Next in my series
on top Web apps in international markets is Russia. To remind you of the previous
countries profiled: Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea and United Kingdom.
Other country profiles coming soon include Spain, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand (if I
can rustle up enough web apps from the NZ2.0 mailing list!), Latvia, China (I still need
more contacts for this) and Ireland (also needs more data). Do contact me if you can give me information about
web 2.0 in your country.
My thanks to Alexander Dodonov and Anton Antich for all the information about Russian web apps.
Alexander says that Web 2.0 became popular in Russia only recently and there hasn't been much development so far - many projects are in alpha and their business model is not clear (hmmm, doesn't sound that different to the Valley!). Russian users use foreign web 2.0 services a lot, such as gmail.com, netvibes, del.icio.us. And livejournal.com is the most popular blog service for Russians - there are thousands of Russian communites on LJ.
Anton too says that web2.0 is at its infancy in Russia and that a lot of web apps are inspired by their western counterparts. He said there are 2 key things for a project to be successful in Russia:
1) It has to be fully localized.
2) It has to work with local payment systems, which are very different than in the US or UK - "that's something many of the english language startups don't get and that's why they are not going to be successful here, unless they change". Anton thinks this leaves a lot of proven and empty niches in Russia.
blogus.ru - blog rating
Blugus rates blogs by calculating quantity of links from Technorati and blogs.yandex.ru (a local version of Technorati). The author of service is Anton Antich, one of the sources for this post. He is an employee of the Moscow office of Microsoft. Alexander said that blogus has drawn the attention of all the Russian blogosphere - "you can find almost all russian blogs in this service".
Its creator Anton told me that Blogus has big plans:
"Now there is a vision for "Blogus" to become an instrument of efficient discovery and tracking of relevant and interesting content on any topic in the Russian Blogosphere. To do that, we are creating something of a cross between Technorati and Memeorandum for blog readers - and a set of services that I cannot yet speak of for bloggers."
moikrug.ru - social network.
moikrug.ru is the Russian equivalent of linkedin.com (I've noticed that most of the countries I've profiled so far have a linkedin clone).
It's a social network for the professionals, created by group of developers from MIPT, which was started on 18 Nov 2005. It supports search on schools, high schools, universities and organizations. There is a job search service and collective blogs. It contains already tens thousand profiles, is regularly upgraded and the network effects are growing.
Anton says MoiKrug is doing quite nicely, although it's missing some of the features of LinkedIn. He says the quality of interactions is also lower, but thinks it will improve over time.
This is a collective blog, created by Jovan Savovich (http://jovan.ru/). It was created a long time ago, in November 2001. Alexander says that Jovan very carefully chooses members of the site community. He says Jovan is a person with imagination and that dirty.ru rules are strict - but fun.
dirty.ru is the most visited collective blog of the russian Internet (RuNet). There is a "dirty effect", same as the slashdot effect! There are over 10000 registered users - mainly programmers and designers, but also politicians, scientists, musicians and others.
The site has set of sections. For example, for free chatter exists a closed (registered use only) blog named "leper colony" (http://leprosorium.dirty.ru/). There are galleries of images by dirty members (http://fake.dirty.ru/) and a rich collection of quotes (http://quotes.dirty.ru/).
This is the Russian equivalent of Google. It has its own RSS reader (lenta.yandex.ru) and blog search (blogs.yandex.ru).
Here are more Russian web 2.0 apps (c/o Alexander and Anton):
A huge thanks to Alexander and Anton for all the info about the Russian Web market.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Top Web 2.0 Apps in Russia.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2713
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Richard MacManus has blogged on top web2.0 apps in Russia on his blog today. Blog is listing such popular russian services like toodoo, MoiKrug (title is translated as MyCircle) and Comby. All of this sites will be covered in details on blog in the nea... Read More
Turkey is next in this R/WW series on top international Web apps. It's the 9th country I've profiled so far - the others have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain and China. For the following information on... Read More
Comments
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yet another bookmark/lins collection in Russia:
Posted by: Denis | August 10, 2006 5:54 AMhttp://www.linkstore.ru
And another digg clone:
http://funlinks.ru/
http://ru.iiyes.com/
This is russian reddit:
Posted by: Alexander | August 10, 2006 6:13 AMhttp://ru.reddit.com/
www.7ruk.ru
Posted by: Anton | August 10, 2006 10:16 AMAccording to their blog, MoiKrug.ru has passed the 100 000 users mark several months ago.
