News from Social networks:

- My.mail.ru welcomed in October the 25-th million user.
- Odnoklassniki.ru (22 mln users) at the end of October has started to take $1 for registration on its socialnet. To pay for registration new users can via SMS. Without payment new account works in the limited mode: so it’s impossible to look through profiles and to chat via instant messager.
- The social network Vkontakte.ru (20 mln users) has started project Userapi.com which can be used at creation of social networks.

New social projects:

- Socialzm.net – new social network where experts of social media tell about trends and Runet’s experience.
- Dengi 2.0 – new social media project of publishing house Kommersant. The main idea is to engage bloggers – experts in economics and other spheres – in mutual content development for the first 2009 issue of Kommersant’s magazine Dengi 2.0 (eng. Money) together with journalists.
- And a very actual event – Crisis-2008.ru – the new project completely devoted to crisis in Russian economics.

Potential growth rate of online market in Runet is extremely high – particularly in boom of new media and social networks – for example the audience of the most popular Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru welcomed more than 20 mln people just for two years! Vkontakte.ru – 17 mln people, My.Mail.ru – 15 mln people.

But most popular Russian social networks used for personal communication or instant messaging. They are effective for contacts not for engaging campaigns.

At the same time average Russian blogger and opinion leader (internet-savvy, highly educated middle class consumer) is generally more critical and suspicious of any information, than its average western user, as well as able to obtain information by himself. Expert opinions usually placed on Internet forums, discussion boards and blogs (over 6 mln). Most preferable blog hosting platform for this blogger – is LiveJournal.Com.

Internet campaigns in general are more effective in Russia as a part of offline complex marketing campaigns.

More popular and long live communities in Runet are those which have continuation in real life (offline regular meetings on Auto.ru etc.)

Microblogging in Runet is not as popular as in global Internet due to poor ability in expression – 140 characters are available for Latin symbols and only 70 – for Cyrillics. Russians need more space to express their thoughts!)

The more localization of internet-campaigning – the better. Global Google looses to its competitor Yandex due to localization – services that appeal to particular Russian consumers interest (for instance Yandex-guru consumer advisory feature or Moscow traffic online navigation feature etc.).

So, if you are going to come to Russian online market, or are already present here – try to use at least several independent information source and communication tools, to know more how you could be more local and effective here providing your global company’s strategy.

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

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.

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

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

See you soon!

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.