According to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) earlier this month, Odnoklassniki.ru has become Russia’s most popular social network among Russians who are 18 year-old and over – ahead of Vkontakte.ru, whose leadership is more affirmed among teenagers.
Odnoklassniki’s reach is now estimated to be no less than 61% – compared to 51% for Vkontakte, 28% for Moi Mir and just 12% for Facebook – of a total of 57.8 million adult Internet users in Russia, FOM reported.
Vkontakte, however, is ahead of Odnoklassniki in certain regions such as the Northwest, around St. Petersburg.
At the national level, Vkontakte’s user base still significantly surpasses that of Odnoklassniki if the younger population groups are included. In February, the site attracted almost 28 million inhabitants of large cities aged between 12 and 54, TNS reported, compared to 24.3 million for Odnoklassniki.ru.
Odnoklassniki shows impressive growth based on several performance indicators.
Mail.ru Group, the owner of Odnoklassniki, recently reported impressive results in 2011. While the site’s daily audience nearly doubled – from 15.3 million at the beginning of the year to 27.7 million at the end of the year, – the quantity of messages exchanged between users tripled, reaching 6 billion in December, compared to 2.12 billion in January 2011. The daily audience of the iPhone version of the site grew from 10,000 to 250,000 over the course of last year.
