American programmer Mark Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook website, a communication platform for students of Harvard College, on February 4, 2004. Very soon, students from other universities and schools started using the site, which quickly expanded beyond America. Facebook, Inc. was founded in the summer of the same year.
Facebook is now open to Internet users around the world. In particular, according to Alexa.com, Facebook is the seventh most visited portal in Ukraine and the second in the United States.
This newspaper came to Facebook in May 2011, and our page can be found at facebook.com/TheDayNewspaper. In a relatively short time, it attracted tens of thousands of loyal readers.
“Facebook’s share of Ukrainian audience is constantly increasing and will obviously overtake competitors [Russian social networks. – Ed.] soon. Unlike these competitors, Facebook attracts mostly highbrow audience which is The Day’s audience as well,” this newspaper’s web editor Artem Zhukov said. “For us, Facebook has become not only a tool for distributing high quality content in a thoughtful environment, but also a platform for receiving feedback and maintaining communication with readers. By the way, Facebook helps us find not only highbrow readers, but interesting contributors, too. It was our editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna’s page on this network where we first met people who went on to become The Day’s popular bloggers, such as Oleksandr Prylypko, Heorhii Kostiuchenko, and Anna Cherkaska. We also use Facebook to disseminate our infographics, intellectual calendar, videos of Den-TV project. All these activities as well as our journalists’ special reports from Maidan contributed to increases in audiences of Den/The Day’s print and web versions alike. In particular, our Facebook audience increased by the factor of 2 to 2.5 during the Euromaidan protests and recent developments, and the number of active users, who comment, ‘like’ and repost, increased by an order of magnitude! Active feedback is evidence of our readers’ trust in the publication and the product that we jointly create. We are holding regular creative contests, surveys and special events, rewarding activity with intellectual gifts. We give everyone an opportunity to make a personal contribution to shaping of the content on the page with thousands of readers.”
The Day’s Facebook team is now preparing a new project for our readers which will see a special discussion platform for communication established. Our contributor Oleksandr Prylypko will be its moderator. It will invite The Day’s friends to active discussions of the major events happening in the country. Therefore, any Internet user will be able to propose issues for discussion and join discussions in the comments to topics raised in this newspaper. Watch this space and join us at www.facebook.com/thedaynewspaper!
