Edu VanHub:Blogging and Social Media (Part 1)

Hello, I am Jor, and I am Vega. We are bloggers, as well as the speakers of the Edu VanHub program. Our collaboration with this program, which disseminates media literacy, started in 2018. Edu VanHub is a mobile school, which has already passed 18000 kms and spread media literacy among young people, especially those who live in rural areas. Just so you can visualize those 18000 kms, it’s enough to remember that the distance between Yerevan and Los Angeles is 11000 kms. The word edu is the

short version of the english word education, Van is the symbol of our program and is also a type of a road vehicle. And Hub is basically the node, thus it’s a mobile educational hub. The program is the first of its kind in the whole CIS territory, it has managed to conduct lessons not only in different regions of Armenia, but also in Georgia, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Moreover, our team has visited those countries in our van. You think it was easy to spend so many sleepless nights on

the road? No, it wasn’t easy. It is now your turn, follow our video courses, learn new skills and new knowledge, which are going to be especially useful for you in the boundless digital world. By the way, after watching video courses on Edu VanHub you will have a chance to participate in a competition. Here are the rules: you should watch all 10 videos, then we will send you quiz questions and a task. After answering the questions and completing the task our team will choose several partici

pants and they will have a chance to win action cameras, tickets to 2-day seminars etc.. During our first video course we are going to talk about social media networks and their history. We will present blogging along with its types, and we will tell you some fun facts and present the Erasmus+ program. As I’ve already mentioned, I am Vega. I fell in love with the media sector the first day I started working and that was long ago in 2014. I know, I still look young, however unlike me, in 2014

was constantly looking for media outlets that would give me a free internship. If desired, you can start today, because the internet is giving everyone this opportunity. Anyone can become a blogger. I took my first steps in the world of blogging.. or vlogging, no I think blogging sounds better. Anyways, I took my first steps 10 years ago. It has already been many years that I’m travelling in Armenia, and not only in Armenia, because the Edu VanHub program has given me the opportunity to tr

avel to many countries. I’m discovering new places and new experiences. The desire to tell people about my travels and experiences made me want to create my vlog and share my stories with people, mostly through videos. That is why I am called a videoblogger. Vega, who is your favourite vlogger? Honestly, my favourite vloggers and bloggers change constantly. Currently I’m mostly watching entertaining vlogs to simply lift my mood. My current favourite is probably David Dobrik. He usually po

sts entertaining videos and the most important part is is that he familiarizes his audience with talented and interesting people and sometimes he helps those who are in need, be it financially or in other sense. And who is your favourite? To be honest I usually try to watch educational vloggers and unlike you, I prefer watching Nas Daily, I’m not sure how familiar I am with him, but the motivation he has given me is very big and I’m mostly motivated by him while shooting videos. In general,

for the opportunity of blogging we should thank the father of blogging: Justin Hall, who created Links.net in 1994, which has later become the first video blog in history. By the way, during that time a student at Swarthmore College had no idea that he had created the first blog in history, because the notion of blogging itself didn’t exist until 1997, when an american named John Burger created the term blogger. By the way, he was also a blogger. Actually the idea of blogging is simple

r than you think. Blogging-logging the web. How have we not guessed it sooner? However, in the first years of its creation blogging wasn’t very common, it started getting popular only after 2000. The very popular website called WordPress, for example, was created in 2003. Vlogging started spreading more along with the development of social media. For example, after 2006, when twitter was created. By the way, the twitter that is now so popular, was only to send messages to each other. The o

nly difference was that one person could message multiple friends at the same time. Currently twitter is not only popular for microblogging, but it’s is also one of the most well-known social platforms for political news. Even some important social organizations and politicians prefer twitter twitter for sharing important information. Along with the creation, development and the change of social media, new types of blogs came up, suchs as Personal blogs Lifestyle blogs Travel blogs Food blo

gs Informational blogs Entertainment blogs Fashion blogs Educational blogs etc. Over the years bloggers moved from text-only blogs to other blog formats. For instance, to Pinterest and Instagrams photo blogs, podcasts and also video blogs; vlogs. By the way, the video published by Adam Kontras in 2000, is considered the first ever vlog. If only Adam knew, what his 15-seconds long video would do, In the first years of its creation vlogging was evolving much slower than blogging, however, it

was up until 2005, when youtube was created. By the way, this year was remarkable in the history of blogging with another event. That year, Gerard Graff received an accreditation for the first time from the White House, which was very important, since he was the first blogger who got that opportunity without being a journalist for some website. And a few years after that, in 2009, event the White House launched their own blog. Today, when speaking about types of blogging, we can surely say

that they are directly related to the choice of a platform. Since traditional text blogs, such as those on WordPress are not relevant anymore as they were years ago, the older generation is adjusting their content according to the chosen platform. They might also choose the platform first and think about what they can create after that, or they come up with the theme of the blog and try figuring out which platform is more suitable for that. Let’s start with the most popular platform in

