Before holidays I visited presentation of the project “Snob” – a multimedia social network for millionaires. There was a late breakfast on the territory of the factory Arma (future office of the company), dedicated to the official launch of media group “ЖV!” (translated from Russian into English as a verb to Live).

The group positions itself as media of a new type, for which Internet space (where text, sound and video are used simultaneously) is a priority. It is based on co-creation of content both by users (participants of the project) and editors. Media group plans to launch 4 projects.

“Snob” number 1. “3 in 1” project – site, magazine, TV  channel – starts in July. Snob’s target audience are insiders. Quoting Andrey Shmarov – CEO of the project, the number of such people is around 5 000, they are rich, influential and they have what to say. Now they will have a place where to say. Exactly they will become hero-members of a “social net for millionaires” – club Snob.ru. It necessary to mention that it will be possible to enter the club only with a special invitation. Other users will have an access to an open part of the site Snob, where they will be able to enjoy posts of influential people and also video and audio content. At the same time for common users it will be possible to watch but impossible to write. In such a way creators of the project plan to protect snobs from “Internet chaos”.

It is not clear how will open and closed part of the club communicate. And what will motivate and attract common users (CEO of media group “ЖV!” Juriy Katsman plans to have 45 000 visitors per day)? It’s obviously that users won’t be satisfied just with news of “bloggers”. And if a user can’t have an influence on what’s going on and doesn’t have possibility to communicate in interactive online space (for example, he or she has no opportunity to comment the post of smb he reads) he will finally go somewhere, where this possibility exists.

At the same time Vladimir Yakovlev – founder of publishing house “Kommersant”, and nowadays chairman of board of directors of media group “ЖV!”, announced at the presentation that possibilities of blogs several times outnumber traditional journalism, and Mikhail Prohorov – the main investor of the project even suggested the journalists who were on this presentation to say good bye to their profession because of its’ coming death. 

Answering the question “How will your project differ from Livejournal.Com and how will you attract famous bloggers” Andrey Shmarov said that “Snob” is not an alternative to Livejournal and this project is not a “blog project”.

“Yes-yes, we understood that the project is multimedia and multi format. If it is impossible to transmit smth online, magazine or TV format will be chosen. But still how will you attract famous bloggers?”- questions continued to come from the hall.
- To copy their blogs and to agree with famous bloggers to come,” – continued Shmarov.
- And why should they come to you?
- Because.
- ???
- They will feel better at our space, all conditions will be created for them.
- Will you invite Dima Bilan? (Famous Russian pop star)
- Who’s that?
- How will you promote the project?
- With the help of acquaintances, - joined Katsman, - and with the help of all other familiar ways.
- How will you earn?
- Two sources of income: advertising on the site and in the magazine and paid services, subscription.

It is necessary to say that it will be invested near 150 mln $ in 4 projects of the new media group before 2010. Each project will have around 30 mln $. At the same time it is planned to earn on the site Snob.ru not less than 3,5 mln $ per year.

3 in 1:

Magazine – a traditional monthly printed edition. Without informational occasions and rubricators – not to fill sections with rubbish.

TV-channel – all the best for insiders. It is planned to attract 20 000 of subscribers who (paying around 65$ monthly) will enjoy only interesting programs.

Internet-portal – site is divided into 2 parts. The 1st: club of highly successful people. 2nd: open for everybody. Not highly successful. Yet.

My photos from presentation

The most unexpected and extremely cool part of Russian Internet Forum was an arriving of President-Elect of Russia Dmitry Medvedev on this event. 450 from 2846 participants of this Forum could hear Medvedev’s speech. Here is an official stenogram  in unofficial translation:

DM: “Good afternoon dear friends, dear colleagues! I don’t think I will surprise you, but nevertheless I will say some words. First of all I would like to thank you for inviting me. This is indeed the most trustworthy forum of Runet. And it’s very good that it has become a tradition.

Nowadays Russian segment has quite strong positions in the global net. This is a source of information and, as a matter of fact, quintessence of freedom of self-expression inherent in Internet in general.

During the last 8 years Internet audience has increased in 10 times, and nowadays around 40 million people class themselves as Internet users, Runet users. I think that this number is very good, because when I started to use Internet (it was nearly 12 years ago) I could not imagine that in short enough time (I mean historically short time) one third of our country will use Internet. And it is obvious that the matter concerns permanent and high-grade users.