Posted by: Petr | August 10, 2006 10:23 AMDo you have any plans profiling Ukraine (my native country)? It certainly less developed compared to, say, Russian but there are still some buzz going on, including atlaskit.com, i.ua and a bunch of others.
Posted by: Max Ischenko | August 10, 2006 11:24 PMWhat about Quintura's visual search at http://www.quintura.ru
Posted by: Yakov | August 11, 2006 3:17 AMThere are other russian social networks, such as ru.Reader2.com, ru.myflimz.net and other Kuchin's projects.
Posted by: .flint | August 11, 2006 3:58 AMhttp://www.neznakomka.ru/ is a cool web 2.0 dating service
Posted by: ya-dub | August 11, 2006 5:48 AMhttp://www.npj.ru/ - unique wiki+blog service and opensource engine.
Posted by: lefevr | August 11, 2006 7:13 AMhttp://beon.ru/ - russian anime comunity
Posted by: Michael Monashev | August 11, 2006 7:34 AM"Top Web 2.0 Apps in Russia".
Posted by: funlinks.ru | August 11, 2006 8:17 AMOn China I like the China Web2.0 Review http://www.cwrblog.net/
Posted by: Marshall | August 11, 2006 9:42 AMFor foreign folks: I bet you guys didn't get this joke at all!
When the author of the review (Anton Antich from Microsoft) puts his own little "garage project" (blogus) on the first place of the list, higher then some really huge community (dirty) and the Russian web-search company number 1 (yandex) - I wouldn't even call it "hidden marketing". No, no, nothing hidden at all! It's clear and really funny.
Dear Richard MacManus! The fact is, many other Russians can speak and write English, too. Not only slaves of Microsoft. Next time, look better for reviewers. Don't make us ROTFL.
Posted by: L e x a | August 11, 2006 12:46 PMWould allofmp3.com be considered "Web 2.0?" If so, it has to be at the top of the list.
Posted by: the patriarch | August 11, 2006 2:39 PMHey Lexa, a few points in response...
a) It was actually Alexander who gave me the info on Blogus initially. Anton's info came after that.
b) the list is unordered, so just because they're mentioned first doesn't mean they're the best. Although I agree it would've been great to get more info on Yandex. Please feel free to supply me with that info!
c) I've made a callout for international sources for my series a number of times now - and seeing as I don't speak Russian (to identify other possible sources) I'm reliant on whoever responds to my callouts :-)
So I invite you to by all means give me more info about the Russian market (readwriteweb@gmail.com). In fact, this is what comments are for ;-)
Personally I found the info Alexander and Anton gave me very informative and interesting - and I thank them again for taking the time to email me and supply me with all the details in this post.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 11, 2006 2:52 PMRichard, two persons cannot give an authentic view, more likely a subjective sight. It is necessary to involve more people always.
Posted by: .flint | August 12, 2006 12:55 AMa) Everything is subjective.
b) If you have corrections or suggestions to make, please do so either in the comments here or by email.
Frankly I can do without the lectures about what I should be doing. Tell me something useful and contribute some knowledge about the Russian market to this post.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 12, 2006 1:05 AMFor example, we have russian version of LJ, which has arisen in connection with Abuse Team actions. There are no any mention about Mazoo Networks, actually, the first russian blog networks also.
Also we have very popular, having a wide circulation, local version of Bash.org -- Bash.Org.Ru.
PS: Richard, fix the Russian Podcasting link -- http://rpod.ru, not a http://russianpodacsting.ru
Posted by: .flint | August 12, 2006 2:47 AMExcellent .flint! The Russian podcasting link works OK, so I'll leave that as is for now. Thanks for all the new suggestions.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 12, 2006 6:03 PMDoodka.com is a social network with blogging, communities, photo albums, tagging a la myspace for Russia and Ukraine.
Posted by: Honor Gunday | August 12, 2006 8:34 PMWhat about that?
Posted by: Jopo | August 12, 2006 10:00 PMIt's not in russian, but someday, I saw this website on the internet, www.pageflakes.com , it's a really nice startpage , where they have thousands of modules , and you can use together with many services , since i discovered i never stopped , it's a nice hint of web 2.0 apps.
Posted by: Lauren | August 13, 2006 8:22 AMwww.scholar.ru - russian analog of scholar.google.com
Posted by: mikedin | August 13, 2006 11:25 AMRichard, thanks for taking the courage to write something about the Russian Web 2.0. I believe that some additional context would help you to understand why all this fuss has surfaced.
