Expensive cul de sac for Bord na Gaidhlig with Gaelic Facebook
newsroom published this on 2:01 pm, Wednesday, 7th January, 2009Gaelic| News | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
It has been announced that Bord na Gaidhlig is spending £250,000 on setting up a Gaelic version of the social networking site, Facebook - mygaelic.com. The site is to be online by the end of this month and is said to have been two years in development by Glasgow-based Gillian Thompson. The site will have an instant translation to English for non-Gaelic speakers.
Naturally the initiative has attracted a fair amount of controversy. Some critics focus on the cost - which is frankly, extremely high. (The site had better be good.) Some point to existing market leaders in the social networking genre - Facebook itself and Myspace - both of whom already have Gaelic users.
What is the function of Bord na Gaidhlig? Is it to promote and develop the use of the Gaelic language and culture? What else?
How does creating an online ghetto do that? Surely the presence of gaelic linguists amongst people of other tongues in multicultural networks like Facebook and Myspace is infinitely more promotional than sequestering Gaelic speakers away in thier own online corner?
How many people, bumping into a Gaelic spaker’s page in Facebook and arrested by a photograph, or a video that looks like fun, or some clearly lively chitchat, will not be drawn to understand the language? How many people, though, will visit a linguistic ghetto? Would you?
And the site title ‘ mygaelic’ is infantilising.
In the end, Gaelic speakers and promoters of the Gaelic language - so much a part of Scots culture - have a decision to make:
- to bring their culture into everyday engagement with the wider world
- or to stay apart and hope to grow their community in apartness
This will be interesting for Argyll, given its own centrality to the Gaelic heritage.
NOTE: For Argyll pub;ished a furter item o this issue, raising issues of possible conflict of interest.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Might interest you and any journos that read this column to know that there is already an existing on-line Gaelic social network set up by a young Highlander. As far as this commentator knows he did it all for nothing and has no ambition to make any money out of it.
Here it is. Just have a quick look around, you don’t need Gaelic to see that you can do most things facebook can do.
http://abairthusa.ning.com/
There are other gaelic sites run by volunteers too that don’t cost a thing.
Shouldn’t Bord Na Gaidhlig be supporting the likes of that site with a small package of funding rather than spending £250,000. Is that a silly price - is price comparison investigation required?
January 7th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Looked at the site bodach2 highlights - and that it’s built on Ning. Funnily enough, when For Argyll was looking at the £250,000 Bord na Gaidhlig has thrown at mygaelic.com the Ning platform was one of the first things we thought of. It’s the obvious platform to use to build any social networking site. It offers streaming servers. It is hugely powerful and it won’t cost anything like that bizarre amount of money.
Apart from the cultural apartheid issue, For Argyll would agree that for every possible reason it makes a lot ore sense to support initiatives that are out there doing it - and that clearly know exactly what they’re doing.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I’ve been a member of a Gaelic group on Facebook for quite some time and in that time, I’ve seen hardly any messages posted on it. I know I’m partly guilty for not writing on it myself, but there are several hundred members and only the occasional post. And most of them are from Anglophones just wanting straight translations or people plugging websites rather than learners and speakers wanting to chat in Gaelic.
If this is the state of a group on the most popular networking site, I’d like to see who beyond the most hardcore of serial signuppers (you know the sort, they’ll register on any old rubbish) will go on a dedicated site for Gaelic only. The Ning platform’s far more promising than both Facebook groups and standalone websites– I know of a couple of successful local online communities built around it. And with hardly any Gaelic media out there beyond the BBC, how are they planning to market the thing?
I’ll be very interested to see what we get for the BnaG’s £250,000. If it’s just an install of some open-source social networking software rather than a completely bespoke solution there should be questions asked. And with hardly any Gaelic media out there beyond the BBC, how are they planning to market the thing?
January 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Great to see the energetic responses from bodach2 and naidheachdair.
Interesting that Ning’s got the support the strength of the platform deserves. The Chair of the For Argyll Board - admittedly a serious IT specialist - immersed himself in Ning for two weeks and built a social networking site for an Argyll community.
Some sharp analysis here from naidheachdair on marketing issues. How indeed?
And good to see that those who know will be running the rule on the technology delivered to BnaG for its cool quarter mill.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Have a look at this:
http://nairnshire.blogspot.com/2009/01/coming-soon-gaelic-facebook-style.html
Love the comment about Google being set up with much less and look where it is now