Armenia: Facebook. Back in 2004, a group of college friends, led by Mark Zuckerberg, decided to create a platform that could become a connecting link for the students of Harvard University. Yes, you guessed it right, that platform is the very well-known Facebook, the initial version of which was called FaceMesh, that was created in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg and his friends as a connecting platform for the university students. Unfortunately, it had a sad ending. Student Mark Zuckerberg wrote a

code for FaceMash that used photos of couples, so that the visitors could judge their attractiveness. There arose a question: where did Mark find those photos? This is what he did. He hacked the university database and copied pictures of people to use them on his site. The website, of course, grew rapidly, had numerous visitors, many winners. However, after a couple of days the website was shut down by the Harvard university administration. Mark was charged with a number of offences and wa

s expelled, however, the charges got dropped later. Mark didn’t give up, he started writing new code and created Facebook during the next semester in 2004. Young Mark had no idea that only in a few years Facebook would become a platform connecting 3 billion people worldwide. Can you imagine? 3 billion people. Today, facebook is more multifunctional compared to other social networks. Here you can write short messages, post your photos and videos, create groups, pages as well as events. That i

s, if used correctly you will get the most out of Facebook. As you may know, Instagram has also been a part of Facebook’s Meta platform since 2012. By the way, you should not mistake the Meta platform for the Facebook app. Facebook is a separate social media platform, and Meta is a company which owns Facebook, Whatsapp and 92 other companies. Instagram was created in 2010 by a Stanford graduate named Kevin Systrom. An app created to simply share photos has later become an inseparable part o

f people’s life. Tired of political texts, long and difficult sentences, people were seemingly looking for lighter and more entertaining content. At first, it was popular for sharing pictures of your food or your everyday outfits, however people nowadays have more serious blogs, such as psychological, social and even political. Despite the fact that many people also use it to write lengthy texts, Instagram still provides the best quality visual content. Visual content and especially video b

logging would not be where they are now if it wasn’t for Youtube. The author of the first video on Youtube is Jawed Karim, who also happens to be one of the co-authors of the app along with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. He created the application on February 14, 2005, romantic, isn’t it? Former PayPal employees thought that internet users would be interested in posting their family videos somewhere and later they turned out to be right. The website had 30000 visitors on the day it was launch

ed and that was just the experimental version, the official version was released a little later. In the year of its creation Youtube would have up to 2 million daily views, however, only a year later that number increased to 25 million. Along with the views, the costs and the problems also increased, numerous companies would complain to Youtube about unregulated copyrighting. The authors started looking for possible buyers and that was when Google decided to buy it for 1.65 million dollar

s after their failed attempt at a video platform called Google Videos. By the way, the first video to reach the 1 million view milestone was a snippet of Cristiano Ronaldo’s training sessions. Here it is. 2018 was a revolutionary year for blogging and video content, that’s when the app musical.ly became TikTok and spread worldwide, especially among young people. During this period the short videos became the most popular and demanded format. TikTok got so popular that Facebook created its

own “TikTok” on Instagram after their failed attempts to buy TikTok. We are, of course, talking about Reels, which outshone the less efficient IG TV. Even the video platform giant Youtube gave in and created Youtube Shots. Even though Youtube and Instagram are lavish concerning their algorithms, meaning they provide more visibility and more views, in the case of Youtube, even 100 million dollars has been provided to compete with TikTok, the Chinese app keeps being the most popular app for

this format. Moreover, apart from previous up-to-1 minute videos TikTok now allows you to upload up-to 5 minute videos, this can be seen as a counterattack against Youtube. Jor, what is your favourite social media network or networks as a blogger, and why? Honestly, I am using many social networking sites, for example Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, but my most favourite and preferred of is Facebook because I have been blogging since 2011, when Facebook was very relevant. It has become a goo

d platform for me to do blogging. And what is yours? In my case, I guess my favourites are Instagram and Youtube. I think Instagram is currently the most positive one among all social networks and there’s less negative content, it’s just easier to filter the content you’re following. I find Youtube the most comfortable platform as the audience rates good quality content there better than anywhere else in my opinion. I am Gevorg, the founder of Edu VanHUb program and the president of non-g

overnmental organization garagErasmus4Yerevan. I will try to familiarize you with the Erasmus+ program and the opportunities it can give, which by the way there is plenty of. Erasmus+ is an exchange program for young people and students. It is a program created by the European Union aimed at the educational, youth, sport and training sectors. The full name of ERASMUS is a bit difficult, I shall open it: “EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students” . «European

community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students» The program started in 1987 and was named after the Dutch philosopher and a scholar of Renaissance Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. During the Renaissance era Erasmus and his good friend Thomas More had become the center of European intellectual life. As the prototype of the current program, in medieval Europe the idea of learning learning by traveling prospered, one of the pioneers of which was Joseph Edison. He traveled all

over Europe and even beyond. During that time the idea that youth could travel and get plenty of skills through liberal education started becoming popular. If you haven’t had an Erasmus+ experience, I recommend you do and I am going to list some advantages of it. If you haven’t been abroad, this is a good opportunity to be there and live as local and feel the culture. Many international organizations have shown that volunteering or learning abroad abroad heavily contributes to one’s person

al and professional growth. Participating in Erasmus+ programs develops various skills, such as self-discipline, communication, teamwork and of course a number of professional skills depending on the type of Erasmus program you’re participating in. Another advantage is having friends from all over the world and of course a professional network that will be spread all over the world and will help you grow as a professional. Another international study has shown that young people who parti

cipate in the Erasmus + programs get employed easier. The Erasmus+ experience has a really very positive effect both in terms of professional growth and personal growth… in every sense. A couple of interesting facts As I have already mentioned, Facebook was a student platform. Only those who could confirm they were students could register here. The first photo posted on Instagram was the picture of the owner's dog. Back in the day Zuckerberg offered to buy myspace for 75 million dollars.

Fortunately for Zuckerberg, myspace declined the offer and Facebook got bigger and became one of the most popular websites and myspace simply turned into a music platform. Currently the most followed person on twitter is the former president of the United States Barack Obama. More than 500 million people use Instagram daily.