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.