Is Google finally becoming serious in approaching the Korean market? Joop Dorresteijn reports that blogging platform TNC has been acquired by Google today; making them the first acquired company by Google in Korea. (who’s counting anyway) TNC offers a [...]]]> Is Google finally becoming serious in approaching the Korean market? Joop Dorresteijn reports that blogging platform TNC has been acquired by Google today; making them the first acquired company by Google in Korea. (who’s counting anyway) TNC offers a blogging platform similar to Automatic, the application behind WordPress.

Source: TheNextWeb

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According to The White African Blog, a new Ad network has been launched called Pamoja Media. Started by Joshua Wanyama (of AfricanPath) and Benin Mwangi (of Cheetah Index), it’s an ad network created to serve advertisers [...]]]> According to The White African Blog, a new Ad network has been launched called Pamoja Media. Started by Joshua Wanyama (of AfricanPath) and Benin Mwangi (of Cheetah Index), it’s an ad network created to serve advertisers trying looking for a one-stop-shop for publishers in Africa, or that reach Africans in the diaspora.

Publisher requirements are quite high. Among other factors sites must have an Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better and a minimum of 2,000 pageviews per day. This looks like an interesting option for advertisers targeting the continent or publishers looking to monetize though.

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Both WebProNews and Bloomburg are reporting on the comments made by Vladimir Dolgov, Head of Google Russia, that online ad sales will jump fivefold in Russia to reach $1 billion in 2010.

In 2010, Google believes its operations in [...]]]> Both WebProNews and Bloomburg are reporting on the comments made by Vladimir Dolgov, Head of Google Russia, that online ad sales will jump fivefold in Russia to reach $1 billion in 2010.

In 2010, Google believes its operations in Russia could be tapping a billion dollar Internet advertising market. 2007 saw Russia grow to a $200 million bonanza in online ads. Two years from now may make that a fleeting, unprofitable memory.

Vladmir Dolgov said online advertising as a whole has caught fire in Russia, with 75,000 companies out of three million registered firms indulging in online ads. Online ad sales reached $200 million last year and have more than doubled every year for the past four, Dolgov said.

Russia will have almost 40 million personal computers this year, according to a Communications Ministry forecast, up from more than 31 million last year. The number of Internet users in the country of 142 million people will rise to 46 million, up from 35 million in 2007.

Yandex still dominates the market in Russia but Google appears to have moved Russia to a higher priority lately as they fight for users.

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Techcrunch reports of Ex-Yahoo SVP and General Manager of Search Vish Makhijani becoming Yandex CEO have been denied by the company in a press release today.

Vish Makhijani has indeed joined Yandex but in the position of President and CEO [...]]]> Techcrunch reports of Ex-Yahoo SVP and General Manager of Search Vish Makhijani becoming Yandex CEO have been denied by the company in a press release today.

Vish Makhijani has indeed joined Yandex but in the position of President and CEO of their new US technology and business development facility, “Yandex Labs” based in Silicone Valley, US. Arkady Volozh, a popular figure in the Russian new media scene will continue in his post as head of the company.

“We did not hesitate to go the extra mile to find this rare talent,” said Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex, the parent company. “We are excited to add a leading technology and business veteran in Silicon Valley to the Yandex team. Vish and his group at Yandex Labs will help to develop and improve Yandex’s core technology capabilities including the quality of algorithmic search for the Russian audience.”

Source: Yandex News

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev joined calls for the country to be assigned an Internet domain name in the Cyrillic script, reports the Moscow Times on Wednesday as part of a Kremlin drive to promote Russian as a global language.

He [...]]]> Russian President Dmitry Medvedev joined calls for the country to be assigned an Internet domain name in the Cyrillic script, reports the Moscow Times on Wednesday as part of a Kremlin drive to promote Russian as a global language.

He said 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would be a key part of raising the importance of the language, a task he said was his personal priority as president.

