The MoscowTimes reports that FaceBook is in talks on cooperation with Russian mobile operators and is opening up an office in Russia. Within a few days, Facebook will announce the opening of its Russian office, said Unova Media, organizer of the Russian Internet Technologies conference, where Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s top software engineer, made a presentation. [...]

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Yandex, the leading search engine in Russia was quick to adopt Twitter. Last September they started publishing a list of the most popular Twitterati and including the service on their blog section, which shows statistics for many social platforms. Now they have released a short PDF report which lists some key statistics for the Twitter [...]

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TNS have released the December 2009 report on the leading sites in Runet. Although the report is in Russian, the statistics are easy enough to understand. As a nod to Alex Howard (@digiphile) who I met online at the #rustechdel, here are the findings on Russia’s leading social networks, VKontakte.ru and Odnoklassniki.ru. VKontakte.ru Editors Note: [...]

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According to Interfax, Googles proposed deal to puchase the contexual ad provider, Begun.ru, for $140m was shot down by the Russian Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) on Thursday. The reason cited has been a lack of clear information on the “individuals who can exert influence on the activity of the Google group, as well as a list [...]

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The Casino Affiliate Convention (CAC) is one of the largest industry events on internet wagering marketing and advertising, and also covers both internet and traditional marketing. They have invited me back to their next conference in Moscow this week to speak on the topic of Social Media in Russia. I really enjoyed the Amsterdam Conference [...]

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Statistics released by the search engine Yandex indicates that it is women not met who are building the blogosphere in Russia. The average blogger in the country is female and 22 year old. This group has also matured over the six months, the previous average age being 21. Female bloggers are more likely to keep [...]

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Anton Volnuhin at the Yandex blog reports on last Friday’s protest at LiveJournal. Bloggers are complaining that the administration fails to listen to their users. They are also protesting about the possible closure of “basic” LiveJournal accounts, which are free but do not contain any advertising. As you can see in the graph below, figures [...]

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