As I’ve reviewed before president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev is very advanced internet user and as he remarked at Russian Internet Forum  ”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.”

And now he starts a new form of online communication – videoblog on the official presidential site. In his first video speech Medvedev announced international conference on geopolitics, that will take place in Evian, France, and promised to cover there the problem of European security.

As VZ.ru says this video blog will be regulary updated. I think it’s a great PR step that shows our president as an open and more available for people leader. We can only hope that such video speeches will be in English, too.

Internet is very dynamical environment, which changes much faster, than other spheres of our life – and Runet is not exception. Earlier I’ve published the analysis of an audience of the Runet’2007, now representing the analysis of an audience’2008 (according to Rosstat surveys, FOM, Comcon and ROMIR).

Internet users in Russia – 28,1 mln people or 25% of population of Russia 18+, and it more than in the last year on 5 mln.

Also, some figures:
Monthly reach – 24,8 mln users
Weekly reach – 19,7 mln users
Daily reach – 10,7 mln users

Parity on age:
18-24 years old – 57%
25-34 years old – 41%
35-44 years old – 29%
45-54 years old – 14%
> 55 years old – 3%

Preferences of users depend on an exit place in Runet.
The majority of HOME users prefer entertaining resources whereas OFFICE users visit news and thematic resources more often. But both prefer social nets, as well. This data confirms the fact of distribution of broadband networks in Russia.

The majority of Internet audience still is engaged in information search (85 %), downloading of files (75 %) and use of programs for communication – ICQ, Skype etc. (56 %)

Tendencies:

• growth of number of users conducting online diaries and visiting blogs-systems such as LiveJournal.ru, Liveinternet.ru, Blogs.Mail.ru etc.
• russian analogues of well-known western social networks became popular and welcomed millions of Russian users
• video hostings and the resources which allow to place video files are becoming the most popular among users despite of low internet connections (Youtube.ru, Smotri.com, Rutube.ru)
• high popularity of social services like bookmarks (Memori.ru, Moemesto.ru, Bobrdobr.ru) and news resources with UGC (New2.ru, SMI2.ru, Roem.Ru)
• the example of Top4Top has shown (this project was closed in September) that principle “all users follow a star” doesn’t work in Runet, because it has its own “stars”.

Where Runet-users search the information:
The most popular among users service is Yandex.ru (84%), at the second place – Mail.ru (80%), Google.ru (61%) – the third place of rating.

Where Russian users spend free time:
The most popular social networks in Runet are: Odnoklassniki.ru (the audience of resource has increased twice and has made over 20 mln people) – ru version of Classmate.com, Vkontakte.ru (17,6 mln people that twice it is more in comparison with last year) – .ru version of Facebook.com.

The most useful instruments for measure public opinion are: Blogs.Yandex.ru and Blogsearch.Google.ru

Vedomosti.ru presents the first rating of top-business and politicians blogs of Runet. Very curious and important detail of this review – more than 90% of these blogs are placed in LiveJournal.

As I mentioned before it’s our special trend – in Russia, influential bloggers use Live Journal, which is viewed in the US as platform for teenagers.

So, for composing this rating Vedomosti.ru used data from four popular bloghosting platforms of Runet – LiveJournal, Blogs.Mail.Ru, Liveinternet, MoiKrug (Yandex) – and here is the picture where you can see where, according to research, Russian bloggers talk about politics and business:

Top10 (as we can predict – only LJ-users)

1. ksonin
2. dolboeb
3. onexim-group
4. lipkovich
5. md-prokhorov
6. another-kashin
7. navalny
8. m-gaidar
9. galerist
10. v-milov

All ratings data (in this research Vedomosti.ru analyzed more than 2 thousand blogs, which quoted the materials of this newspaper).

When I visited Edelman offices in America during my business trip to Chicago and New York (11-18, August), I noticed that the information that I heard everywhere from media there – TV, radio and press, concerning Georgia conflict – was not objective. Because the massive of information was presented only from one side of the conflict, while the conflict had two sides as minimum! And every morning my hotel’s TV started with «mr. Saakashvili said…». So, during my being in US the most popular question from my colleagues was «What is really going on?»

In this post I’d like to review some online resources, which present Russian position on the main economic and political issues:

The Voice of Russia – state radio company broadcasting in foreign languages. It broadcasts 450 programs about life on modern Russia, its history, culture, internal and external policies.

Russia Profile - is an English-language information service offering expert analysis of Russian politics, economics, society and culture.

Nikitsky fund -  Strategy: Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance) by Eric Kraus.

Russia Today - is 24/7 English-language news channel to present the Russian point of view on events happening in Russia and around the globe. A selection of the best news reports, stories and programmes can be viewed at it’s Youtube channel.

«Kommersant» – Russia’s daily online English version of business magazine.

RIA news and Information Agency – a news portal in 10 languages offering news and analytical articles, photo, video, online conferences and readers’ comments.