Traffic and e-commerce are growing rapidly. During the exhibition we started to discuss, what is the amount e-commerce in Runet. There is information that 50 billion rubles. The total amount of payments in Internet from Runet is more than 300 billion rubles - by some estimations.  

The amount of web production market - around 2,5 billion rubles, advertising market is more than 11 billion rubles and it’s growing rapidly.

A considerable amount of money was spent in 8 years, probably a bit less that abroad, but still money was spent. This includes money from the State budget for financing socially important projects. Some of them are well known like “Gramota.ru“. The promotion of online higher education has been started and a big number of educational resources created. But on the other hand we understand that it is just the beginning.

There is a range of State services; these are such services that can be used by citizens without queuing, in the most convenient way for them. In my point of view, now it’s important to connect these services with normative documents that are used in the State office, to make sure that online services be accepted in the same way as traditional paper documents and with the same level of trust. For this we need to create an appropriate legislative basis. 

E-trading for the State needs also has started and it was necessary to do that. No use to mention that our traditional media became online as well and online versions are used as much as their traditional form.

Also there are exceptionally interesting social services, created by private business, they are well known: “Odnoklassniki.ru”, “Vkontakte.ru”. Yesterday I saw there are around 10 million users in “Odnoklassniki.ru“. I found 630 people with the name Dmitry Medvedev, and part of them look much like me, simply the same face. And.. that’s good!

What can be the goal of our further work? This is, certainly, making quality content for all services, all Runet products, technical and technological advance of Runet, so that our segment keeps up with foreign analogues. This is, by the way, a joint task, task for state, private business, maybe task for everybody who is in this hall today.

There is a very subtle point about correlation of freedom of word and responsibility. I won’t make any banal remarks, but I think that an answer to this question is quite simple. It is necessary to obey the law everywhere, including Internet, and not to do actions that directly contradict Criminal Code. This is obvious.

But at the same time State has to have a calm and loyal position in this context because this segment, this business is developing. If we are not speaking about crimes all other activities, which do not contradict with the law, should be welcomed. That’s why we exclude Internet-providing from the list of so called strategic industries.

There is one more important topic: dialog between internet community and government authorities, as a matter of facts that is what we are doing today. I think that it needs to continue in future, and, as I have already said, State has to act with correctness but at the same time to assert appropriate rules. And I know that nowadays many government officials get information from the Net. But I believe that almost every government official must have a PC with Internet access and s/he has to be a high-grade Runet and Internet user. Only in that case s/he will be able to acquire all necessary skills for communication in the informational environment, all necessary informational products.

I would like to wish you success. I think that this Forum is to achieve those important aims that it has set. All the best!”

This spring, however like all the previous ones, is rich in interesting events and conferences. At last it’s time for RIF and CIB, the time when all internet specialists gather together and discuss their professional challenges and try to find creative solutions. We sum up the results and select ways of development. Despite every participant of the events knows what this all about we are all sure that it will be extremely interesting!

RIF – Russian Internet Forum will take place on the 3-4th of April, participation in the Forum is free, one only needs to pay for staying in “Lesnie Dali” hotel and food and banquet. RIF has been run since 1997. The organizer of the event is Regional Social Center of Internet Technologies. The intrigue of this year is the presence of Dmitry Medvedev at Russian Internet Forum opening. His arrival is planned for 11 a.m. Dmitry Medvedev is expected to say general words about Russian IT-technologies and the importance of its development for further economical growth. By the way, RIF has the blog where I’ve noticed adv. of a new movie “About Runet” – the first performance of it will be on the 7th of April at 8 p.m.

RIT - Russian Internet Technologies  conference has been run from 2007 by a community of Web-developers for web-developers, it will take place on the 14-15th of April. Participation is paid (from the 1st of April it costs 9000 rubles). Here everybody talks PHP, ASP and AJAX. At the conference there will be Alex Moskalyuk, a developer of Facebook, who will present Facebook Infrastructure and Facebook Platform and widgets, built into Facebook’s pages. By the way, social networks are not only technology, but also social networks themselves. We’ll get to know about it more from report “Failures of innovators and success of conservatives” presented by Vladimir Voloshin, the creator of Eva.ru, the largest Russian community for women.

