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Facebook annexed Kosovo — and that’s a good thing
Getting your country recognized by the United Nations is an important step for global recognition. But it may be a bigger deal when Facebook acknowledges statehood. That’s just what happened for Kosovo. Now when you tag your friends in a photo at a posh bar in Pristina, you can list Kosovo as the location.
For a digital diplomat like Petrit Selimi, getting Kosovo's independence recognized is not about increasing your cache of guns — it's about Facebook.
Selimi, Kosovo’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, argues that being on Facebook is an important step in Kosovo defining itself as a country.
He was part of a group that reached out to digital companies like Facebook to get them to add Kovoso to their country list.
Imagine living in Kosovo but not having a digital home. You simply couldn't select Kosovo as your location, because it wasn't an option on Facebook's dropdown list.
Then in 2013, the social networking giant updated its platform and effectively recognized Kosovo as a country.
The decision allowed users to set Kosovo as the place where they live. Before, they were scattered across different states, such as Albania and Serbia.
Selimi calls getting Kosovo listed as a country on Facebook the "biggest success of Kosovo's digital diplomacy."