Russian business daily Vedomosti revealed this past Friday that United Capital Partners (UCP), the Russian fund that currently owns 48% of Vkontakte (VK.com), has offered to sell its stake to majority shareholder Mail.ru Group. Mail.ru Group has been trying to take full control of the network for several years – a step which Vkontakte’s founder and CEO Pavel …
UCP considers selling its Vkontakte stake to Mail.ru Group Read More
“Doctor At Work,” Russia’s leading physicians’ community, has just secured $3 million from three major Russian venture funds – existing investors Aurora Venture Capital and Bright Capital, and new investor Guard Capital. The deal valued the startup at $16.5 million. A part of the funds – less than one third, Bright Capital’s press service told East-West Digital News …
Leading physicians’ community ‘Doctor At Work’ secures $3 million Read More
Mail.ru Group announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement to acquire an additional 12% stake in Vkontakte.ru, the leading Russian-language social network also known as VK.com. Should the deal – which is “conditional on a number of matters, including third-party consent” – be completed, the LSE-listed Internet group will own 52% of Vkontakte. The remaining 48% …
Mail.ru Group to become majority shareholder of Vkontakte.ru Read More
Billionaire Alisher Usmanov sold shares in Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc., focusing on technology investments in China such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and may expand stakes in Russian assets, an executive said. “Chinese companies account for about 70 percent to 80 percent of the portfolio of our foreign Internet investments,” Ivan Streshinskiy, head of …
Billionaire Usmanov aims at China after Apple, Facebook sale Read More
Surfingbird.ru, the first collaborative content discovery service on the Russian-language Internet, has raised $2.5 million from Russian fund Klever Internet Investments. The transaction, revealed last week by the Russian business daily Vedomosti, was confirmed to East-West Digital News by the startup’s CEO Sergey Shalaev. Launched in 2011, SurfingBird is inspired by US site StumbleUpon.com, which …
Russian-language content discovery service Surfingbird closes $2.5 million Series B round Read More
Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) announced yesterday that it has blocked access to 13 virtual communities of Ukrainian organizations on Vkontakte.ru (also known as VK.com), the leading Russian-language social network. “These communities promoted the activity of Ukrainian nationalist groups, including open calls for the …
Telecom regulator blocks access to “terrorist” pro-Maidan social media content Read More
The Vkontakte shareholder drama saw new developments yesterday as United Capital Partners (UCP), which acquired a 48% stake in the social network last year, announced that it is suing the company’s two other shareholders in Russian and international jurisdictions. The Russian fund is accusing Mail.ru Group and Ivan Tavrin – who bought his 12% stake …
Vkontakte shareholder drama continues: UCP to sue Mail.ru Group and Ivan Tavrin Read More
On February 4, 2014 Facebook, the most popular social network in the world turns 10 years old. With 1.23 billion users around the world, the company is worth $150 billion, a global record for an internet company. Despite dominating markets all over the world, however, Facebook is visibly less popular in Russia than local social media. So …
Can Facebook win a bigger share of the Russian social media pie? Read More
Earlier this week Adzuna, an innovative job search engine based in the UK, launched a fully localized Russian version. “Russia is an exciting, dynamic market with a huge number of job seekers and great business potential. We feel job seekers in Russia are currently underserved by the employment tools (particularly data and social search tools) …
The 2012 Olympic Games were accurately described by many as the world’s “first social Games” for the unprecedented ways in which digital communication connected athletes, media and fans. For the International Olympic Committee (IOC) this meant promoting the Games online played out more or less like you’d expect, primarily happening on Facebook and Twitter. But this year’s Winter Olympics — …
Vkontakte, the Olympics’ social media secret weapon Read More
A legal, ad-funded movie offer is now available on Vkontakte (VK.com), Russia’s leading social network, reported news agency RIA Novosti last week. Star Media, a major Russian producer and distributor, is among the first copyright holders to have worked with Vkontakte to make its movies available on the network. In 2013, after years of laisser-faire, …
Leading social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki introduce free legal video offer Read More
Earlier this week Russian search giant Yandex announced that Facebook has granted it full access to its “firehose” of public data. Thus not only can Yandex search for people and company pages on Facebook, it can also search for content marked “Public” from users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey. At present, Facebook posts from …
Public content from Facebook users to be displayed in Yandex search results Read More
