VKontakte got its first Hollywood star on board! According to the Huffington Post Tom Cruise announced he was joining the Russian social network on Friday from his Twitter page with a tweet that read: “Увидимся там!” (“See you there” in Russian). As of Monday 25, Tom’s profile had gained 63,000 followers, many of which commented in English …
Tom Cruise’s Vkontakte page attracts 63,000 followers in three days Read More
Blabroom, a resident company of the St. Petersburg-based technopark and incubator Ingria, has completed a seed stage round from Imperious Group, which has injected 6 million rubles (approximately $200,000) into the startup in exchange for a 20% stake. Blabroom’s site has been designed to help shy people establish their first contacts with other members of …
St. Petersburg startup secures $200,000 to turn shy people into online daters Read More
The Russian government is making headway in persuading some of the world’s leading Internet players to block content that it has labeled as illegal. Roskomnadzor, a federal agency that oversees telecoms, IT, and mass communications, announced last Friday that it has come to an understanding on the matter with Twitter. In the first three weeks of …
Twitter acquiesces to Russia’s content-blocking while Google battles it in court Read More
The ownership of three major Russian tech companies – the search giant Yandex, the state-owned nanotechnology corporation Rusnano, and the mobile operator Megafon – is being affected by significant changes. Yandex, which raised $1.3 billion in its IPO back in May 2011, announced yesterday the closing of a secondary public offering of Class A ordinary …
Stocks of Yandex, MegaFon and Rusnano are changing hands Read More
There are not too many Russians who participated in the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, this year, but this one is hard to miss. Yuri Milner, a Facebook investor and the founder of DST Global investment fund, was interviewed by Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean. During the interview, Milner predicted that …
SXSW: Yuri Milner predicts rosy future for social networks Read More
Russia’s first ever charity social network launched earlier this month to enable handicapped children in Siberia’s Tomsk region to publish blogs and charities across the world to donate online for the kids’ treatment, the five-year-old regional Ordinary Miracle charity fund for children announced. Elena Makarova, the fund’s president, said at a press conference at RIA …
Siberian children’s fund launches online charity network Read More
Seventeen-year-old Kirill Chekanov has created a start-up which he called “Twitter for investors.” The project, which is still beta testing and seeking both new investors and a customer base, is competing in a narrow niche. Chekanov claims Hippflow steps up investor communications, while critics say it allows investors to publically transmit what they prefer to exchange …
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 …
Russia’s biggest social network has announced a new ad policy to streamline and centralize sales of advertisements in applications and has launched its own advertising network, a move first announced in November 2012. Starting March 15, app developers will not be allowed to place banners and media advertisements in their apps, as everything will be …
Vkontakte changes ad policy, launches own advertising network Read More
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) issued a statement earlier this month showing that in music markets such as Russia and China, “the levels of piracy are so great that they essentially eclipse the output of the legitimate sector.” Commenting on this year’s broader annual “Special 301” report to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) …
Piracy in Russia’s music market eclipses legitimate sector – RIAA Read More
Just weeks after its launch on Jan. 10, an educational app named Znanija has broken into the top-100 downloaded free iOS apps in Russia and become third most popular in the nation’s educational category, according to the App Annie app ranking and intelligence company. The mobile app allows Russian users to access the Znanija.com social educational network, which boasts over …
Russia’s search giant Yandex has decided to withdraw Wonder, its new voice-activated search application for social networks, from Apple’s App Store, following Facebook’s decision to block it, rendering the app largely irrelevant. Launched just six days ago, Wonder retrieves and displays relevant data from Facebook or other social network content. As The Next Web noted, …
Yandex puts Wonder on hold after Facebook blocked access to social data Read More
