One of the sites making waves in Poland at the moment is Nasza Klasa, or Our Class. When we were there at Christmas, the whole family was getting very excited about it – reconnecting with old friends and giggling at old pictures. A lot of fun.
It’s interesting that this social network is even needed. Lots of local / native language sites and networks do exist, not only in Poland, particularly in the Far East for instance… this is one area where sites like Facebook sometimes fail. Poland in particular has its own instant messaging network (Gadu-Gadu, on which I have an account but never seem to be able to login using Adium) and other reinventions of the otherwise English-speaking wheel. Although some of my family are on Facebook, they are also enjoying using the Polish alternatives.
Nasza Klasa is suffering growing pains having gained several million users in a very short space of time… it’s particularly evident in the performance of the service, unfortunately. The site reminds me a lot of Friends Reunited, which I suppose was one of the earlier social networks. The idea is the same – reconnecting schoolfriends – and even the colours and layout are not dissimilar to the original Friends Reunited design. Looking at Friends Reunited now (part of the ITV empire, for some reason), it does look horribly dated. We complain about Facebook’s walled garden, but FR has absolutely no APIs or feeds, you have to visit the site to do anything, and you have to pay to be able to contact your friends. Thank goodness the web moved on.
I, being Polish, never really quite got what reallt fascinates people in Nasza Klasa. What is strange, is that all personal data is there visible for anyone to view…. Really idiotic in my opinion.
Among the millions of Poles there have also been some no quite wise celebs and politicians, who after receiving some phone-txt attention will probably think twice next time before publishing their details….
Well the personal information thing applies to many of the social networking sites – Facebook in particular makes a lot of information available by default and you need to either decide not to enter it, or deliberately go and make it only visible to your friends (and then be careful about who you add).
I’m surprised that people are being quite so open about what information they share! As you say, they will probably learn their lesson quickly.
So I’m interested to ask Pawel, which social networking sites do you use – do you have any presences and prefer them over Nasza Klasa, or do you avoid social sites in general?
Thanks for visiting!
Most people are really careless with nasza klasa. There are press reports, that banks and insurance companies have started screening their clientrs through nasza klasa….
I have a myspace account for ‘informal’ friends and keeping up with my favourite artists, And I have a linkedin account for job-related (which I got when I noticed the woman recruiting for a job I applied for had an account there – and added link to my cv).
Hi
We are pleased to meet people interested in poland.We run a big social network site that could boost your goal for joining all of your friends
http://www.forpolonia.com
social networks such as bebo, myspace , youtube already changed our life!
I recently discovered http://www.12pietro.pl in Poland. Live since 2 months and really promissing, they already quit a lot of members in the short period
[…] 18, 2009 · No Comments I’ve written before about how I find it fascinating that country-specific social networks and tools exist. I suppose I […]
I just read this and I was thinking what else people will do in the future. It could be in the future milestone like discovering America.