AlterGeo, a Russian startup inspired by the Foursquare concept, announced yesterday it has closed a third round of financing with Intel Capital, prominent Russian venture fund Almaz Capital — sometimes called the Almaz-Cisco fund, and U.S. angel investor Esther Dyson, who is involved in several Russian IT projects.
Mail.ru Group, a leading player on the Russian Internet market, has just launched two new services on its top two web properties: a real-time news and blog search on its Mail.ru portal and a streaming audio and sharing application on its Odnoklassniki.ru social network.
Sintez-rus, a traditional and online retailer of Sony electronics products in Russia, has opened its first online retail outpost for Sony-branded products on Russia’s largest social network, Vkontakte.ru. The news was announced yesterday by e-commerce solutions provider Magazinga, which provided the software platform for the new outlet. Magazinga, launched last April, is a joint venture …
Sony products to be sold on Russia’s largest social network Read More
Ambitious Russian social games developer Pixonic has just closed its third round of financing, raising $5 million from Russia’s Kite Ventures, Ukraine’s Take Advantage Venture and France’s Ventech. Founded in late 2009, Pixonic has already launched over 30 games on 13 different social networks.
Mail.ru Group, the top Russian Internet group, has released Target, its new synonymously named targeted advertising tool with enhanced ability to reach users of Odnoklassniki and MoiMir, its two major social networks.
Professionali.ru, the second largest Russian professional social network after Yandex’s MoiKrug, announced it has raised $2.5 million from Open Capital, a London-based venture capital fund investing in Russia and other former Soviet states. The news has been reported by Unova, a Russian website specializing in local innovation and venture news.
Some 500 speakers at the annual three-day Russian Internet Forum (RIF) participated in dozens of conferences and forums on virtually everything from SEO, online PR and non-standard advertising to usability, group buying, payment systems, and online monetization issues. Those concerned with legal issues and regulation were served with conferences on author’s rights, children’s Internet safety …
Industry reverberations at the Russian Internet Forum Read More
Facebook representatives announced this week that it now counts 5 million active users in Russia, reported news agency RIA Novosti. That figure, however, represents a mere one Internet user out of ten, and Facebook still lags behind Russia’s social networking behemoths Vkontakte (23 million unique users in February 2011, according to TNS), MoiMir (20 million), …
Google has deleted from its search results the links to 446 pages of 106 pirate resources, which had illegally borrowed content owned by Eksmo, a leading Russian publisher. Among the blacklisted sites are Bookmir.ru, Fanknig.ru, and Kniga-free.ru, as well as torrent tracker Torrentino.com, reported Vedomosti, a Russian business daily.
Twitter officially launched new Russian and Turkish language versions of its web and mobile interfaces on Tuesday. The microblogging service launched in the US in 2006 only started to gain notice and popularity in Russia about two years ago.
Softline Venture Partners and Ecwid have launched Magazinga, a new joint project that represents “an entirely new approach to promoting goods and services through social networks,” claim its creators. Magazinga provides merchants with ready-made e-shops as well as access to its own marketplace of products intended for social network users.
BuzzLook.ru, a new social media monitoring system, was launched earlier this month. The site allows searches for keywords on such popular Russian and international resources as social networks Vkontakte.ru and Facebook, hosting sites Youtube and Flickr, blogging platform LiveJournal, as well as on Twitter.
