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.

Develop yourself and teach others – creators of new multifunctional social net appeal to their users. While reviewing this project I has noticed this video and now advising you to look at. And then you will be able to multiply any numbers easily using only a pen and a sheet of paper.

So, Russian project skillopedia was launched as foreign 5min.com, sclipo.com, expertvillage.com, metacafe.com video self-tuitions analogues. Though skillopedia.ru has no analogues within its functionality, as its creators insist. For example, video player is so constructed that you can use video, audio, photo and text in one window at the same time. And there is very useful opportunity to record captions to downloaded video.

Every user can organize competitions by themselves. Also creators provided an eventuality for videotape authors to get money for their lessons from learners.

- Our resource is in opened testing now without any promotion. – Ivan Burtnik, one of Skillopedia’s creators, says. – We are to begin large advertising campaign in Moscow and then all over Russia. At present we are upgrading our creature constantly. Users help us to discover errors. It must be said, in a technical sense this project is rather complicated and not everything is perfect. But we are working at it”.

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