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

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).

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.