“We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name — it is a pretty serious thing. It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language and Cyrillic. … And I think we have a rather high chance of achieving such a decision.”

Medvedev is certainly the most tech-savvy head of state Russia has seen, he has publicly used his mobilephone to connect to the Internet and says he surfs inline every morning for news.

The Russians wish to have the first true IDN extension on the Internet, .RF (.рф). Unlike other IDN domains currently available, where the extension itself remains in Latin characters, full IDN domains will be entirely in the non-Latin character sets. The viability of these domains is beng discussed at the ICANN meeting later this month in Paris.

While the application of presidential influence may well help the Russian cause, ICANN still has issues with the continued use of the .SU (Soviet Union) extension. After many requests to the operators to “to freeze new registrations”, this extension is still being actively promoted. In fact their last reaction to ICANN’s demands was to slash prices by 50%. This move quadrupled the number of SU users from 11′000 to more than 45′000, making it even more of a headache to decommission. However, it is increasingly looking like a compromise will be in the form of an exchange between .SU and .RF (.рф). With that in mind registration of .SU would seem a smart move at the moment, as users domain names would be transferred, without further application.

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The Moscow Times reports that Turkmenistan has begun to allow private citizens to connect to the internet. The national internet provider, Turkmentelekom, said on Thursday that it has been connecting up to 20 homes a day since the announcement, mainly [...]]]> The Moscow Times reports that Turkmenistan has begun to allow private citizens to connect to the internet. The national internet provider, Turkmentelekom, said on Thursday that it has been connecting up to 20 homes a day since the announcement, mainly in the capital city of Ashgabat. It has a waiting list of 2000 people.

Previously internet access was restricted to government employees, diplomatic posts and offices of major international companies.

The average monthly salary in Turkmenistan is $200, so it is unlikely that many can afford the price of a home connection, nor is it known if the government will block any websites. Surfing the net will cost around $1/hr on top of a monthly charge of $8. The initial installation costs $42. Turkmentelekom is also offering a dial-up connection to users but this is reported to be extremely slow, which will frustrate many web surfers.

Russian’s largest internet provider MTS has also launched a new high speed wireless service in the country. They are covering Ashgabat, Balkanabat (former Nebitdag) and Turkmenbashi (former Krasnovodsk). This will create some much needed competition for the national provider.

Turkmenistan already has their own version of Google.tm but the market holds potential for Russian providers such as Yandex. As a former USSR satellite, the population of just over 5m speak Terkmen, Russian, Uzbek and Dari. The ccTLD for the country is .TM and is available to foreign owners but requires a minimum 10yr registration period.

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Aegis Group plc has bought AdWatch in Russia to make the UK media buyer’s digital marketing unit Isobar the country’s number one in online media. Moscow headquartered AdWatch, founded in 2000, has gross assets of €9.5m and works for [...]]]> Aegis Group plc has bought AdWatch in Russia to make the UK media buyer’s digital marketing unit Isobar the country’s number one in online media. Moscow headquartered AdWatch, founded in 2000, has gross assets of €9.5m and works for clients such as Microsoft, VTB Bank, SUN Interbrew, Canon and Rolf.

Russia is seeing major growth in advertising expenditure, with spending across all media is predicted to increase by 20% in both 2008 and 2009, with online advertising predicted to grow by over 50%. A shift towards digital consumption means that Russia’s online users now stands at 25 million and is growing at over 25% annually.

“The recent growth of Russia has made Europe’s ‘Big Five’ markets a ‘Big Six’,” said Aegis CEO Robert Lerwill. “AdWatch brings us a significant competitive advantage in a market where demand for digital services is outstripping supply.”

Source: Sharecast | Aegis PR

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The Moscow Times reports that Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, plans to raise $1.5b to $2b in a New York IPO this fall. Their source has said that these expectations are based on a preliminary valuation of [...]]]> The Moscow Times reports that Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia, plans to raise $1.5b to $2b in a New York IPO this fall. Their source has said that these expectations are based on a preliminary valuation of Yandex at $5 billion.

