 1,000,000 students all around the world.[5]
In the near future, the EDU Glogster development team will design and release an enhanced version of Glogster EDU 2.0 which should further meet the basic mission of this site to educate young students and prepare them to use the benefits of the Internet and multimedia applications.[6]
Cooperation with educational services
In June 2009 Glogster EDU announced a cooperative partnership with School Tube, one of the world's leading Internet portals focusing on educational media.[6] This partnership allows the students and teachers who are using Glogster EDU to share their glogs on the popular server School Tube and import multimedia from School Tube to their glogs.
Since May 2009 Glogster EDU also cooperates with DetentionSlip.org, an online media company that focuses on news related to public education.[2]
Awards
Project Glogster.com was selected the fourth most successful web start-up project in 2008 at the Prague Web Expo trade fair.[7]
Financing
The Glogster project is funded primarily from private sources. In the future the company may wish to modify their funding model. Glogster occasionally cooperates with well-known brands in competitions for the user. There is little paid advertisement on the site.
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b Reuters, March 13, 2009. Glogster EDU and DetentionSlip.org Announce "What`s Wrong With This Picture?" Contest. Reuters. Retrieved July 5.
- ^ Arrington, Michael, December 29, 2007. Glogster - Like Geocities (in a bad way), And In Flash. TechCrunch. Retrieved July 8.
- ^ Lowensohn, Josh, January 4, 2008. Glogster brings glitter graphic blogging to the masses. WebWare. Retrieved July 1.
- ^ Yahoo Finance, May 13, 2009. Glogster EDU and DetentionSlip.org Announce "What's Wrong With This Picture?" Contest[dead link]. Yahoo Finance. Retrieved July 8.
- ^ a b PitchEngine, June 16, 2009. Glogster EDU Partners with SchoolTube to Enable School-Safe File Sharing. PitchEngine. Retrieved July 12.
- ^ WebExpo. Startup Show - soutěž pro startupy. WebExpo. Retrieved July 1.