The Russian law “About the State Regulation of Activities on Gambling” comes into effect tomorrow, forcing many casinos to shut their doors. .
Although Vladimir Putin could not have foreseen the economic crisis when the law was proposed in 2006, the implementation could not have come at a worse time for Russia. An estimated 400′000 [...]

According to the Moscow Times, Microsoft will be investing 10 billion rubles ($300m USD) in Russia over the next three years. The announcement was made on Monday by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a press conference in Moscow.
Aside from expanding the company’s investment into software for students and startups they will also invest in [...]

John Rose, CEO of Rose Creative Strategies, writes for the Moscow Times on the subject of using reward schemes to encourage sales during these dark economic times. Interestingly he suggests cross-overs from traditional marketing into the internet, as “penetration is now sufficient in Russia to allow companies to launch national loyalty promotions inexpensively by fulfilling [...]

Gambling companies have welcomed the news that poker is now officially classified as a “sport” in Russia following an order signed March 26 by the Federal Sports Agency head, Vyacheslav Fetisov. On June 26, 2007, Seven-Card Stud Poker, Omaha and Texas Hold’em were officially included in the All-Russia Registry of Sports.
“This game doesn’t have any [...]

Never one to shy away from accusations of sexism, the classic “beauty contest” is a reliable technique in the Russian marketer’s toolkit. Even search giants such as Mail.ru have jumped on the idea with their Miss Mail.ru competitions.
In an effort to bring some sexy back to Russian nuclear power, the industry launched a competition [...]

Begun.ru is the contextual advertising provider for the Russian search engine Rambler and other leading Runet portals. They have just released a book on the topic of “Contextual Advertising on the internet”.
The authors include several key members of Begun’s own organisation, such as Victoria Aliyev - (Chief Analyst). Alexey Basov (Begun CEO) and Glavatskiy [...]

We don’t often highlight domain sales on here, but this is an exceptional offer for anyone interested in the Ukrainian market. Kiev.com, will go on sale at the Domainfest Global 2009 to be held at the Renaissance Hotel, Hollywood, LA, January 28-30th.
Kiev is the capital capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the [...]

Josh Catone over at SitePoint reports that Firefox has decided to drop Google as their default search option for Yandex. This will effect all the versions they release for the Russian market. According to Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson, the reason behind the change was a study of Russian user behavior conducted by Mozilla that [...]

The 2008 Russian Internet or Runet Awards were given away last week in a lavish ceremony held in Moscow. Russian singers and celebrities were among the audience as leading players in Russian internet industry were awarded for their contribution to the development of the Russian segment of the internet.
The awards have been running since 2004 [...]

Guy Kawasaki, arguably the interwebs most famous VC, has launched a Russian section for his news aggregator - Alltop. As Chris Shipley, the chairman of Guidewire Group and executive producer of DEMO explains in Guy’s blog:
“Alltop is deceptively simple. The site gathers up the best suggestions from the most active social web users and compiles [...]