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 service in Russia.

• Yandex estimates 183 thousand Russian accounts on Twitter
• More than 60% of Russian-speaking users update their Twitter stream every day
• 67% of all Tweets contain links, 8% of Tweets contain links to the media.
• During the winter 2009-2010 the number of Russian-speaking users on Twitter has increased by 42%. In the year period from March 2009 to March 2010, by 26%.
• About 150 thousand Tweets (messages) are posted each day in Russian. 5% of them are ReTweets.
• There are more than 125 thousands links published on Twitter each day.
• Yandex studies more than 20 microblogging services in RuNet. Every day, more than 2 millions entries are made.

Technorati Tags: Russia, Social Media, Twitter, Yandex

The U.S. State Department organised a delegation of IT luminaries to visit Russia and discuss the state of the web industry. Aside from U.S. officials the group included executives from U.S. tech firms such as Twitter, Ebay and Cisco Systems. Ashton Kutcher, a regular Twitter user with over 4.5m followers bought some star quality to the delegation. As Conor Sweeney of Reuters pointed out:

The delegation is meeting Kremlin officials, universities and private businesses to see how Russia and the United States can work together on technology issues, one of the projects set up by the two countries as they seek to improve relations.

As you might expect the event has been covered well on Twitter, under the hashtag #RusTechTel. Ashton livestreamed the event on Sunday Night at the offices of Yandex, files maybe found here. (time dependent). Finally you can find some pictures from Esther Dyson here.

Largely the conference has been covering the basics and informing the delegation about the current state of Internet development in Russia.

An interesting question but the learning experience may possibly be two-way. Lack of investment and Russia’s particular form of short-term capitalism may force sites in Runet to develop paid models sooner than their American peers. It’s a good conversation to have though, and long overdue.

This figure was supported by the ComScore study, which shows Yandex has 91% growth and has now become the 8th largest search engine globally.

Social usage in Russia at 6hrs/month compares well with social network usage in the U.S. A recent Neilsen study put this at 7hrs per month for FaceBook. This explains why social networks in the West are so keen to impact the Russian market. So far the leading social networks of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki and have around 90m users between them.

Technorati Tags: RusTechDel

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: Vkontakte.ru are the leading social network in Russia, according to their front page they have almost 63m users. VKontakte translates as ‘In Contact’ (V’Kontakte).

The most popular application is a game “Happy Farmer”. More than 6m users installed it and revenues are estimated at $200m per month.

Key: the top columns define the statistics by ‘Russia’, ‘Moscow’, ‘St Petersburg (SPB)’ and ‘Ekaterinburg (EKB)’. The figures are all in the thousands (‘Тысяч человек’), with the % relating to users between 12-54 yrs of age (‘В населении 12-54′). Average Daily Reach is divided between weekdays ‘Будни’ and weekends ‘Выходные’. The final total is for unique visitors per month (‘Unique Visitors за месяц’)

Odnoklassniki.ru

Editors Note: Translated as ‘classmates’, Odnoklassniki.ru is more similar to FriendsReunited.co.uk or Classmates.com. They have over 30m registered users. The site was started in March 2006.

Key: the top columns define the statistics by ‘Russia’, ‘Moscow’, ‘St Petersburg (SPB)’ and ‘Ekaterinburg (EKB)’. The figures are all in the thousands (‘Тысяч человек’), with the % relating to users between 12-54 yrs of age (‘В населении 12-54′). Average Daily Reach is divided between weekdays ‘Будни’ and weekends ‘Выходные’. The final total is for unique visitors per month (‘Unique Visitors за месяц’)

Ebay, the e-commerce platform that connects buyers and sellers have announced that they will open in Russia by the end of March. Users will be able to access the site in Russian and pay for fixed-price items using PayPal, eBay’s online payments system.

Chief Executive John Donahoe said Russia’s e-commerce market is worth $5 billion a year at the moment, compared with $150 billion in the United States, but could quadruple to $20 billion.

