International Journal of Multidisciplinary Thought 1(4): 18-31 (2011) © CD-ROM. ISSN 2156-6992 Educational Potential of Social Networking Sites. Exploring the Use of Web 2.0 Technologies by Bulgarian Generation Y Greta Dermendjieva, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria Veronica Valkanova, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria Abstract: The educational potential of social networking websites depends on the extent of individual, particularly young people’s involvement in them. The place of mobile communications and the purposes they are used for, are no less important. Keywords: Social networking sites, Web 2.0 technologies, educational application, Generation Y, Higher Education Introduction Social communities in Internet redefine the information technologies, media and communications as a whole. In recent years we have witnessed a process of an incredible number of websites being created in the form of blogs, wiki and social networking sites. The new communication models arise in response to the growing needs for information exchange in order to connect, unite and organize people in communities with a view to obtain knowledge. However, the educational potential of social networking websites depends on the extent of individual, particularly young people’s involvement in them. The place of mobile communications and the purposes they are used for, are no less important. Let us start with some statistics. Bulgarian Internet users as a whole number 4 million, i.e. about half of the country’s population, 25% of them having profiles on Facebook and spending an average of 6 hours monthly on the social network. Globally, Facebook has an insanely high number of monthly page views: 630 billion, 550 million of them being page views per unique visitors, i.e. 14 million per minute or 80 billion per year. Facebook servers number over 30 000 and keep increasing, the network users are 500 million. Facebook users upload 2.5 billion photos monthly (or 30 billion per year) and generate 700 000 million clips daily. The users of the second most popular social network Twitter send 27.3 million messages in 24 hours (September 2010); 4 billion photos per month are being uploaded to Flickr, and 1 billion YouTube video clips are being watched per day. Web 2.0 significantly changed our interaction with information as well as our individual potential for non-formal education. The appearance of specialized software tools for