Edelman Imageland Russia celebrated Maslenitsa (Pancake week) and greeted Spring in the Red Square:

200 000 people participated in a 7-day popular festival …

… consumed thousands of pancakes and hectoliters of mead and tea …

… enjoyed folk song-and-dance show and traditional amusements.

This is the clip of the project that we prepared for Edelman Europe Video:

Moscow this summer can’t breathe! And not only because of outstanding heat (+32 C), traffic in the city so heavy that I wonder why office managers haven’t gone on vacations in this period of time! Staying in this stony jungle every morning and evening I have to know how to reach my office or home without traffic problems. And thank Yandex, mostly I succeed.

Traffic 2.0

Yandex.ru – well known search engine of Runet launched a new mobile service as an additional plug-in for its Maps. This service shows on the map the traffic situation in big cities of Russia. In addition of underlining on the map trouble places with red and yellow, now Yandex takes information about traffic from drivers through their mobile phones and communicators. So drivers by means of GPS, special plug-in and with mode “traffic informer” ON – create paths that appeared as green lines on the map, showing free roads where cars are moving with the speed more than 40 km per hour.

In brief about project- we all use to see where traffic is heavy, but with the help of new UGC Yandex service we can see free ways and roads.

Social map

MirTesen.ru (it’s a small  world) – social network on the map (on Google platform).
Besides all trivia functions that almost every social network allows to its users, in mirtesen you can show the other users your favorite place, write reviews and share photos via mobile phone, hear what people talk about on 100 thousand km. And of course you have an opportunity to read responses about those places, that you want to visit. In addition you can see the rating of all places of the project selected by categories.

In brief about project – people talk about places and the places talk about people.

Twitting on Twitter, I’ve found out that my colleagues from London moved to the new office and writing about it as of something great and awesome.

I was so curious about this new one though I hadn’t seen the old before. So, I’ve asked Simon Collister to show me this new office in pictures. He kindly uploaded some on Flickr and while I was looking at, I thought that it would be interesting for me or may be for others, too – to make a collection of views of/from Edelman’s offices.

And now the set View from Edelman offices counts 72 photos from 17 Edelman’s offices:

Montreal (Canada) 

Press to see another view – in winter! 

(photo by Katheryne Boileau)

Read all »

Every geek knows Twitter – very useful microblogging platform that helps us easy to connect with each other world wide web and via sms. On Twitter.com Russian users has its group – TwitRU and now there are 2700 users that write on Russian language. 

I know at least 8 clones of twitter.com on different languages as Feecle.jp – a Japanese site (amazing, the first nickname I’ve noticed here is Russian name – Vladimir)). Frazr.com - a German/French Twitter clone. Komoo.cn - Chinese Twitter. Numpa.nl (Nederland), Jaiku.com (Finland), Oseflol.com (France), Robisz.pl (Poland), Turulcsirip.hu (Hungary) and new more visual one – Plurk.com.

So, several weeks ago in Runet has started the new project SMSter.Ru – Russian Twitter clone. Besides advantages declared in Twitter.com the Russian system has integration with very popular among Russian users instant messenger ICQ and Google Talk. And the great advantage of this system for Russian users – sms notifications that are paid off under the local tariff and rather cheap for smster’s users. In future developers of this system are planning to invent new features like API, karma, sending photos via MMS, etc. and lots of ideas.

For 2008 Leadership Meeting in Shanghai the president of Edelman Imageland Russia, Veronica Moiseeva, has made the presentation about Russian Pr-market.

There are some main issues of her speech:
- Russian economy’s prospects are now highly trusted by leading World institutions;
- Foreign investors increasingly see Russia as a lucrative investment opportunity;
- High social spending and economy rise increase personal disposed income of Russians thus defining high levels of consumer spending;
- Russian PR-market is one of the most fast-growing in the world, as the demand for its products and services is objectively high;
- Growing number of Russian IPO’s and SPO’s definitely means, the Russian companies do need and will need much PR-support in western markets.

This presentation describes all these points in flash, that you can see online:

In Runet there are lots of sites for those who are looking for job. But now it’s a modern trend to catch these careerists in social nets. So, the first in my list of job social networks is MoiKrug.ru. It was rather traditional social network with not a simple navigation, but after Yandex has acquired this site it has appeared as a social network for IT-specialists. And now headhunters know where to search the valuable staff. It’s rather easy to do because of a special button in user’s profile – Looking for job / Not looking for job.

The biggest Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru (17 mln users) has recently opened the special section for its users – Rabota. And it has launched another useful service Rabota.Odnoklassniki.Ru NewsReader – with the help of this program, users would get the latest news and updates of the site on their computers.

Mail.ru – Russian popular online portal and the owner of My.mail.ru social network has launched the Job project few weeks ago - very nice in general and simple in navigation. I’d like to distinguish a special service called as “Vacation” – for high school students seeking job for summer season.

By the way, a new job-project for high school students has been started as the first Russian reality recruitment show in terms of which it is organized PR campaign in leading high schools of Moscow for attraction of a target audience on Young.funkyjob.ru, where stage-by-stage selection for vacancies of students is going in real time and the results of it are available for users with the comments of HR experts.