Kloop

Infobox Website
name = Kloop
url = http://www.kloop.kg/


commercial = No
type = Blog Social Network
registration =
owner = Kloop Media Foundation
author = 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 [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] .

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.

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 [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] .

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 [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] . 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 [ [http://kyrgyzstan.neweurasia.net/2007/08/09/kloop-attacked-by-hackers/ Kloop attacked by hackers] ] . The changes started being implemented in September 2007 with the introduction of the blogs rating and Kloop blogs search engine [ [http://kloop.kg/blogs/ Kloop blogs rating main page (in Russian)] ] .

Features for local users

While LiveJournal is the most popular virtual community among Russian speaking users [LiveJournal Demographics] , Kloop authors plan to attract users from Kyrgyzstan with cheap Internet expenses [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] . 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 [ [http://www.saimanet.kg/cgi-bin/rates/view?id=EEZVylpVuAOheEFfIH Price rates of the SaimaNet ADSL connection (in Russian)] ] .

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 [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] .

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 [ [http://www.mediaprovinces.kz/index.php?r=50&c=3142 V Форум молодых журналистов «Поколение.KZ»: ИнтернетиЯ в Караганде (in Russian)] ] . Kloop is also registered to take part in the International Weblog Awards.

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 [ [http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/07/19/kyrgyzstan-interview-with-bektour-iskender/ Interview with Bektour Iskender] ] .

References

External links

* [http://www.kloop.kg/ Kloop.kg]
* [http://bektour.kloop.kg/ Bektour Iskender's blog]