Armenian users active on Twitter and Facebook, lose interest in blogs

PanARMENIAN.Net - Over the past 2 years, a number of unsuccessful attempts were made at “artificial cultivation” of bloggers within frameworks of various programs and grants, according to blogger Tigran Kocharyan. As he told a news conference in Yerevan, although the practice has been rather effective in other countries, various projects envisaging training for future bloggers did not yield expected results, “artificial cultivation” of bloggers being a hard task. As blogger Sedrak Mkrtchyan noted, for his part, a tendency of optimization is becoming more obvious in current blogosphere, with shortening of post lengths and decrease of reader rate. “Twitter and Facebook, with one-line news and status opportunity are gaining popularity with users,” he said.

The Armenian Wikipedia is 90th by the number of articles. According to statistics of Wikipedia, which is updated on a daily basis, the Armenian language segment of the encyclopedia - http://hy.wikipedia.org – contains 12,991 articles. The number of registered users of Wikipedia from Armenia reached 10,219 people, including 167 active users. The encyclopedia is edited by six Armenian administrators. The Russian Wikipedia climbed up to the 8th place in the rankings (676,694 articles), due to a large project on articles about Russia’s rivers. Meanwhile, the Turkish segment of the encyclopedia is 22nd in the rankings, Persian is 31st, Azerbaijani is 48th and Georgian is 53rd.

Armenian Genocide Museum Institute hosted www.baku.am website presentation. As AGMI director Hayk Demoyan stated at the presentation, the trilingual website covers the social, political, cultural and business life of the Armenian community in Baku. “The website aims at providing Azerbaijan’s youth with alternative information on the history of Baku, where anti-Armenian agitation forbids mention of the role of Armenians in the history of Azerbaijan,” he stressed. Separate section is dedicated to photographs and documents covering the Armenian massacres of 1905, 1918 and 1990 in Baku. Creation of the website is a special tribute of respect to the memory of Armenians in Baku who fell victim to state orchestrated policy of intolerance and xenophobia provoked against Armenians in Azerbaijan.

254 schools of Armenia have their own web pages, including 56 schools of Yerevan. Lori and Shirak are leaders among Armenia’s regions by the number of schools (30 schools in each region) having their web pages, according to data placed on armedu.am Armenian educational portal. The RA Ministry of Education said that as of October 2010 around 81% of Armenian schools (1,180 schools) had access to Internet communication, including 937 schools, which are connected to a single school network of Armenia. Another 414 schools will be connected to the singe network in 2011.

Synopsis Armenia will sign an agreement on cooperation with the European Regional Educational Academy. Executive Director of Synopsis Armenia Hovik Musaelyan told journalists that the education will be implemented on the basis of the educational department of Synopsys. Thus, the company will sign an agreement with the fifth technical higher educational institution of Armenia. Students of the State Engineering University of Armenia, Yerevan State University, Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University and American University of Armenia already study at the company.

Armenian Defense Ministry hosted a presentation of the updated ministry website (www.mil.am). “We aimed to improve the quality of information provided through the use of updated technical means and alteration of website style,” Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said. The updated website aims to provide exhaustive information on defense sphere of Armenia, also strengthening army-society ties through interactive means. In future, we plan to find new means to increase public awareness of defense sphere through social networks. The 5 sections of the website will include official information and data on military–scientific and military-educational institutions.

Armenian Customs Service named the mobile phones and other data communication means the 7th in list of imported goods with the highest customs price. According to Customs Service-provided data, over 1 million of data communication means with a customs price of USD 81 million were imported to Armenia in 2010. The number of imported data communication means grew by 2,3 times compared with 2009; while their customs price increased by over 1,14 times. Meanwhile, the number of imported computers and SUs decreased by 1,6 times to comprise 578 items (USD 47 million 726 thousand customs price).

IBM corporation shows interest to Armenia’s IT market, according to Enterprise Incubator Foundation Director. As Bagrat Yengibaryan told a news conference, representatives of IBM aim to present e-government solutions in Armenia. However, as he noted, this is not the sole purpose of the visit. The corporation views Armenia not only as a market, but also as a partner for future development of products and solutions. As he remarked, the guests were interested in technology-related personnel skills and number in Armenia. “As of today, Armenia is presented as a regional center in IT sector. Companies like Synopsys and National Instruments are presented here, Microsoft Innovation Center was launched, so IBM is unwilling to stay behind,” Yengibaryan said.