The Great Migration
Published Postimees 13 Sept 2012
By Abdul Turay
Recently, I asked a group of young people, if they have Facebook
accounts. They looked at me like I was mad.
"That's like asking us, do we have a noses?" one of them
said.
"Come to think of it even people who don't have noses have
Facebook accounts," another said to much laughter.
Last
week 6th
July, Kanal 2 did a program "Minu Facebooki sõbrad". It
was a light hearted look at the social network phenomenon. But the
whole Facebook is king challenges some of our cherished beliefs about
modern Estonia.
10 years ago when I first visited here, Estonia was more advanced
than my own country the United Kingdom. It was a revelation. Estonia
was my introduction to whole concept of social networking.
Rate.ee was founded in May 2002, that's a year before Orkut, or
MySpace, two years before Facebook.
I so wasn't impressed when I first saw Facebook.
"Social
networking,..... they have this in Estonia already for years, what is
the big deal?"
Rate.ee was as successful as it was because it was "cool"
for teenagers but it never made the transition that Facebook made to
being a useful tool of communication for Generation Xers.
Then suddenly it wasn't cool any more. Estonians made the first great
migration.
"We
never lost the leadership of the market," Andrei Korobeinik
Rate.ee founder told me.
"It's
was like Myspace and Facebook. Myspace was the market leader. The
problem with Myspace was popularity. It's
started with teenagers who went there because it was cool and when
parents went there it wasn't cool any more. That was actually the
same situation with rate.ee."
For some reason, I don't exactly know why, the first great migration
was not to Facebook or Myspace but Google's Orkut. Whilst in the UK
and the US and Scandinavian countries we were all using Facebook by
2005-6 already.
Orkut is horrible. It looks horrible, its functionally is horrible.
But some of us were kind of forced to use it because Estonian friends
and family were on it. In 2008, the typical expat in Estonia would
have both an Orkut account and a Facebook account. It was a
nuisance.
When in Rome...and all that.
In 2008 when I came here to live, the majority of Estonians, even
young people hadn't heard of Facebook.
But then in about 2010, Estonians suddenly realised that Orkut was
horrible and the second great migration began. And when Estonian
moved over they didn't keep a separate Orkut account they simply
closed their Orkut accounts and made the switch to Facebook
permanent.
Today thirty seven per cent of the population of Estonia are Facebook
users.
Consider the situation with our neighbours. In Sweden 53 percent of
of the population are Facebook users, in Finland it's 41 per cent,
in Denmark it's 32 per cent of the population.
Russians
are almost exclusively using Russian language social networking. Only
4 per cent of the population use Faccebook, though this is a larger
number on absolute terms, 6 million people.
Ukraine
and Belarus are similar, 4 per cent. This situation is unlikely to
change.
Latvians are still using their own Latvian or Russian language social
networking sites. Only 16 per cent use Facebook.
In you want evidence that Estonia is more Nordic than Eastern
European, this is an example.
In Lithuania 30 per cent of the population use Facebook. The
explanation is that unlike Latvia (or Estonia) Lithuania does not
have a large Russian speaking minority.
Surely "the Facebook great migration" is then a good thing?
It shows Estonia as moving in tandem with the West. It also has the
practical advantage of making it easier for Estonians to form bonds
with the rest of the West, making social and business connections
that may bring investment or create export opportunities.
Well yes and no!
If you haven't spotted it already, the great Facebook migration means
that Estonia has gone from being as leader to follower.
Whereas five years ago Estonia was ahead of the curve now it is
behind it. Instead of inventing stuff that others are using,
Estonians are now using stuff invented elsewhere.
Estonia has become e-backwards. And it is not just in Social
networking that Estonia is falling behind. It's all IT.
"The
general public think we are leaders of E-government in the EU and the
World but actually we are not," Korobeinik said.
"We
are not looking for foreign experiences. The UK is way more advanced
and still they come to learn. Our politicians don't understand other
countries are way more advanced."
"Our
systems are not as good as in other country because we did these
things earlier. ID cards, you would do them different nowadays.
"The
tax department for example. There was not such thing as cloud
service. Five years ago US and UK were way behind now they are way
ahead."
Korobeinik
said that lack of vision by the government is behind all this.
"We
would keep our number one position if companies were able to export
e-government solutions.
"Could
you imagine if the US tax department was developed in Estonia?
"That
would be a huge thing. Or if elections in UK are made with local
e-voting systems. Estonian companies can't export them because of
contract and the government's never going to export because there is
not a single person in government who is interested, he is not
getting anything from that."
"The
Government should own the license and company gets everything else."
There is another bad side to this. Think about why Social networking
exist. The web is popular because it creates spaces on the internet
were people can operate in their own language and culture.
Go to the cinema and you basically have to watch American movies.
That's OK... sort of. People don't have to go to the cinema if they
don't want to. Estonians actually don't go to the cinema, American
teenagers go every week, sometimes two or three times a week and if
they like a film they will see it again.
But now we have a situation that even if you want to hook up with
friends or put on an Estonian literature event, somewhere in
California, somebody gets paid.
I'm not sure if this is bad, but it can't be good.
What's to be done?
Actually nothing. People have voted with their feet and that battle
is over. IT leaders like Korobeinik are not that interested in social
networking any more, the future is mobile.
"We
won't go back to roots. We will try to use competency in other areas.
Mobile will be way more important than internet because it provides
possibilities. You can interact will people in real time. This is new
area we don't have a lot of successful mobile services around.
"It
is not a very exciting opportunity to have the number one social
network in Estonia. You can earn a few million Euros and that's it.
Much more exciting is to do something globally," he said.
