Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

My last post about Odnoklassniki.ru became the most popular post on this blog.  It’s by far more popular than all the tips, links, and tutorials that I’ve written here, combined. It comes up pretty high in related Google search results and brings quite a bit of traffic. It also brings in some comments.

Most of the comments are from people who mistakenly assume that this blog is some sort of support forum for all the troubles they have with Odnoklassniki.ru, or, even, that this site IS in itself Odnoklassniki.ru.  I am trying to limit those comments, since they don’t belong here.  On the other hand though, there are some really insightful comments.

For example, Gennadiy Zaretskiy has recently posted a comment with the link to this article. Here is what caught my attention:

Foreign users constitute a significant share of the project ‘Odnoklassniki’ audience. According to Mr. Popkov, about 20% of the traffic comes from abroad.

Wow! “20% of the traffic comes from abroad“.  That seems like a lot.  Odnoklassniki.ru web site is in Russian.  Only Russian-speaking folks can make use of it.  Also, the whole topic of the classmates is tied very much into specifically Russian users.  So, does that mean that about 20% of computer literate (at least to some deree), educated (at least to some degree) young (mostly) people either live, study, or work outside of Russia?

That. Seems. Like. A. Lot. 

Russian (or, Russian born) company SUP acquires LiveJournal blog service from Six Apart.  The two companies have been working together for the last six month or so, with SUP “taking care” of the Russian users of LiveJournal, which are an impressive 28% chunk of population.

How do I feel about this?  Here are some points from the top of my head, that will give you an idea:

• I have an account with LiveJournal, but I don’t use it that much myself.  There are a few blogs there that I read, but this is not by any means a vital service for my web life.
• I think that LiveJournal is lagging behind its competitors for some time now.  It needed a “push”.
• I don’t think that SUP will be able to “push” it.  For a number of reasons.  (Russia lags in technological development and understanding.   SUP is company established by “an international management team”, not techies.  And so on.)
• I don’t think that SUP (or any other Russian company for that matter) has enough trust to run a blogging service.  I think that many bloggers (especially political ones) will look for alternative services.
• I have a feeling that monetization of LiveJournal will get a bit more aggressive in the nearest future.
• I think that it’s time for a lot of people to take a look around and learn about other excellent blogging communities, such as WordPress.com for example.

I’m always amazed and shaken when ugly things work. I know they often do, but every time it happens, it’s like the first time for me.

There are many examples around, MySpace.com being the most well known. The idea behind it is nice – to provide a place for youngsters to communicate and share pictures and music. But the way it is implemented is truly ugly. Yet, MySpace.com is one of the top visited web sites on the Web.

Odnoklassniki.ru is another example of this. (Odnoklassniki is a Russian word for “classmates”.) Again, the idea was pretty good – create a way for people to find their classmates and all friends easily. 10, 15, 20 years later names and faces tend to fade out and we don’t remember them all that good anymore. So, those of us who want to get re-connected with friends from the old days have some troubles locating those. With Odnoklassniki.ru it becomes pretty easy – pick the region, area, and school or college where you studied, specify the years during which your were there, and you’ll be shown other people who are registered on the web site, who studied at the same place during approximately the same years. Names and pictures are there, and those help a lot.

The way the whole thing is setup is terrible though. First of all, the web site is horribly slow. Always. I’ve been registered there since forever, and I was checking it out once in a while – always slow. Secondly, it tries to be everything – a contact manager, a search engine, people directory, photo sharing and rating service, messenger, forum, and so on. Needless to say, it sucks badly at most of these. There is not a single function that works properly.

But, the main thing is that it works. The web site is very popular in Russia and lots of people register there every day. I myself managed to find and connect with people who I lost and forgotten a long time ago.

When I think about how these things work, this quote comes to mind (from Pirates of Silicon Valley movie):

Steve Jobs: We’re better than you are! We have better stuff.
Bill Gates: You don’t get it, Steve. That doesn’t matter!

I can’t really describe how I feel right now. But I’ll try.

Angry. Outraged. Speechless. Sad. Shocked.

(You probably shouldn’t read this post altogether, as it is more for me to release the hate, rather than for you to worry about.)

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The time came for Maxim to get his citizenship. I was trying to delay this moment as much as I could. I am waiting for the news from my Cyprus citizenship case that is in processing for more than two years now. And, naturally, I was hoping to get the Cypriot citizenship and pass it on to Maxim.

Unfortunately, it can’t wait no more and we have to arrange for the Russian citizenship for him too.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The other day in the park I overheard to kids talking. One of them was saying that he is from Russia. Another one was claiming to be from Moscow. There was a confusion in their talk. They couldn’t understand each other because neither of them knew the difference between the country and city. They were “feeling” that they were from the same place, but they couldn’t just figured the connection between Moscow and Russia.

They were discussing the issue for about five minutes or so, which is a long time for any kids’ conversation. I was laughing almost out loud as they argued. It was really amazing.

Few days later I realized that I was thinking way too much about that episode. My memory was coming back to it and replaying it back and forth. And I couldn’t understand why. And then it suddently hit me.

Many adults argue the same issue, using practically the same arguments. You see, currently there are so much money and power concentrated in Moscow that it is very separated from the rest of Russia. There is even a joke that says: the only problem with Moscow is that it is surrounded by Russia. If you are to watch a person from Moscow talking to a person from somewhere else in Russia, you’ll see that they can hardly understand each other. The differences in culture, level of life, money, jobs, and opportunities are just too great.

So, I find it very ironic how those two kids were discussing the issue and it seemed like the only thing on the way was the knowledge that Moscow is the city in the country of Russia. But many adults have this knowledge is still have a problem in understanding.

Statski sovetnik” was one of this movies. Ididn’t particularly want to see it, but since I got my hands on a copy, I thought – why not…

Directed by: Filipp Yankovsky
Genres: Drama, Crime
Cast: Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg Menshikov, Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Mashkov, Emiliya Spivak, Mikhail Yefremov, Oksana Fandera, Aleksei Gorbunov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Oleg Tabakov, Mariya Mironova, Aleksandr Strizhenov
IMDB raintg: 7.3
My rating: 5.0

[Read the rest of this entry...]