CIB – Internet and Business conference will take place on the 16-18th of April in “Bor” hotel. The main part will start on 17th of April. The participation is free as well as at RIF one only needs to pay for staying in hotel and banquet. This conference will open with night sit-round gathering at 00.00 and informal conversations on interests. Two main themes are declared for discussion sections «Social networks» and «Investments in internet projects». Alex Moskalyuk, after two presentations at the RIT, will tell us at CIB about Facebook expansion strategy on international markets & social networks business. The intrigue of the conference is the possible participation of representatives of social network “Vkontakte” – the Russian clone of Facebook. Interesting innovation of this year – minisections – unlike a round table this format of discussion can organize any participant of conference if only the theme of declared minisection is worth talking about, so the public voting decides what minisections will participate at CIB.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
On the 3th of April I’ll make my broadcast from RIF on Twitter.com/OlkaRose – Follow me!

For my review I’ve chosen 5 popular bloggers according to Yandex.Blogs rating. This rating based on authority – the integrated parameter based on data how it’s often others bloggers refer on considered blog, who exactly refers, quantities of comments in this blog, quantities of its readers and its position in blogosphere. Blogs in the rating can be sorted both on authoritativeness and by quantity of readers that are known for Yandex.Search.

Another

The leader of Yandex rating is drugoi (it’s “another” on English). This illustrated blog is about everything on the world. The real name of the blogger – Rustem Adagamov. When I’ve asked him why he is blogging – for money, glory or self-realization - he’s told me that he is blogging because it’s very interesting to him to show an event around through photo report - his own or another’s as well. “My self realization is in other sphere – I’m the graphic designer in advertising, engaging in it of more than twenty years”. And on my question what is your blog about, he said: “My blog is about the life around, that I observe through an objective of the camera”. Authority of his blog  is 187 804, the quantity of its readers - 21 250. For now it’s the most popular blog in Runet.

Pop

Unlike drugoi the second popular blogger (according to Yandex.Blogs rating) is the professional photographer of the1st channel on Russian TV, official photographer of Eurovision 2008 – Alex Jdanov. Before blogging he was interested in chats, then by somebody’s advice started his blog on Liveinternet.ru (popular bloghosting platform among young people), was surprised popularity of some celebrities’ blogs and decided to make his own popularity on publishing results of his every day work (photo and video of celebrities) in his new blog. A year later he has earned by means of this blog on flat in Saint-Petersburg. And now alexjdanov is engaged in advertising for those who wants to be known in web, his blog authority is 140 111, the quantity of his readers is 11 417. The most part of his audience is young people under 18 years old.

Nick

dolboeb is the most authoritative blogger with the most disgusting nick in Runet. His authority is 82 023, the quantity of his readers – 11 656. His real name is Anton Nossik. He’s one of Runet founders, very famous and authoritative internet specialist has started and conducted many interesting and profitable online projects as Gazeta.ru, Newsru.Com and others. Once he was asked about the reason of choosing such a nick for his blog, where he observed curious events of Runet, he said that when you were a big boss (like CEO of Rambler that Anton was in 2001-2004), media liked to quote you and even your personal blog was under a sight of mass-media, so if you wrote under dolboeb you wouldn’t be mentioned on their pages. For now he is a head of blog department in SUP company, that acquired LiveJournal from Six Apart in 2006. On our round table he was asked - ”why are you blogging?”, and his answer was – “I don’t know!”

Woman

The most well-known woman-blogger in Runet is radulova. Her name is Natalya, her nick is her surname. As she says about herself in her blog - she is just a journalist. Her main subject is the relationship between man and woman. She is a great observer and a magnificent story-teller. In her posts she can be very rough in the statements, but thus very exact in definitions. Her blog authority is 57 360, the quantity of her readers is 6 402. It’s very interesting, but for those who don’t like or even hate radulova there is a community ne_radulova and an opposite blog – anti_radulova where any can express his feelings, but for now there is a little wishing.

Writer

doctor_livsy – the logbook of Doctor Livsy has authority - 54 488 and 19 296 the quantity of readers. The real name of blogger is Sergey Lukyanenko. He is a famous Russian fantast - Emperor of Illusions in Live Journal, the author of Night-Day’s patrols under which books the very popular films have been released. In his blog Sergey shares his thoughts, ideas, views and observations with his fans and also publishes his new scripts for discussion. Thus by means of this blog he can receive the real reaction to his new novel or film.

So this is the most interesting bloggers on my opinion from top 10 Yandex rating.

The role of blogosphere and social networks in business communications.

