Rick Kelley: There are 2.2 million Bulgarians using Facebook
27 October 2011, Sofia, Bulgaria
More than 5000 top digital professionals from 45 countries in Central and Eastern Europe gathered at the third edition of the Webit Congress 2011. The Main Marketing Stage was the most popular and crowded place at the congress for yet another year. The opening was marked by a presentation given by Alain Heureux, President and CEO of IAB Europe, who pointed out interesting facts about the digital industry in the region and highlighted the challenges and opportunities for online business. According to Heureux, more than 50% of users believe that they have made better purchase choices, namely thanks to the Internet.
Next on the agenda was a presentation by Marc Bresseel, Vice President, Global Marketing, at Microsoft Advertising. “Good advertising lies in stories well told; stories which emotionally touch the consumer. Digital world is the one which creates new ways of storytelling,” Bresseel said.
One of the most attractive and expected lectures was undoubtedly given by Rick Kelley, Head of Mid Market Sales in EMEA, Facebook, who presented interesting statistics about the social network. Kelley explained that Facebook’s users in Europe were more than those in the USA. It’s an interesting fact that 350 million people around the world access the social network via their mobile phones; two billion posts in Facebook are liked and commented on every day and the number of log-ins is 500 million. The average number of friends each user has on their friend list is 130. “There are 2.2 million Bulgarians using Facebook,” Rick Kelley added.
The GamesVille event which gathered the gaming industry in the region took place at Webit for the first time this year. One of the speakers was Martin Kreuzberg, Head of Marketing at the large group for multiplayer online games Travian Games GmbH, who gave information about the games his company was developing and about the business model Travian was using. The next speaker was Alexander Piutti, CEO and Founder of GameGenetics, a company dealing with such games and applying a very interesting model which distributes profit among the company, developers and game distributors at the local level. The Bulgarian company XS software, the creator of the very popular in Bulgaria multiplayer online games Khan Wars and Bulfleet, also took part in the forum. One of the most interesting presentations given in the session belonged to Michael Schade, CEO and Co-founder of Fishlabs Entertainment, who shared his experience in cross-platform gaming – the possibility to play one and the same game on various platforms and to save the stage that has been reached and then continue on a different platform – from the PC to the mobile phone; from the mobile phone to a Play Station, etc.
The Creative Lounge event was new to the congress as well and was devoted to digital creative. The event gathered designers and advertisers from Central and Eastern Europe. The first speaker, Tom Adams, dedicated his lecture to creative and the stages one needs to go through in order to achieve the desired results. All six speakers in Creative Lounge pointed out that one of the most important prerequisites for creativity was the working environment which should allow for good ideas. “Clients always notice what information and data they are missing which is why we should provide free access to that,” Edward Opara, partner at Pentagram, explained. The rest of the speakers included Jason Little from Landor, Marvin Liao from Yahoo!, etc.
For the first time this year Webit Congress presented DevCamp Workshop – the place which gathered top developers and web developers from Central and Eastern Europe and representatives of leading world distributors of platforms and operating systems. All participants exchanged experiences, contacts and ideas about the development of both platforms and applications. The dynamic workshop run by John Lunn, Director Platform and Integration at PayPalX, demonstrated new solutions for online payments and discussed with developers the revolution in payment services.
The Open Theatres, whose lectures have been so far visited by more than 1,300 people, caused great interest. Some of the topics were the development of the digital market in Serbia, Turkey and Greece and the suitable strategies for bringing a digital business from national to regional level.
Detailed information about the programme and all the speakers as well as high-resolution pictures from the event are accessible on the official website: http://www.webit.bg.
For more information:
Simeon Polimenov, Event Manager, Webit Congress, Tel:+ 359 886 606 222, email: simeon@e-acad.eu
Dimitar Sabev, Account Executive, All Channels|PR, Tel: + 359 2 434 03 67, mobile: +359 878 610 600, email: dsabev@all-channels.com