“Our goal … is to have a small percentage of that … The (Russian) market is at an exciting, but growing stage, and there is a lot of opportunity there,” he said. “The Russian e-commerce market grew by more than 50 percent last year to $5 billion and can continue to do so for many years to come,” he added.

Ebay are also open to picking up local players, which will come as good news to the Russian start-up community.

“If the right opportunity presents itself, we will be open to acquisitions (in Russia),” Donahoe told Reuters during a reception held by the U.S. embassy in the Russian capital. He added that joint ventures were also under consideration.

Currently Ozon.ru is the largest e-commerce player in Russia with a platform more similar to Amazon.com than Ebay. Amazon have yet to make any moves into the Russian market although they do deliver to the country.

Rossiiskaya Gazata reports that Internet advertising is continuing to take an ever larger share of the overall advertising market in Russia. Despite the economic downturn that has affected the overall spend.

Internet advertising in Russia grew by 6 percent in 2009, up to 19 billion roubles (approx. $630.6m USD), while the whole advertisement industry in 2009 was valued at 256 billion ($8.50 billion). This figure was down 27 percent on 2008.

After negotiations last year, Google won the contract away from Yandex to provide Mail.ru with contextual and organic search results. However, it’s become clear that instead of a transition from Yandex to Google, Mail.ru seems to have decided to go it alone and use results from their own in-house search engine Gogo.ru.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. As I noted back in December, Mail.ru always had aspirations to enter the search market with their own technology. In one move they have managed to make Gogo.ru the third largest search engine in Runet with 9.1% market share.

Google still has the contract for their contexual results which makes Mail.ru their largest Russian publisher but it seems the plucky engine has decided that they need to carve their own place in the market. Google should look out for signs of them developing their own contexual system.

As my friend Svetlana Gladkova points out, the initial deal may have been to keep Google organic results as a backup plan while they tested Gogo.ru under pressure. Now the tests have been successful they have no reason to use Google results.

So Yandex loses the extra market share that Mail.ru provides but importantly to them, Google makes little ground on this deal. Yandex will keep their position as market leader with a comfortable 55% against Google’s 30%.

Time will tell if Mail.ru market share continues to climb. On historical evidence, Gogo.ru was not well received by Russian users with a market share of 0.3% at it’s peak in July 08 which tailed off to 0% for the last 9 months. Mail.ru is giving their search platform exposure but if the results are poor it may prove a risky strategy.

Kommersant reports that Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine, is considering purchasing AOL’s ICQ platform at more than $200m.

ICQ has between 40m-50m registered users worldwide with the majority in Germany, Russia, Israel and Eastern Europe. In December of 2009 AOL announced that they would be restructuring and selling off some of that assets, including the social network Bebo and ICQ.

Yandex and Rambler already cooporate with ICQ and have released their own branded versions of the popular messager client. According to IK “Finam”, ICQ revenues last year were between $30-40m. Yandex, according to their latest figures had total revenues in 2009 of 8.7b roubles (approx. $287.4m USD). The Russian market for contexual advertising is currently estimated to be 11.3b roubles (approx. $373.3m USD).

Sources close to the negotiation say that ICQ’s investors are looking for a figure around $200-250m (they paid $287m for the service in 1998 and have invested close to $120m in the platform since that time). However others feel this price is too high.

Tatiana Menkova, analyst at IK “Finam” believes the figure of $ 200 million for the company is overstated. On their assessment the company can cost a maximum of $60m. “If the amount required by AOL is too high, Yandex may well just continue to work with ICQ, or even start their own messenger,”

This point of view is echoed by Yandex’s press spokesperson, Ochir Mandjikov. He neither confirmed nor denied the information about the company’s participation in talks with AOL, saying that “the company is happy with the current cooperation with ICQ”.

Although many Russian users have registered accounts with ICQ the trend on the ground is to use alternative clients, which provide more functionality or allow users to access several chat networks at the same time.

