Mail.ru Group, a leading Russian Internet group listed on the London Stock Exchange, is developing its own microblogging service to compete with Twitter on the Russian market, Russian business daily Kommersant reported earlier this week from unnamed sources within and outside the group. The ‘Russian Twitter’ will be integrated to user accounts on the group’s …
Russian President and tech lover Dmitry Medvedev announced yesterday on Twitter that he has opened a Facebook account. 24 hours later, Medvedev had been “liked” by over 2,800 Facebook users, but his Friend Activity page displayed only a news story – dated, for strange reasons, from late August 2011 – about his meeting with Bielorussian …
According to Vkontakte.ru’s co-founder and General Manager Pavel Durov, “Mail.ru Group’s ad sales teams give bribes to ad buyers openly and at a massive scale.” Durov posted the accusation in a discussion on Facebook yesterday, according to the online business publication Marker.ru and IT news and forum site Roem.ru.
Yuri Milner, co-founder of the top Russian Internet fund DST, is among the investors in Airtime, a new video chat service to be created by former Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning. The news, reported by The Financial Times last Friday, was based on exchanges with Airtime’s founders. The Airtime concept is derived from …
Yuri Milner joins US Internet stars to launch new videochat service Read More
Russian programmer and businessman Valery Gasratov launched social gifting application Giftofoni last week, allowing Turkish speaking Facebook users to order gifts and organize parties. The application is derived from Welcome Gifts, Zhelannye Podarki in Russian, an application launched last year by Gasratov’s team on Odnoklassniki.ru, a leading Russian social networking site. Welcome Gifts was used by 12 …
Ambitious Russian social gifting app launched on Turkish version of Facebook Read More
Two weeks after Foursquare made available a Russian version of its service – along with versions in Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, and Thai – a powerful Russian media group, RBC, announced it has invested $1 million in Ogorod.ru, one of the two best-known local services inspired by the Foursquare concept.
US Foursquare announced yesterday it launched localized versions of its social geolocation service in Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Thai. The new versions have been made available through the company’s iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry applications as well as through its web interface. The Russian press also reported rumors that Foursquare is considering hiring a country …
Foursquare launches versions in Russian and four other languages Read More
TMT Investment announced last week it will invest $1 million in a 20% stake in Berryman Capital Group (BCG), a developer of online games for social networks. TMT Investment is an international investment company based in Jersey and run by Russian businessmen focused on technology and media investment. The deal, which includes other conditions for BCG …
NASDAQ-listed Russian search engine giant Yandex announced last Friday it fully acquired The Tweeted Times, a website offering social news services, for an undisclosed amount. Yandex aims to use the technologies developed by The Tweeted Times to enhance its search and content services with information from social networks.
The number of Russian language Twitter accounts exceeded 1 million in July, reveals a report by Yandex, the top Russian Internet search company whose offerings include a function that searches blogs and forums. Russian speaking users send 370,000 tweets daily. 8% are retweets and about one third are replies to other tweets. The average tweet …
Twitter reaches 1 million Russian language accounts, but user activity decreases Read More
JP Morgan and Russian business daily Vedomosti revealed the detailed shareloder structure of Vkontakte.ru this week. According to JP Morgan, 12% is owned by Vkontakte founder’s Pavel Durov, 8% by his partner Lev Leviev, and 40% by Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and members of his family. Mail.ru Group owns a 39,99% stake, having acquired 7.44% from Pavel …
After weeks of rumors, DST’s investment in Twitter was confirmed officially for the first time yesterday on Twitter’s blog. “Now we have an opportunity to expand [our] reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, along with the participation of several of our existing investors,” Twitter writes. “We will …
