Yahoo! appoints manager for Romanian online community

Yahoo! has appointed its first manager in Romania, blogger Bobby Voicu (photo). So far, the American online giant (with revenues worth 1.8 billion dollars and net profit worth 542 million dollars in Q1, 2008) has not had a local official, with its sales being conducted through online sales agency Mediacafe. Bobby Voicu, 29, has a degree in banking and finance from Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies (ASE) and owns several blogs and websites, both in Romanian (blogoree.ro, monden.info), and some with an international readership, in English. He is an online consultant, who specialises in blogging and social media. He will be Yahoo!’s community manager for Romania. “Bobby will be the voice of Yahoo! in the local market place. As an evangelist, he will be convening people in virtual space includes a range of online activities, such as collaboration, virtual networks, Web-based discussions, sharing media etc. as an online community is a group of people sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings over the Internet,” Zbengxi Danard, product marketing manager for Eastern Europe told ZF. “My role is to become an interface between the millions of Yahoo! users in Romania and the company’s service developers,” said Bobby Voicu. For the time being, Bobby Voicu will remain Yahoo!’s only employee in Romania, however, Yahoo! is expected to open an official representative office in Bucharest next year, and start to localise its services. Yahoo! is the top player on the e-mail and instant messaging market in Romania.