2 Deadly Explosions in Moscow metro became the main theme in Runet. The blasts occurred during the morning rush hour in central Moscow. The first was at the Lubyanka metro station (7:50 am), the second came 40 minutes later at the Park Kultury station. Social media turns to be more quick and operative than traditional media. The tragedy in Moscow metro has become an example of TV sluggishness: “40 Tweets per second on the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro vs. only 4 TV newscasts in the morning” via @krassnova.

Shortly after the tragedy in blogs and social networks began to appear the first reports from users via twitter and LiveJournal. The main issue, which were discussed – how to help the victims (shortage of donated blood), horrible  behavior of Moscow taxi drivers (who took advantage of the situation and inflated the prices several times for those who had been unable to get out of the subway, but had yet to reach their destinations) .

Today in blogs,  photos from tragedy places, video from tragedy places, hashtags broadcasting the news in real time – #moscow and #metro29. Moreover, in twitter there was an hour of silence from 5 till 6 p.m. on March, 29.

Detailed description of what was going on in Moscow in English.

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.

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.