Russia tops social media

The beautiful St Basil's Cathedral

Story by Matt Rhodes from Fresh Networks 

Earlier this year we reported on how Russia is the fourth largest social networking market in Europe. Data from TNS showed that use of social media and social networking in Russia is widespread, making it the fourth largest market in Europe for social networking behind the UK, Germany and France. In part this position is driven by strong local social networking sites, principally Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники), which reports some 30 million registered users, and VKontakte (В контакте) with some 28 million registered users.

These numbers are truly impressive and perhaps the rate of growth in membership of social networking sites in Russia is even more so. But recent research from comScore shows that Russians are the most engaged users of social media in the world.

The research showed that in May this year, 1.1 billion people went online worldwide, and 75% of these visited social networks and online communities. In fact, the typical user of the internet spent 3.7 hours on such sites in May. But users from Russia led the way with the typical internet user in that country spending a total of 6.6 hours ever month on these social media sites. Brazil was second with an average of 6.3 hours per user and Canada was third with 5.6 hours per typical user. These numbers compare with 4.6 hours spent by the typical UK internet user on social networks. And a typical 4.2 hours for people in the US.

By this simple measure, the Russian internet audience appears to be perhaps the most engaged in the world in social networking and online communities. This highlights the danger of focusing on English-language-centric developments in online communities, social media tools and social networks. In Russia, two local sites each reach more than 40% of the entire Internet population in the country. Facebook, by contrast, reaches only 2% of the Russian internet audience.

Some of the most interesting developments in the use of social networks and online communities are happening where the users are most engaged and where the user bases are growing most rapidly. This is more likely to be in the markets where the audience and access is developing quickly. Perhaps we should all look to Russia and Brazil more when we want to know what comes next.

Creating a click

“If you don’t like the news…. go out and make some of your own.” — Wes “Scoop” Nisker

Nisker’s words can be a tribute to citizen journalism today. I thought it’d be good to compile a list of organisations where people are making some news of there own. Here is a list of citizen journalism publications,that are demonstrating the strength of this new media platform:

I’d drink to that

My friend has recently been part of the launch of PRinks, the monthly social get-together for people in the communcations industry, and as as she talks to me about the birth of PRinks, she refreshingly reminds me of the power of online networks to build relationships. It’s also given me an interesting view on traditional networking and where the value of these events lies.

Everyone’s a journalist

So lets delve into user-generated content. Citizen journalism is about the people, it’s a new media, so how much impact has it really had? How are news companies engaging and using citizens as journalists? What are the effects of this? And why is it such a growing trend? This Digital Media TV episode looks at these questions … enjoy!

Journalists <3 social media

Here’s an interesting article by Jeremy Porter from blog Journalists that looks at how 70 per cent of journalists use social networks to assist in reporting.

The future of journalism

Here is a great blog article on the future of journalism education in a social media world, by Jeremy Porter from his Journalistics blog. It discusses how journalism institutes are needing to change their curriculum to take in account social media networking sites and to create students that are fit for the online world.

From the expert

To fully delve into the online world I thought the best place to start was getting some advice on how to negate my way around and more importantly why should I jump on this bandwagon, so I’ve turned to Gemma Crowley, PR extraordinaire from DRPR and social media guru for some words of wisdom. Here’s what she had to say: