Social network usage has continued to grow with their increasing Internet audience. According to a recent study by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) cited by eMarketer, 75 million Russian people are expected to use a social network at least once per month this year. If you want to reach them—you could try using humor.
This blog will walk through Russia’s top social networking platforms and research on their social network activities to help you understand more on Russian user behavior online.
Russia’s top social networking platforms:
When it comes to Russia’s most popular social networking sites, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.ru are the most popular.
- Vkontakte (VK) is the most popular with 42% of Russian Internet users using almost every day. 78% of 18 to 24 year old Internet users, and 54% of 25 to 34 year old Internet users went on the site daily.
- Odnoklassniki (OK) is the second most popular Russian social networking site with 27% of Russian Internet users using it almost every day.
- Instagram comes in third place
- Facebook in fourth place. By comparison to most countries, Facebook does not have a very strong presence in Russia due to its fierce Russian competitor, Vkontakte. Russia has the lowest percentage of Internet users using Facebook among all the countries it tracks, just 13.7% will have used Facebook on their phone in 2016. VCIOM’s study found that only 20% of Russia’s social networkers used Facebook.
- Mail.ru comes in fifth place followed by Twitter and LiveJournal.
Russian social networkers’ preferences
The VTsIOM study also found that the most popular social media topics for Russians are related to humor and health. 43% of respondents found humor to be the topic that is most likely to draw their attention. The second most popular topic was a 41% tie between health and news related content.
Based on this research alone, Russians want to laugh when interacting onine but also stay informed about the news and their health.
Preferences for the most popular social media topic varied depending on age, gender and location. Humor, sports, and science and technology are more popular between the ages of 18 to 24. Topics such as the news and health and food are more popular among people that are 60 and older. Topics such as sports, cars, and science and technology are more popular among men. While topics about food, family, and healthy lifestyle are more popular among female social network users.