Netmind presentation. Anna Rokina is telling about the importance of monitoring and researches in blogosphere:

Konstantin Maksimuk from Beeline (one of the popular national mobile brand) presenting the case of Beeline work in russian blogosphere:

Rick Murray is inviting russian audience to the Future but warning against inefficient ways of blogging:

Rick Murray presents Rexona case (this PR-campaign succeeded in US, but failed in Russia because of different approaches!)

Anton Nossik, a popular blogger and the head of blogs department in SUP (LiveJounal in Russia), says that russian online market can be a little behind from US, but the benefit is the learning of western mistakes in digital practice.

More pictures from this press-event are available on Flickr

Rick Murray presents western approach of working with social media to russian bloggers and representatives of local media. Are there any differences between US and Russian online market? What are the main principles of communicating in social networks and blogging? Good-bye web-sites, hello world as a worldwide social network!

Video of Rick Murray’s presentation “Welcome to the Future” on the round table in Moscow:

Today at 13.00 a.m. Edelman Imageland Interactive is organizing the round table with participation of Rick Murray, president of Edelman Digital. The theme of press-event is “The role of blogosphere and social networks in business communications”. There will be representatives of our local media and specialists in online communications. The main issue of this discussion is the comparison of western and Russian approaches in working with social media during PR-campaigns.

Every interesting moment will be recorded on video and placed here as a podcast (may be Rucast).

See you soon!

According to research of consulting company Netmind, in the middle of 2007 there were 137 corporate blogs in the Russian internet. As for now we are waiting for more actual information about Russian blogosphere that is due on April, 2008. But if the numbers of new research are going to be quite different, the key trends for sure will be the same.

The most popular in Russian corporate blogosphere format is collective - 51% (two or more bloggers working over the same blog), Community - 10% (several authors-columnists blogging for one friend-feed), personal - 15%, non person (no direct author, often corporate interest) - 24%. Almost 40% of the corporate bloggers are simply «appointed blog-supervisors» by the company headquarters. Any other pro-active employee amount to 47%. And top management makes some 13%.

Typical corporate blog is owned by IT company. It has several authors, with the employees of the company writing to as an addition to corporate web-site. So, the blog is a kind of a corporate website’ sidekick.

Most bloggers consider communicating the main objective of blogging (using it as an extra channel) - 58%. Others deem to have better feedback from clients and partners - 24%. Some still prefer using blogging for other purposes (very rare answer, but there are few - to be more transparent) - 12%. And only 6% use blogs as their only communication channel.

The target audiences of most corporate blogs in Russia are potential clients (32%), loyal clients (24%), B2B partners (22%) and potential employees/applicants for the job (14%). It’s amazing how little is attributed to influence mass media (8%). But it’s highly likely to change in the next poll - as most bloggers working for the corporations feel rising interests to their blogs on the part of internet and mainstream media (over 90% of corporate bloggers say the media show much interest in their information).

Corporate bloggers think that their blogs are most helpful in ADV and marketing (54%), PR and Media relations (31%), HR and hiring new employees (15%). The bloggers already see some key advantages of blogging: 31% of them see the increase of brand recognition, 27% see increase in sales and  16% - increase of their corporate web-site incoming traffic.

Blog content analysis show the most preferable patterns of blogging. The first one is «all in one» - the blog about anything at least somehow relevant to corporate interest (corporate trivia, business operations, personal impressions, staff appointments etc.). The second is a «niche-blogging» - specialty interest, focusing on the very specific fields of the company’s specialization.

On my opinion, the main problem of the corporate blogs is the initial mis-targeting in placement. Unlike most of western corporate blogs, which are stand-alone blogs, most of Russian corporate blogs are based on livejournal.com blog hosting server, which is widely considered to be the place for personal information exposure (personal diaries, lifestyle, celebrities, yellow-reporting, gossips, info-leaks etc.).

There are some examples of corporate blogs in Runet:

Corporate blog of MIF Publish house - blog.mann-ivanov-ferber.ru
Alfa Bank blog-community - community.livejournal.com/moneyblog_ru
Norilsk Nikel (industrial company) - community.livejournal.com/norilsk_metal
Red Graphic (popular design studio ) - blog.redgraphic.ru
All Soft (IT company) - blog.allsoft.ru

New noticeable thematic projects 

They appeared in Runet during social networks boom, when success of the most popular of them was discussed in famous TV shows. By the way, due to the popular social network a lot of people from different regions of Russia started to get access to Internet and use it more frequently – it  happened because (by word of mouth) they heard that it really helped in finding real people. So at the beginning of 2008 Runet was awaked from long-long winter holidays (officially from Dec., 29 till Jan. 09, in fact from Dec. 28 till Jan. 14) and blown up with new startups.

