Hello world! Your attention please! Please fasten your seatbelts and update your RSS readers, as we bring you the latest, highly relevant and unique content on Social Media topics primarily in Central and Eastern Europe. Why should you be interested? Read more and find out!
I remember the Internet in the late 90s – it was new for everyone and opened up the world in front of our eyes. The Global Village feeling hit us, and we used to look for communities based on our passions. And these communities were very international. My own website was in English first, but in 2002 I switched to Czech when most of my friends and schoolmates start using the web. And I wasn’t so famous as to have an audience that would benefit from my poor English.
And surely that is not just my experience. In Europe, each country has its own specifics, and national borders, determined by language barriers, are clearly visible. On the other hand, everybody of our generation understands English. So this creates common ground and we all read the same sources – usually from the US. But we don’t know each other. Czech start-ups rarely know about their Hungarian counterparts, Polish social media gurus have no clue about Romanian start-ups, and Austrian conference organizers still offer hotels to guys from Bratislava (though the Slovak capital is one hour’s drive away). And we struggle hard to break through in California, as most of us have never considered the option of going to neighboring countries first (well, it’s clear that is not the only reason).
Babel Guide is my attempt to change this. Let’s have a place to share what we know. I have barely started, but I have already found so many interesting people that the world should know about – and they are stuck in a local arena. I know how stupid it feels to know that your products/services/skills are great, but your potential is limited due to the size of your market. Social media is very local industry, so for a campaign to work in another country, it’s not enough to merely translate the message.
Babel Guide will be here to inform people about great projects, personalities, news and insider information, mostly in the CEE region. It’s a platform open for discussion and sharing. My vision is to publish articles of a value that lasts more than few days. I want to cover topics in depth and believe that there are still people out there who appreciate texts longer than 500 characters. You don’t have to read everything, but if you look for something – let’s say an analysis of social media monitoring tools in a particular country – one page is the summary of the article, not the article itself. Many of these texts will be of a promotional nature – and I believe that is right: they should praise the good stuff created here. But in each case this will be clear, and the connection will be shown, so there will be no hidden ads.
In the beginning, there might be slightly more articles about Czech market, since I live in the Czech Republic and know the Czech market best. But it should be an open platform for everyone in CEE, and others are welcome to join the team. Lets burn down the walls between us, it’s been about time.
And of course – follow us on Twitter, become fans on Facebook, subscribe to RSS and spread the news. I hope you will like it.