October 2007 — Can Web 2.0 be a tool to support peace, multilingualism, European NGOs, social enterpreneurship, European enlargement and raise awareness about Neighbourhood policy? European Social Network http://www.mypacis.eu was launched in September as a positive answer to this question. Now, this European Social Network with a social agenda is available in more languages and offering new services, including free online languages lessons to make easier for Europeans to improve their language skills.
http://www.mypacis.eu is localised for English, German, Danish, Italian and Russian speakers. French, Spanish and all the other European languages should be available by April 2008. MyPacis.eu team is working on integrating into the personal messages tool an automatic translation tool, which will allow users with no common language to communicate with each other. “While we are aware of the current limitations of automatic translations” says Frank, community leader for this European social network, “they can be a starting point towards connecting Europeans. We aim to offer a range of solutions to promote multilingualism and communication, from localization of the site, to automatic translations to the use of auxiliary languages as Esperanto”.
After years of social networks used only for entertainment, it was time for mainstream social networking to come of age with a social agenda. Several benefits make this European Social Network unique: it is the only multilingual social networking site which aims to bring together both agents of change and recreational users of social networks, to foster dialogue and peace; it has a social agenda, it has been built to contribute to a better society and not to sell eyeballs to advertisers; it makes a honest effort to make easier and more effective communications among Europeans; it mixes the recreational side of Web 2.0, with funny videos etc, with the opportunity to be informed citizens. Users can register as female, male, NGO or social enterpreneur.
“Previous generations moved from the Guthemberg Galaxy to the Global Village, and now from there we are going to make the P2P Continent prosper,” says Frank. “We guess this expression would have been liked by Marshall McLuhan, famous Canadian communications theorist; he was using toponyms, such as Guthemberg Galaxy to Global Village, to identify particular periods in the history of communication. Also, for playing with words in his ‘the media is the massage’ (instead of message, also readable as mass age). The “P2P Continent” sounds like a reasonable label for our age, with P2P generated content.”
Younger generations are the ones who will affected the most by changes in Europe, and a social network is a media effective to reach them, and still accessible to more mature users. “We can now talk about a Generation-E(urope), made by young Europeans for whom a peaceful Europe is not a goal to achieve or a recent accomplishment, but the only reality they saw since they were born,” says Frank. “Luckily, they have no first-hand experience of Cold War, Communism or conflict in their home countries. Their age span varies based on their country’s accession to European Union. Our services are designed to serve all Europeans, but also flexible to meet the expectations of Generation-E.”
“To take full advantage of Web 2.0 opportunities and limit weaknesses, we need to be aware both of the potential and limitations, benefits and risks they carry,” continues Frank. “One risk is that information recorded in older media may have limited reach on wide audiences. For this reason, it is important for agents of change to translate and localize older media they consider important into Web 2.0, to take the good from the past and avoid making old mistakes again. In same case, the best way to preserve memory is to keep it in the form which was originally meant to be, just using technological means to transfer old content into new media, in some case to maintain the original message it will be necessary to redesign its whole form.”
Users on MyPacis.eu can discuss European enlargement, European Neighbourhood and other policies; relax chatting and exchanging private messages with each other; publish pictures, write in their blogs, create events; get free Italian lessons offered on http://www.mypacis.eu/profile.php?ID=22 Users are invited to volunteer to localize the social network in their own language, and to donate scripts to make the site even more useful. Volunteers play an important role in the growth of this European social network. Also, MyPacis team publishes a blog about best Web 2.0 tools blog on http://blog.mypacis.com/
About MyPacis.eu
http://www.mypacis.eu is a European Social Network with a social agenda: promoting peace by linking Europeans together. It is an open source, integrated and multilingual social network, developed using Web 2.0 tools with a European prospective. It is available in as Social Network in English, German Social Network, Italian Social Network, Russian Social Network, with new languages to be released soon.
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