BIRDZ.SK
Commercial?	Yes
URL Uniform Resource Locator In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....	http://www.birdz.sk/
Type of site	Social network service
Target group	teenagers, college students
Registration	Open up to age of 30
Available language(s)	Slovak Slovak language Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people... , Czech Czech language Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
Owner	Perex, a.s.
Created by	Tomas Abaffy

BIRDZ or BIRDZ.SK is a social networking site for Slovak

Slovaks

The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...

 teenagers and students. Registration is free and open for all users between 11 and 29 years of age. Users create accounts, with their own Webpage, Blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

, Photos where they can show their talent

Skill

A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills...

 and discuss everything that is in a teenager's head in forums with other young people or meet students in the same age, and make new friendships.

History

BIRDZ.SK was launched on 4 December 2000 as a student's ezine. After a huge relaunch BIRDZ became one of the first community portals in Slovakia

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

. The Portal was designed and developed by freelance web designer and college student Tomas Abaffy, who is sole owner of the company. In February 2008 the portal was bought by Perex, a.s. publishing house, subsidiary of Northcliffe International.

Tomas Abaffy

Tomas Abaffy is a graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 and Web designer. He created BIRDZ in 2000. In 2004 he co-founded (with Radoslav Augustin) the media news server Mediálne.sk which was sold to a publishing company in 2006.
He is also known for his famous status message on BIRDZ: "Since I eat less meat and more vegetables, I feel happier. Maybe meat causes sadness. Maybe the suffering of the dying animal goes to his flesh. :D".

User base

BIRDZ now has about 100000 registered teen users, mostly aged from 13 to 26 years old. It is the largest portal of this kind in Slovakia

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

. Users upload thousands of photos, write almost a thousand blogs and send a large amount of internal messages every week.

Competitors

Pokec.sk is the largest dating/chatting portal in Slovakia

Slovakia

The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

, according to AIM Monitor (Gemius)

Booom.sk is a social network of clubbers, charges membership fee.

GigaCast.sk is a social networking utility of user which communicate and share their experiences between friends and family.

External links

Birdz.sk homepage

Birdz.sk history article about history of the project (in slovak language)

PEREX a.s.