Vbox7, a Bulgarian video sharing website that operates on principles similar to YouTube, enabling visitors to watch clips of everything from popular music, bad driving and the antics of school-leavers, is now the country’s second most-visited website.

Vbox7 was launched in July 2006. It was acquired by the Net Info.BG (NI) company, in a transaction recorded in the commercial register on October 15 2007.

The owners of Vbox7 told The Sofia Echo that the website had become the second most-visited Bulgarian internet site “at lightning speed”. Web counter Tyxo.bg provided the data.

Currently Vbox7 has more than 700 000 registered users and about 200 000 unique visitors a day. The monthly number of visits is 12 million and, according to the Tyxo.bg statistics, Vbox7 covers big part of the “active internet population”.

“Vbox7 represents the digital services generation of the web 2.0 wave, where the visitors generate the site content,” NI said. The project’s main aim is to facilitate the sharing, finding and watching online video content. “As a concept, currently the site follows the same line,” NI said.

Asked by The Sofia Echo about NI’s plans for development of Vbox7 after acquiring its majority stake, both sides (NI and Vbox7) said that the site would look for new formats to popularise big media channels content and new business models to co-operate with the “big content owners”.

According to one of the Vbox7 creators, this change “opens new horizons for Vbox7”. He said that NI’s experience would assist the implementation of new ideas, which would improve the project.

“The web site will continue developing in the same direction aiming at providing more personalised, more qualitative and a bigger amount of content,” NI said.

Currently Vbox7 covers very wide subjects, starting from serious videos to accidental funny clips. Most of the content is Bulgarian. It is organised with tags such as “hobbies”, “family”, “party”, “sport”, “funny”, “cars” and “advertising”. The visitors can submit a video response, comment on and vote for videos.

Vbox7 classes the 40 most watched videos of the day every day, as well as the 100 most active users. Users vote for videos in the categories “qualitative videos today” and “selected videos collection”.

NI said that Vbox7’s creators also had an online blog, where they respond to questions, and give details of improvements and temporary web site problems.

Asked whether NI plans an English version of Vbox7, the company told The Sofia Echo that currently it is concentrating on the Bulgarian market and had no such plans.

NI said that in the spirit of the digital services of the web 2.0 wave, Vbox7 encourages sharing content generated by the users and on this way the website refrains from active interference in giving content to the audience. It encourages self-expression and “gives new meaning of the online visitors experience, transforming them into active creators of internet content”.

“At the same time this content needs to correspond the Vbox7 ethical rules,” NI said. Any visitor who noticed something unacceptable can report it using a special web link. “Users who regularly and knowingly violate the rules can be banned,” NI said.

Moreover, the company said that it had no plans for major changes at present, and “the website will continue responding its users’ needs”.

There are no editors to check the video content uploaded on Vbox7.

“The website relies on reports on irregularities from users and in this way it strives to keep site content within the framework of rules of ethics,” NI said.

Vbox7’s audience is wide, mainly young people between 15 and 35 years old. NI said that these were people who had the free time to look at, appreciate and share new things, making them the natural audience of such a website.

Asked whether Vbox7 management was aware of and liked the comparison that people make between their product and YouTube, which has similar content, NI said that Vbox7 was meant to serve the Bulgarian market’s needs, and this market had requirements and specifications different to those of YouTube.

“The users’ opinion and assessment are more important for us, and we are happy that Vbox7 succeeds to be in line with their need to share video content online,” both Vbox7 and NI said.

They said that future investments in the website would be used to put into practice new ideas from which users would benefit.