Site’s worldwide expansion buzz at an all-time high, but local social networks in Russia still hold on to their lead
Facebook may be the world’s largest social network, with a user base predicted to top 837 million in 2012, according to eMarketer estimates, but the social giant isn’t the leader everywhere; it still trails local incumbents in several emerging markets, including Russia.
According to data from comScore, in October 2011, Facebook was the fourth most popular social network in Russia, reaching just over 20% of internet users in the country. It trailed three domestic sites: VKontakte (VT), Odnoklassniki.ru and Mail.ru (My World).
In addition to dominating Russia in total reach, the top two native social networks dwarfed Facebook by more than 10 to one in average time spent per user.
eMarketer forecasts the number of Facebook users in Russia will increase 62% in 2012, whereas overall social network user growth in the country is only predicted to rise 11.1%. The figures suggest that local social networks will not be able to hold onto their dominance much longer. The real question may not be whether Facebook will overtake local social networks there, but when.
For more information on social network user behavior and trends outside the US, watch for a forthcoming eMarketer report on worldwide social network usage.
COMMENTARY: I took the opportunity to look into the top 3 Russian social networks: Vkontake, Odnoklassniki and My [email protected]. Vkontakte is the big cahuna in Russia, but the key reason they are so hot over there is because they are a platform for spam and 40% of its users are students and younger Millennials. But what really sets Vkontakte apart from Facebook is that it offers a file-sharing system that allows users to easily find pirated movies (dubbed in Russian), and illegally download music for free. Does that sound familiar? Apparently, the latter is enough to keep its users from switching to other social networks.
Vkontakte
Vkontakte is the social network created by Pavel Durov in 2006. They state they have more than 150 millions of users from all around the world (83 millions just from Russia and Ucraina), but just 28 millions are active every day. The main reason between this big divide is the usage of Vkontakte as a platform for spam, which forces users to be really suspicious: we must consider this crucial aspect when we want to plan a the brand presence on this social network. It’s also curious to notice how it’s relatively easy to access to all the names an profiles, displayed in chronological order based on subscription, completely ignoring any sort of privacy.
Another element we should consider is the massive presence of teenagers, a segment with low buying power; despite Vkontakte vice-president Ilya Perekopskyi stated that more than 60% of users are over 25 and not students, it’s quite hard to believe so by using the platform on daily basis (to know more read this). And our idea is confirmed by an analysis of the brands that can actually show some successful case histories on this social network. As an example we can mention Clearasil, a brand of anti-acne body detergent owned by Reckitt Benckiser.
Clearasil created a Vkontakte app that allowed users to create videos based on the product benefits. Everything was aimed to make the user-generate-content go viral inside the platform, aided by some others collateral micro-campaigns and online and offline PR. The impressive results (more than 13,000 contents created and a total reach of half a million people) caused sales to go up by 30% compared to 2009. To have a more precise idea of the results, here is the campaign report on Vimeo.
In a country like Russia, where the average time spent on Social Media is double the American one, how can we explain the success of Vkontakte over Facebook?
The answer is pretty easy: VK, apart from being the first comer in the tight national market, offers a file-sharing system that allows users to easily find pirated movies (dubbed in Russian), and illegally download music for free. For many people this is apparently enough to decide to not switch from VK to FB, but it’s also a characteristic we should think of when we decide our target for a brand campaign.
When Facebook arrived in Russia, VK lost a relatively small amount of users (less than 6 millions users according to Ogilvy). But these users were more open towards the brand communication (mainly to emphasize their social status) and they were representing ahigher cultural level compared the average Vkontakte users.
Anyways, it’s interesting to notice the effort Vkontakte put into an evolution towards a professional standards: they adopted some anti-spam policies and in April of 2011 they introduced the possibility to open Brand pages, and to launch video advertising campaigns.
In fact, like in many countries in the world, online videos are a crucial tool to increase the awareness of a brand; let’s just take a look at this viral campaign to launch in the Russian market a set of sea salts to cleaned the nose, called Aqua Maris. An agency called Novocortex created the “World Championships of Nose Cleansing”, together with a number of fictional characters and fake-websites, generating big buzz around this pretty funny hoax. This made the campaign bounce on several blogs and newspapers, both in Russia and abroad.
And this clearly shows how the Russian audience is reactive and easy to involve, when contents are well structured (to know more, read here).
Odnoklassniki
This social network has less registered users than Vkontakte: 43 millions between Russia and Ukraine. But it showed an big increase, after VK decided to re-establish the invitation-only subscription, another anti-spam move. This way Odnoklassniki was able to win the Kazakistan, which was owned by the competitor just months before. It’s also very popular in Kyrgyzstan, and it’s the n.2 most visited website in Armenia.
The main usage of this platform (which used to be a paid service) is to get back in touch with old friends and classmates, and it’s not really considered by brands, that usually choose alternative social networks like VK or FB.
Odnoklassniki is part of the Mail.ru group, the biggest Internet corporation in Russia: they also own [email protected] and a 33% share of di Vkontakte, and two huge instant messaging platforms (ICQ and Mail.ru Agent, with more than 80 million registered email accounts). Even though they basically share the same ownership, it’s curious to notice there have been fight between different social networks: as an example, Pavel Durov (the VK founder) defined Mail.ru “a tasteless warehouse of viruses”, blocking links directing to Mail.ru on Vkontakte.
This network, born in 2007, counts almost 4 million users amongst Russia and Ukraine, most of them teenager and kids according to Ogilvy. The main goal of the platform is to incentivate the creation of connection between young users, offering several platforms to communicate between users. This makes it one of the most relevant network in the Russian panorama.
“My World” members can send private messages, give and get gifts, share their desires, publish pics and videos, listen to music and manage personal blogs. But the most important thing to the young audience is the possibility to know what their friends are doing in real time.
For quite a while I've predicted that Facebook would encounter problems gaining traction in Russia. Looks like I am right. I'm not sold that Facebook's user base in Russia will increase by 62%. That's just too optimistic. Maybe 30% is more like it. A big maybe.
If you look at the average number of minutes Russians spend on the top 3 Russian social networks with the time they spend on Facebook, you get the feeling that Facebook has not fully sold Rooskieland. Will Zuck break some rules allowing pirated movies and music files? I say he does, cause he has no real values. He also said about the Chinese, that maybe Facebook should become political and adopt to local Chinese custom. Translation: allow Chinese censorship. China turned down Facebook, but Zuck is not quitting. He's scheduled to make another try later this year. He needs China to get to 1 billion users.
Courtesy of an article dated February 27, 2012 appearing in eMarketer and an article dated October 19, 2011 appearing in Young Digital Lab
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