It makes complete sense that people are what people seek on the Internet. There are many manifestations of this kind of search and the most viable online businesses have involved a very social angle. ct.kz for example, is the largest kazakhstan forum and the only homegrown purely online business that is making substantial amounts of money. I've been following this forum fairly closely since I found out about it last year in Kazakhstan.
CT= center of mass, is a forum that hasn't really changed it's appearance since its inception and has been around for 10 years (in fact this year is their 10 year anniversary). Despite the pronouncements of occasional bloggers that the forum format is dead, ct.kz seems on track to remain viable for years to come. The forum is steadily growing, with over 200 thousand registered users to date. For a country with just 3 million users, this is a substantial share of the market.
When people I speak to bring up ct, it is usually in the context of "you can find everything there.... just everything!" If the Internet is about searching for people, then ct provides access to a very large and diverse number of them. The discussions cover every conceivable topic from charity, financial questions, law and order, emigration, and technical questions to sports, cars, beauty and love. There are three main things that the forum does not cover: ethnic and nationalist tensions, politics and the president. The forum is heavily moderated with two goals in mind: to keep the conversation off the forbidden topics and to manage "downers"- people who turn every conversation into a flame war. Moderators are unpaid volunteers who put in untold numbers of hours doing their 'job'.
The majority of the CT users live in Almaty with Astana a distant second. Heavy users of CT speak of a particular culture of getting things done and helping each other that has grown up on the forum. For example people who hang out in the discussion thread of everything related to Auto maintain what they call an 'emergency list' - a list of phone numbers in locations around the country that are willing to help if another CT user is in trouble. People literally print these pages out and keep them in their cars just in case. There are many stories of people breaking down in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan (not a difficult thing to do given that population density and the quality of roads around here is very low) and getting help first from other CT users and then from the equivalent of road-side assistance. CT users have stickers they put on cars that serve as identifiers. Within Almaty, if a car with such a sticker breaks down, others are likely to stop and help.
CT users also have discount cards where business owners who also hang out on CT give discounts to other users. Getting such stickers and cards is a point of pride and requires substantial participation in the community. The community itself is not just online, with meet ups and events scheduled often for various subgroups that discuss various topics. Just recently there was a big meet up of koreans from Kyzylorda who now live in Almaty.
In the course of 10 years of its development, ct.kz has grown from a small bunch of enthusiasts to a huge confluence of people. The enthusiasts have perpetually complained that the newcomers never really understand the 'culture' in ways probably similar to what had happened during the invasion of usenet by the 'unwashed masses' of aol users. The moderators have done a lot to maintain the pre-existing rules and agreed upon ways of behavior, which had resulted in pages upon pages of rules and regulations. When people are warned about breaking rules, the moderators actually quote the particular rule number and paragraph that they may have broken.
Despite this meticulous maintenance of the community, the audience of the site has changed over the years. There are many more teenagers and young people now and the topics they discuss have changed. What is more, the level at which things, for example cars, are discussed has changed. For example, where half a decade ago it was expected that people would post asking about buying relatively cheap cars, the average asking price has now increased nearly 10-fold and people seeking older and cheaper cars are looked down upon. Basically, the conversation is similar, but the conversationists are trying to exude a lot more 'cool' in what they discuss.
No matter the changes, ct.kz is a collection of diverse and very strong communities. In my conversations with one of the moderators, she told me a story of one of the auto-thread participants ending up in a horribly disfiguring accident. Medical care in Kazakhstan is very expensive and he couldn't afford some types of re-constructive surgery. A friend had posted the news on ct.kz and within 4 days they had amassed enough money for surgery and subsequent medical and in-home care for nearly 6 months. People simply handed money without even leaving their names and the sums ranged from a few dollars to thousands. Stories of such expressions of kindness and support are common, but what is remarkable here is that people who spent a lot of time on ct.kz and who mentioned the site to me talked of it as a space and a community they could depend upon despite a lot of crabby growling about the rules and the 'downers' and the flamers...
Amid all of these feel-good stories hides one particular aspect of this forum that distinguishes it from the old usenet type forums of yore. ct.kz is profoundly local - with Almaty being the strongest and most populous community. Even for those that do not normally post on ct.kz, it appears to be a good source for very local information - that kind where advice from other people and word-of-mouth are really important. It's sort of a yelp.com on steroids where nearly every single business in Almaty, from surma shops to high end clothing and auto sales, is discussed at length. In fact, some businesses, such as car insurance sales people, several prominent banks, telecom operators, actually have people hanging out on ct.kz and answering questions or addressing concerns. CT.kz is very strict about attempts at getting free advertisement however, so all of this communication with actual businesses is closely watched.
Ct.kz is not a neutral space, it is most certainly a political space, where politics, government monopolies, the pitfalls of official policies or issues of ethnicity and language are pointedly not discussed. Sometimes however, such discussions happen anyway, and there are stories of people making formal announcements that they did not mean a word they said. The forums are watched by members of internal security (FSB) and ct.kz openly hands over ip-addresses of the people in question. ct.kz is not in the business of freedom here... to be frank, if they were, they would not have survived this long and they would certainly have not been a business.
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