Some of them are worth being observed
 
For intellectuals

Top4top – the symbiosis of services with both user generated and editorial content, hosting services and social network. Design is supposed to be in a luxury style, the project is made on Flash.9 version. It might be very cool, but it’s very strange in usability. The way of promotion – TV advertising, the way of hiring the editorial staff – an open announcement in LiveJournal.com communities, the main authors of the project content (columnists) – celebrities and popular TV presenters,  face of the web-site (and the producer of the project) is Dmitry Dibrov -  famous Russian TV showman. For now its social network unites more than 70 thousand people. Honestly I don’t believe that all of them are academicians (the slogan of TOP4TOP is – the web portal for intellectuals), but I suppose they don’t mind to be called like that and to share their own thoughts and observations with others.

For careerists 

Head Hunter Live – a new social media for those who are looking for the new job or just have an intention to do it, for hr-managers, who are searching prospective collaborators and for specialists of all areas who would like to have a convenient site for communication with colleagues and participation in professional discussions. This site consists of business magazine, corporate blogs (17) and communities (162) and has close relation with a very famous project Head Hunter , which has recommended itself as a highly professional and useful resource in job searching sphere. I’d like to distinguish an interesting service of the site – Career adviser , where users ask questions about job opportunities and HR specialists answer and consult them online.

For drivers

Аutopager.ru is distinguished from all new automobile social networks by its creative idea. Every pedestrian or driver can publish a message to another driver just sending a text to the number of his/her car. Aside from traditional communication through web-site, messages can be sent from mobile phone which lets to communicate on the city roads. So the slogan of this service is «Chat in a motion!». Herewith the message will be published on Autopager.ru, where every user can read it and vote for the best or the worst driver. For now its social network counts 10311 users.

In the Spring’08 we’ll see which new and noticeable social media projects will appear in Runet.

A quick view on Russian internet in numbers
(according to Romir surveys, FOM and TNS Gallup in 2007):

Population of Russia – 142,2 mln people
Over 18 years old – 114 mln people
Internet users – 23, 9 mln people (18+) - that is 21% of the general population of Russia 18+

Population of Moscow – 9 mln people
Internet users over 12 years old – 4,8 mln people (51%)

Russia
2006 - 20.1 mln users
2007 - 23.9 mln users
Moscow
2006 – 3.6 mln users
2007 – 4.8 mln users

Audience in Moscow goes up thanks to: ACTIVE users (6-7 days a week) and HOME users
Age groups: under 25 and over 35

Runet audience evolution

• Equalization of gender audience makeup (48% female users)
• Audience concentration within 18-39 years old will abate
• Number of users will go up in the old age groups

Tendencies

• There are more new users in the regions, but both activity growth of Moscow audience and migration to Moscow balance this process
• Current Moscow model of Internet audience is a prototype of what there will be in the regions in three years:
  • Access to Internet both at home and at work (office audience more often use Internet at home, e.g. LiveJournal & Odnoklassniki.ru)
  • Almost all home computers have access to Internet
  • Broadband access full dominance
  • Main audience growth is provided by 40 years old users (+60% among pensioners 55+ - according to FOM data for the last two years)

Where Internet users write

According to Yandex Blog Search Russian language blogs for the most part are kept at 73 blog hosting servers (the number includes sites that host more than 200 blogs). The most popular blog hosting websites housing between 50 and 350 thousand journals are LiveJournal.Com, LiveInternet.Ru, Blogs.Mail.ru. At the same time the majority of standalone bloggers use WordPress as engine. A vast majority of bloggers (95%) live in cities, where population exceeds one million people – nearly 80% are from Moscow ans Saint Petersburg.

Where Internet users spend their time

The most popular social networks in Runet are: Odnoklassniki.ru (more than 10 mln people) - .ru version of Classmate.com, Vkontakte.ru (7,6 mln people) – .ru version of Facebook.com.
Dating services - Love Planet (9 285 582 people), Mamba.Ru (9 467 626 people).
Photo and video hosting – fotki.yandex.ru, video.mail.ru, Rutube.

And to measure public opinion helps Blogs.Yandex.ru with it’s pulse as well.