Tag: Russia

Odnoklassniki.ru – Russian classmates, but abroad?

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.

SUP buys LiveJournal

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.

Odnoklassniki.ru – Russian classmates

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!

Speechless. With a lot of words.

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.)

Continue reading Speechless. With a lot of words.

Russian climbing – MUST SEE!

One of the things that I’ve been saying for as long as I can remember is that it is always interesting and exciting to watch a person do something he is good at. And your interest in the subject is irrelevant – it’s all about how that person does it and that only. And ‘it’ can be anything. OK, maybe with few small exceptions, but those don’t count.

Another thought that I support, but always try to avoid is that in order to be good at something, all you need is strong will and a lot of effort. Equipment, financial injections, and stuff like that can only slow you down.

In support of these two ideas, I offer you the link to a video – Russian climbing.

It is a pretty long download and will last for only 8 minutes, but YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SEE THIS! Actually, you might have seen something similar in Jackie Chan movies, but who believes the cinema these days? Jackie Chan is doing what he is doing for the movies and he uses a lot of trained professionals and equipment to achieve the effect.

In this clip though, you’ll see guys doing some really amazing things without any equipment what-so-ever. Really, really cool stuff!