Social Networking in Russia

A bit of a cut-and-paste post here - a couple of translated articles courtesy of Johnson's Russia List, and some awesome graphics from Yandex kartinki, all dealing with the always-interesting topic of social networking in Russia.

Young Russian professionals choose social networks - survey

MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti)-More than half of Russian Internet users (52%) have accounts in several social networks, a poll by the Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) published on Tuesday revealed.

Sociologists portrayed the typical social network user as a resident of Russian northwest administrative district (71% of them have accounts in the social networks), aged from 18 to 24 (75%), highly-educated (57% have a higher education), and financially stable.

The poll shows that the most popular network among Russians is Vkontakte with more than 75 million registered accounts. Almost one-third of the respondents (31%) visit it daily and another 23% visit the site on a weekly basis.

The second most popular Internet spot for Russian networkers- is Odoklassniki.ru. Twenty-one percent of the users visit it daily, 28% - weekly.

Unlike Odoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte allows the posting of music and video, which the networker can share with the friends and manage his or her account by changing privacy settings.

According to the survey, other social networks are not so popular amid the Russian audience. The micro-blog network Twitter is used by only 13% of the respondents, blog-generating site Blog.ru - by 14%, Facebook and MySpace are familiar to only 15% of the respondents.

The poll was held on April 3-4, 2010, with 1,600 respondents in 140 localities of 42 regions. The margin of error is 3.4%.

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Social Networking Sites Becoming Political, Alarming Authorities

Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal
http://ej.ru/
May 18, 2010
Commentary by Marina Litvinovich, under the rubric "In the Opposition/The Wild Ones": "The Miners Are in Contact"

Social networks are the egg in which the needle is kept, and along with it -- the death of Koshchey (fairy tale monster). Koshchey is not so much Putin as he is the established social order (which, it is true, has nothing in common with order in the sense of harmony). The social order built in Putin's time presupposes the absence of self-willed and self-reliant citizen unification and action and proceeds from the idea that everything that is happening with the society should be approved and financed in the Kremlin, and then shown in approved form on television. Public action a la Putin is a youth army of many thousands which is brought in to stand on Academician Sakharov Prospekt, who is turning over in his grave for the umpteenth time at this spectacle. The young people usually are standing to confront some kind of color threat: the planners apparently proceed from the principle of "if not skills, then numbers," and each time bring in more and more people to do the "confronting," while who they are confronting remains unclear to this day. The personification of confrontation usually ends up with good-natured bouts of drinking in the neighboring courtyards, and this is despite that fact the all the local wine stores have been closed since morning.

However, as many people predicted -- and I was one of them -- the Internet is creating a completely new structure of public space. This has become especially noticeable in the last two years thanks to the growth and development of the social networks. Millions of new social cells -- groups, communities, circles, and associations -- have arisen on the Russian (more accurately Russian-language) Internet at the websites VKontakte (In Contact), Odnoklassniki (Classmates), Meyl.ru (Mail), and LiveJournal. These communities and groups structure Russian society in an absolutely new way: the ordinary urban Internet user today voluntarily belongs to at least 2-3 communities, but at the same time is not and has never been a participant in any public association or group in reality. It is considered natural for young city-dwellers to "belong to groups" on the Internet, but completely unnatural for them to join a party or become a member of some association. This is largely because membership in Internet groups does not obligate you to anything in particular except voluntarily receiving information, and entry to and departure from them is simple. However, here is an interesting fact: if there is a threat to some interest of the given group, it mobilizes instantly and is frequently ready to move from the virtual world to reality.

With the arrival and spread of social networks, we absolutely unexpectedly received in Russia an enormous civil society consisting of millions of virtual groups. The construction of a civil society, which Russia has been seeking for many years now, was not assisted by any state efforts or international grants: it was facilitated by a simple leap forward in Internet technologies -- the transition to web2.0. And it is not so bad at all that many of the groups that have arisen on the networks are comical like, for example, the large society of people who lick yoghurt lids. Suffice it to glance at the lists of public organizations in the United States or in Europe -- strange organizations are met there too, such as the Foundation To Rescue Cows in Great Britain or the Movement To Resist Aliens from Other Planets in the United States. I will go further -- if something begins to threaten yoghurt lids, we can receive a vigorous, ready-to-act community that rises to the defense of its interests, even such unusual ones.

There are many political, human rights, and social communities in the networks. But they are not so large. The large communities are those created on the territorial or fan principle. Experience shows that in critical situations it is these communities that become the main sources of information and help people unite their efforts and move to actions offline, that is, in reality. When it was decided to revoke the license of the television channel "2x2," hundreds of fans and viewers who adored the Simpsons and "South Park" went into the streets with posters in defense of the channel. People far from politics were organized for public actions thanks to the users of the VKontakte network who originally belonged to the "2x2" Channel fan group.

After the accident at the Sayano-Sushenskaya GES (Hydro Power Plant) operational information that was different from official reports could also be gotten from users of the VKontakte network, who organized a group to exchange information on survivors and victims.

A recent example is provided to us by the situation in Mezhdurechensk, where after the explosion at the Raspadskaya Mine, the rally, the clashes with OMON (special-purpose police), and censorship of the mass media, the primary debate and exchange of information and opinions developed in the community "Devoted to the Miners of the City of Mezhdurechensk" at the mail.ru website and in a group on this same subject at VKontakte. Both communities had existed for a long time and joined people on the territorial-vocational principle. The first has more than 6,000 participants, while the second has more than 5,000. It was in fact online in the community on mail.ru that the first report appeared that clashes with OMON had begun on the railroad tracks. These same communities went very quickly from discussing "what is happening" to "what is to be done" and, inevitably, to political topics and conclusions. Words that formerly had been heard only from the mouths of the non-system opposition began to be heard from the mouths of ordinary people. And this alarmed the fighters against extremism (E Center) and the FSB (Federal Security Service). The administrator of the VKontakte group was summoned to the organs and they took his password, which makes it possible to manage user profiles and groups. Power over the group was seized, its name was changed, the group was made closed (originally admission to the group had been free and open), and all information and exchanges of opinions were deleted. Several users who made pictures of screens were able to document the process of the disappearance of information and the irreversible metamorphoses with the group.

The group on mail.ru still exists, but no one is giving any guarantees that they will not treat it in the same way. This is actually the first time that the security structures worked out a procedure for a "raider takeover" of a group on the social networks. "All it took" for this was to put strong pressure on the administrator so he would give up the password. And "pressure" is something the "siloviki" (security officers) know how to do -- it is not brain work.

State and security structures have been concerned with the subject of controlling the Internet for years now. They usually talk a great deal about the fight against pornography, but during the commotion they deal with politically undesirable websites and bloggers. And the fight is not against "wheels," but rather against individuals: bloggers are being put in jail, and as we now see, they are pumping out their passwords with threats. It is like some kind of "war and the Germans," and every blogger or group owner is a potential female radio operator Ket (Cat). I think that in the near future the "siloviki" will try to incorporate this new and promising area of the fight against their own people.

[image source]