Bureaucrats Now Have a Social Network of Their Own in Russia

It is quite obvious that the social networking boom of the recent years has resulted in abundance of social networks that probably cover all the niches of society. It is quite obvious that in some countries (like Russia where I live) this process is taking longer than it did in the US because all the trends arrive here with a noticeable delay. So while the US has social networks for everything already, in Russia we are now witnessing yet another novelty – a social network intended specifically for state officials.

The social network is promptly named Gosbook (where ‘Gos’ is part of the Russian word that stands for ‘state’), features a proud ‘beta’ tag in the logo and has all the features we have come to expect of a social network – user profiles, blogs, groups, and friends who are colleagues here to stick to a generally more official tone of the site.

While usually everything that is developed by request of any state or regional authorities tends to be overpriced in the country – corruption is a huge problem in Russia that I don’t expect officials will really want to discuss online or offline. For some reason this project is not an expensive one: it only took about $30 thousand in development and probably zero in marketing and PR as all the Russian blogs and TV networks are only glad to feature a story about the social network for officials – especially the official one that is told to be supported by the president Medvedev himself.

The target audience for the project is supposed to be those bureaucrats who deeply care about the future of the country and want to participate in discussions regarding various issues that exist. Users of the social network can join various groups based on the specific agencies they belong to. They can also participate in discussions but for now the discussions don’t seem to be active at all and have a maximum of 5 participants – and that for the most absurd topics where everyone probably wants to add their 2 cents on how absurd the topic is.

The interesting part about the social network is that it is not some invite-only website where you need to provide some evidence of working for government authorities in order to be able to sign up. In reality anyone can submit an application to register by submitting a bio with valid data and – if approved by the website administration – participate in the discussions there. True, statuses on the website include newbies or experts and the users will only be able to participate in the website to the extend allowed by their specific rights. But anyway the project has a chance of becoming yet another platform for regular citizens to criticize the authorities and display their opinions in public – provided that the bureaucrats will come here and actually want to listen (something I am not quite sure I want to believe).

But the most important question that internet users and TV reporters now want to ask is exactly when officials are supposed to participate in this social network by writing their blogs or comments in communities. It is quite obvious that they have plenty of other regular activities in their offices and given how Russia now lives, I have a feeling that they don’t have enough time even for those direct responsibilities. And if they now start chatting in the social network instead of fulfilling their duties, people in the country have no reasons to be enthusiastic about this new initiative.