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Fri, May 25 2012
Friend a minister
STRAIGHT FLUSH: Nikolai Mladenov is clearly the most prolific minister when it comes to social networking, with an active Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog and a website. A close second is Roumyana Zheleva, with a Facebook profile, a fan page, a blog and a website.
Photo: Rene Beekman
WILL THE REAL BOIKO PLEASE STAND UP? Boiko Borissov appears to have Facebook-schizophrenia. With multiple user pages containing his name and photo, it is impossible to tell which one is real.
Photo: Rene Beekman
CULTURE HEROES: The two most senior Cabinet ministers Bozhidar Dimitrov (63) and Vezhdi Rashidov (58) had Facebook pages created specifically for the 2009 national Parliament election campaign. The pages make not a single reference to what either of the two men did before the 2009 elections.
Photo: Rene Beekman
Banking ties
While some Facebook profiles of ministers have been very easy to find, others seem to value their privacy a bit more. Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov’s profile does not have a photo on it and his privacy settings are such that the page only shows a selection of his friends. Even so, the network seems to give sufficient clues about whose profile this is. Listed as friends are Kalin Hristov, Latchezar Bogdanov, Bisser Boev, Rumiana Bachvarova and Nona Karalashvili, among others.
As Sofia Echo Media, the publisher of The Sofia Echo, is part of the Economedia publishing group, we know the profile of former Economedia chief executive Bisser Boev is real. If we assume that Hristov is the advisor to the BNB governor, Bogdanov the IME economist, Bachvarova the director of Marketlinks who is currently slated as chef-de-cabinet, while a simple Google search shows the head of the Department for Sustainable Development at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources in Georgia is called Karalashvili, and we add to that the little detail that the Simeon Djankov (yes, he does spell his name that way) profile is said to be a fan of celebrities/public figure Boiko Borissov, we can be pretty sure the Facebook profile belongs to Bulgaria’s new Finance Minister.
But he is not sharing anything else with us, unless we become his friends.
LinkedIn
Social networks outside Facebook seem to be very unpopular with Bulgarian politicians. The most prolific Bulgarian politician when it comes to social networking is without a doubt Mladenov, who seems to be the only Cabinet member to use Twitter, but also has an extensive LinkedIn profile.
Besides Mladenov, it is little surprise that on the business and career networking site LinkedIn, only former World Bank Dyankov and former general manager at Lindner Immobilien, currently Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev have LinkedIn profiles, though both are extremely short and each has only one friend, or, in LinkedIn-speech, connection.
How we found them
In searching for the social network profiles of Bulgaria’s new ministers, we have attempted to respect privacy settings of the people involved as much as possible. All webpages we mention can be found without the need to register or log in on any of the sites. Some information is only available to registered users. We have not used any information that would only be available to friends. To find individual ministers, we first searched for their names in Bulgarian. When that did not yield any results, we tried the name in Latin, using standard, official transliteration. If we were still unable to find the page we were looking for, we would try different alternative spelling variations and generally be creative in transliterating the names into Latin.
Nikolai Mladenov consistently spells his first name as Nickolay, while Tsvetan Tsvetanov turned out to be a fairly common name that, when spelled as Cvetan Cvetanov, would
return 22 profiles on Facebook - none of which appeared to be the one we were looking for, although many of the profiles did not have any photos
or other information at all.In the end, a profile on a social networking site is only as useful as it easy to find.
While some Facebook profiles of ministers have been very easy to find, others seem to value their privacy a bit more. Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov’s profile does not have a photo on it and his privacy settings are such that the page only shows a selection of his friends. Even so, the network seems to give sufficient clues about whose profile this is. Listed as friends are Kalin Hristov, Latchezar Bogdanov, Bisser Boev, Rumiana Bachvarova and Nona Karalashvili, among others.
As Sofia Echo Media, the publisher of The Sofia Echo, is part of the Economedia publishing group, we know the profile of former Economedia chief executive Bisser Boev is real. If we assume that Hristov is the advisor to the BNB governor, Bogdanov the IME economist, Bachvarova the director of Marketlinks who is currently slated as chef-de-cabinet, while a simple Google search shows the head of the Department for Sustainable Development at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources in Georgia is called Karalashvili, and we add to that the little detail that the Simeon Djankov (yes, he does spell his name that way) profile is said to be a fan of celebrities/public figure Boiko Borissov, we can be pretty sure the Facebook profile belongs to Bulgaria’s new Finance Minister.
But he is not sharing anything else with us, unless we become his friends.
Social networks outside Facebook seem to be very unpopular with Bulgarian politicians. The most prolific Bulgarian politician when it comes to social networking is without a doubt Mladenov, who seems to be the only Cabinet member to use Twitter, but also has an extensive LinkedIn profile.
Besides Mladenov, it is little surprise that on the business and career networking site LinkedIn, only former World Bank Dyankov and former general manager at Lindner Immobilien, currently Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev have LinkedIn profiles, though both are extremely short and each has only one friend, or, in LinkedIn-speech, connection.
How we found them
In searching for the social network profiles of Bulgaria’s new ministers, we have attempted to respect privacy settings of the people involved as much as possible. All webpages we mention can be found without the need to register or log in on any of the sites. Some information is only available to registered users. We have not used any information that would only be available to friends. To find individual ministers, we first searched for their names in Bulgarian. When that did not yield any results, we tried the name in Latin, using standard, official transliteration. If we were still unable to find the page we were looking for, we would try different alternative spelling variations and generally be creative in transliterating the names into Latin.
Nikolai Mladenov consistently spells his first name as Nickolay, while Tsvetan Tsvetanov turned out to be a fairly common name that, when spelled as Cvetan Cvetanov, would
return 22 profiles on Facebook - none of which appeared to be the one we were looking for, although many of the profiles did not have any photos
or other information at all.In the end, a profile on a social networking site is only as useful as it easy to find.
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