Unfortunately, corruption in Russia is omnipresent, including many internet-related publications. L E X A is simultaneously an editor at one such publication and an owner of a forum for women. He got really pissed off that you had not included his baby into the list. As his subsequent column shows he does not mind directly promoting his site without mentioning his relation to it. Also, he mentions several real Web 2.0 players and yet several others with a remote (if any) connection to anything typically associated with Web 2.0. Too bad that such a talented guy prositutes himself. I guess it is hard to make a living in Russia just by being a professional at a brand name firm.
I personally would exclude from your list utx.ambience.ru, blogosphera.net, talxy.ru, keep4u.ru and add blog.mail.ru and planeta.rambler.ru, as L E X A correctly had pointed out among others.
All that being said, I personally think it would be ethical in New Zealand to mention for a full disclosure that Anton, who had helped to compile your original list, is the owner of Blogus.
Posted by: VB | August 13, 2006 3:27 PMThanks VB for your thoughts. I'm not really sure why there is such a fuss, but I get the feeling there are some cultural misunderstandings.
In any case, I did actually disclose in the post that Anton runs Blogus: "The author of service is Anton Antich, one of the sources for this post. He is an employee of the Moscow office of Microsoft."
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 13, 2006 3:33 PMRichard, I don't know what kind of anonimous coward is hiding under "VB" nick (no link is given), but let me assure you I don't own any "forum for women" :)
I used to do some work for Eva.ru for a couple of years, indeed (content management and development), but not anymore, and it make me no money to mention this site. It was like your consulting job, I suppose. I did it for different projects, so what? I don't think it should be a reason to exclude the biggest Russian women community from the list given in my article.
If I wanted to promote my OWN project, I had to somehow change the line of my story toward Japanese poetry called haiku :)
Posted by: L e x a | August 13, 2006 4:16 PMI think that comment #13 is ridiculous. People like Richard are doing their best trying to bring information and excitement about Web 2.0 from different parts of the world. It is impossible to know EVERYTHING about specific market, just like it is impossible to know EVERYTHING about anything.
His coverage is pretty on the money, so it does not warrant such arrogant rebuttal. He can't possibly know or understand all the intricacies and specifics of Russia these days. I left that country 15 years ago at the age of 19 and I can know longer understand all the nuances. So what depth and level of details are we looking for here?
I think that the fact that Richard took time to write about all these sites on his influential blog should be appreciated. And instead of critisizing you should thank him for sending traffic your way.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | August 13, 2006 10:40 PMDear foreign friends, now you can observe typical display of Russian mentality: fight because of details, not paying attention to the main thing.
Posted by: .flint | August 14, 2006 3:28 AMflint, the main thing is we all must die some day.
Posted by: L e x a | August 14, 2006 10:18 AMBut till that day, we got to find the way to the next whiskey bar.
And "The Doors" wasn't a Russian app.
and we launched Typepad in CIS (forme Soviet Union) with 3 portals at the beginning (www.wmjblogs.ru www.blogsit.ru and www.blogmania.ru). We expect to sign with a big media very soon.. Then if some western web companies want to do something in Russia, don't hesitate to contact us !! Tussian market is exciting but rules are a little bit different ;-))
regards
Pierre Mechentel
Posted by: Pierre | August 14, 2006 10:23 AMhttp://tubbydev.typepad.com and http://weblogrussia.blogsit.ru
Sucks, where are Web2 apps here? I can see regular old good SITES, not Web2 services...
Posted by: Jo | August 15, 2006 9:44 PMJust ugly promo of Anton's Blogus (very new service, hardly half-year old).
Maybe have to look at http://mos2.ru, as an example for such apps?
As well as Dirty is community blog, http://boti.ru as well. As well as blogsummit.ru is falen project (with hardly 100 uniques), there are hunderds of such projects in Ru.Net...
so, before writing such articles, maybe look at http://ezhe.ru to figure who rules russian internet segment?
2lexa:Alexey, aren't you editor-in-chief on eva.ru?
Posted by: unu | August 19, 2006 10:04 AMRichard, please count for Letopisi.ru is an educational wiki-based project. Russian word 'Letopisi' means living chronicle in English. The main aim of the project is to help students and teachers from different areas of Russia and other countries to 'play' in wiki spaces in order to understand this environment for their research and other educational activities.
We do not want to 'copy' any of the recent Wikipedia look-like projects, but are willing to test WikiWiki as a tool for common knowledge, environmental thinking and tolerance.
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Posted by: Andrey | April 21, 2007 12:05 PM[...]We do not want to 'copy' any of the recent Wikipedia look-like projects, but are willing to test WikiWiki as a tool for common knowledge, environmental thinking and tolerance.[...]
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