In January 2013, Vkontakte.ru (VK.com), attracted 50.5 million users of 12 to 64 years of age in Russia, or 47.5% of the country’s population of the same age group. The popular social network occupied third place among the Top 10 Russian websites, according to the market research company TNS.
In its January report, TNS put Vkontakte right after Mail.Ru Group and Yandex, whose websites attracted 58.4 million and 57.6 million visitors, respectively. It is worth mentioning that these figures are an accumulation of 31 and 35 web properties of Mail.Ru Group and Yandex, respectively.
At the same time, Vkontakte bested Mail.Ru Group for the first time in January, when measured by average daily audience. Vkontakte showed 10% growth in that category, with an average of 27.3 million daily users.
This notion triggered low-key protests from Mail.Ru’s side. Alexey Astafyev, head of the research and analytics department at Mail.Ru Group, called Vkontakte’s results a “groundlessly high” gain, the business daily Vedomosti reported. He also mentioned that other research bodies’ figures for Vkontakte have been much more humble. Particularly, LiveInternet showed the social network’s daily audience with a growth of only 4.4%, while ComScore reported a 0.2% decline.
It is also noteworthy that, in TNS’s report, Odnoklassniki, the second largest social network in Russia, was evaluated separately from its parent, the Mail.Ru Group, and placed fifth in popularity with an average daily audience of 18.6 million users.
- EDITOR’S NOTE: The TNS methodology in Russia has changed significantly over the last few months. Its data now encompass Internet users of 12 to 64 years of age, compared to 12-54 previously. In addition, the figures are no longer limited to cities of 100,000 or more inhabitants, as was the case in the past.
