Softline Seed Fund, a joint investment vehicle formed by the state fund of funds RVC and software publisher Softline, has invested an undisclosed amount in WhatsHelp. Founded in 2016, this Russian startup is developing sales and CRM solutions for mobile messengers and social networks, now available in Beta version. “We have an ambitious plan to …
Telegram, a Russian-made messaging service, also allows users to create channels, and some of these are now used for political discussion and analysis in Russia. They are highly popular among the political establishment, read by tens of thousands of people, cited by journalists, and monitored by politicians. In the prevailing conditions of secrecy in Russian …
How Telegram became Russia’s hottest new media in politics Read More
Last week Threema, which claims to be “the world’s favorite secure messenger,” became the first-ever foreign messaging app to be added to the official Russian “Registry of Information-Dissemination Organizers.” The news has been reported by Roskomsvoboda, a Russian NGO that aims to combat Internet censorship in Russia. Since 2014, the Russian authorities have managed a list of online services that “organize the dissemination of …
Flock, an Indian startup whose corporate messenger is widely used across the world, will soon enter the Russian market. The news has been reported by Russian industry publication Firrma.ru, which cites exchanges with company representatives. Flock is a real-time messaging and collaboration app for teams that “speeds up and simplifies communication and boosts productivity.” The startup claims …
Corporate messenger Flock to enter the Russian market Read More
As instant messengers (IM) are getting increased traction — even more than the classic Internet and social networks for certain user categories — Intento offers a new way to explore their content, which is generally ignored by traditional search engines. The startup claims to have developed “the only automatic crawl-and-search engine indexing the content of …
Intento aims to build “the Google for IM and chat bot content” Read More
Russian companies have begun searching for ways to fully decipher intercepted messages on popular platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the Kommersant newspaper reported Tuesday. Decryption of messages is a key provision of the recently-passed anti-terror law authored by conservative lawmaker, Irina Yarovaya. As part of the wide-ranging law, all companies providing online communication are …
Russia begins search for decryption of online messengers Read More
Russia’s second most popular social network, Odnoklassniki.ru (Russian for “Classmates”), owned by Mail.Ru Group, has expanded to China, Iran, Iraq and Macao, Izvestia reported last week. On August 31, the network’s new Android app was launched under the OK.RU brand in these countries, the Russian newspaper learned from unnamed sources close to the company. When …
Mail.ru Group launches social network and online games in Asia Read More
Last week Mail.ru Group, a major, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, announced that the new version of ICQ for Android now allows processing images using a neural network-inspired technology. “ICQ is the first messenger to seamlessly integrate neural networks,” the group stated. With this update, ICQ users can transform a photo into a painting in just one tap. The …
Earlier this year, the Kremlin tasked the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) to develop develop a new secure messaging service for government. Concerned that foreign governments could access secret Russian information shared via Western apps such as WhatsApp and Viber, officials expressed concerns that Russia’s security agencies were unable to crack encryption if …
Russian companies fight for secure government messenger contract Read More
Iranian hackers have compromised more than a dozen accounts on the Telegram instant messaging service and identified the phone numbers of 15 million Iranian users, the largest known breach of the encrypted communications system, cyber researchers told Reuters. The attacks, which took place this year and have not been previously reported, jeopardized the communications of …
Hackers break into Telegram, revealing 15 million users’ phone numbers Read More
Russian police have apparently begun pressuring mobile phone operators to intercept authorization text messages generated by the messaging app Telegram, according to the service’s creator, Pavel Durov. Durov said in a characteristically colorful statement published on the radio station Echo of Moscow that such policing measures are usually adopted by the “cannibalistic regimes that don’t care about …
Russian police might be involved in hacking Telegram accounts, says Pavel Durov Read More
Unlike Yandex, which a few months ago declined government invites to enter the Iranian market, Mail.ru Group, a leading, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, is “engaged in a marketing investigation and research” of this market. In particular, young Iranians have shown great interest in ICQ, an international messenger service that belongs to the group, with about 35,000 users having already downloaded it, reports Sputnik. In an exchange with the online …
Mail.ru Group eyes Iranian market as ICQ gains popularity in the country Read More