In an attempt to retain marketshare ICQ often cuts access to their network from these unofficial clients. This upsets their users and each action from ICQ is followed by floods of complaints across Runet. As Svetlana Gladkova notes,

The major problem with AOL hoping to get the market share back to its official ICQ clients is that anyone who has ever tried both official ICQ clients and a deeply customizable and extendable with plugin client like Miranda will know that comparing the two is like comparing Internet Explorer to Firefox. Would you ever want to leave your Firefox with all your plugins and extensions and switch back to the rigid Internet Explorer?

I guess I know the answer and the answer is very similar for those who has been using unofficial – but much more powerful – clients with ICQ.

When I arrived in Russia 6 years ago, it was quite a surprise to find the Russians had adopted the Chinese Zodiac. From October onwards you see references to the coming animal sign all around; in advertising, promotions and products. It is very much part of the Russian New Year tradition. I guess this makes sense in a society that places the emphasis on New Year rather than Christmas.

2010 is the year of the Tiger. As you can see to the right here, even Ikea has joined in the fun and is offering a stuffed tiger toy at their store. It is considered lucky to give gifts that reference the upcoming animal sign to your friends and family so sales of these items are strong.

The reason I mention this tradition is to help you localise to the Russian market. Consider this as part of your web strategy – you may want to use the correct Zodiac animal in your branding or advertising. If you have goods that can be connected to the animal, even better. Any references to this, show that you understand Russian culture and help you make that connection with your audience.

And from me – have a good Christmas and New Year. May the year of the tiger be good for you, your family and your business!

SearchEngines.ru reports that Yandex has just signed a deal with Bing (Microsoft) to add them to their contexual network. That means Yandex Direct adverts will now be shown on the Bing network in Russia.

Microsoft has not done so well in Russia to date with their MSN brand but Bing has been quietly picking up market share over here. They now hold 1% and are the 5th most popular engine in Runet.

While the proportion of Bing in Russia is not so high, we are very happy that one of the world’s largest companies expressed a desire to monetize in RuNet with the contextual technology of Yandex, stated the Yandex company blog.

This is an important deal but Yandex will be hurting from the loss of their contract with Mail.ru this week to Google. Mail.ru is the 3rd largest engine in Runet with 10%, so this represents a significant amount of advertising real-estate.

However, as my friend Yakov Sadchikov (CEO Quintura) does well to remind us:

Since the Russian contextual advertising market is vauled at $400 million per year, Yandex powering search ads on Bing will translate in several million in additional annual revenues for both Yandex and Microsoft.

Last week rumours of a potential Mail.ru/Google deal hit Runet. Although Google previously held a deal to provide organic and contexual advertising to the engine for 2003-2005. They lost this contract to Yandex at the end of 2005. Mail.ru confirmed the deal this morning.

Mail.ru is a rising star in Runet. It has built marketshare to 10% and replaced Rambler as the third largest search engine in Runet. Google currently holds 30% against market leader Yandex with 53% (63% incl. Mail.ru results). This move effectively takes Google to 40% market share.

However this is probably only a temporary win for Google. The issue at the heart of the Yandex/Mail.ru split is the refusal from Mail.ru to brand their results as being powered by Yandex. The Russian search giant was reported to be unhappy with Mail.ru promoting their search technology as their own. Subsequently Google has won back the deal by agreeing to provide the engine with unbranded results.

Why is this important to Mail.ru? Well, Mail.ru have their own search aspirations. They have already developed a mobile search application and invested in their own search platform, GoGo.ru. So far the technology has not been a success, barely registering on market-share charts but they clearly want to head in this direction. As their press release states,

…Mail.Ru plans to actively develop its own search technology. The search “engine” will be used without mentioning the Google brand. Mail.Ru will be able to handle the requests of users using its own technology, in order to test and further improve their development, and as a consequence – the [search] product as a whole.

So count down the days until Mail.ru decides to dump both the search giants and go it alone. When 98% of Google’s revenue comes by the way of advertising, it makes sense to develop your own technology to capture that income stream.