Meanwhile Google is looking to improve their performance in Russia, Google co-founder Sergei Brin said in an interview in Moscow last week.

“Yandex received about twice as many searches in Russia per day than Google”, Brin said, “We think our search is better, but [Yandex] also has many talented people”.

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Joop Dorresteijn has started a series of posts which aim to explore the South Korean internet market. The series is not complete yet but one to bookmark if you’re looking for information on one of the most active internet [...]]]> Joop Dorresteijn has started a series of posts which aim to explore the South Korean internet market. The series is not complete yet but one to bookmark if you’re looking for information on one of the most active internet markets globally.

• Introduction to the South-Korean web series
• A profile of the connectivity in South Korea
• Why so little Korean web companies get ‘Techcrunched’
• Introduction to five popular Korean websites
Social community Cyworld a trendsetter in E-commerce?

It looks like he will continue the series to give us an overview of the main search engines in the country, Naver.cm, Daum.net, Empas.com and Nate.com.

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As we reported back in February 2007, ICANN is still attempting to delete the obsolete SU (Soviet Union) extension but having little success. While they have managed to decommission the .YU (Yogoslavia) extension successfully they are finding rebellion [...]]]> As we reported back in February 2007, ICANN is still attempting to delete the obsolete SU (Soviet Union) extension but having little success. While they have managed to decommission the .YU (Yogoslavia) extension successfully they are finding rebellion among Russian webmasters, ISPs and the Registry itself.

To bring you up to date with the dispute so far, September saw ICANN release a statement urging “the current .SU operators to make it clear to the .SU registrants the issues surrounding the domain, as well as to freeze new registrations until its future is clear”.

In response the .SU operators announced an 80% price cut to their domain in the Russian press, bringing it into line with .RU pricing and the launch of IDN (international) version of the domain extension. Not exactly the reaction ICANN must have been hoping for.

ICANN soon dispatched a team to Russia to discuss the situation, happily reporting that the SU operators had seen reason and holding a letter from from Alexei Platonov and Alexei Soldatov on the .SU ccTLD RosNIIROS. The letter indicated a willingness to talk about the issue of decommissioning but saw this within a time frame of 10-15 years. However, first they would fully investigate the possibility of keeping the extension running and obtaining special “exceptionally reserved” status (like .EU which does not pertain to any one country).

The Russians were a little less candid on the point of freezing new registrations but did agree to inform the SU community about the talks and possibility of future migration.

It’s been hard to see that conversation in the Russian press. Article carry positive quotes from the PR department of RU-Center, talking of the future for the domain and of ICANN backing down over the issue. Rumors have been circulated about a possible third IDN extension, .RF (Russian Federation) in exchange for letting the .SU decommission. As promised though, on November 1st 2007, the price of SU was slashed. While there were only 10’000 subscribers at the beginning of that year, there are now over 45’000.

Today a new volley was fired, as SU opened the sunrise period for IDN registrations. Far from winding down the extension, they are actively promoting it and expect, according to their own figures, to see 30-40% new registrations over the coming months.

According to Andrei Vorobyov, Head of Public Relations for the Regional Network Information Center (RU-Center), who operate the domain, “In the future, we have plans to expand the number of languages used in the IDN .SU domain, including all the national languages of the people of Russia.”

Although RU-Center has made all the right noises to ICANN, their actions have pointed to a deliberate promotion of the domain. This has caused the number of their users to spiral, giving weight to their arguments to keep the domain. All eyes are on ICANN now to see how they deal with this latest snub to their authority. At the moment, it seems there is little the international organization can do to stop the Russians.

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If you’re considering targeting the Russian audience, one of the first hurdles to overcome is how to deal with the local online payment methods. Credit cards have started to be distributed but they are expensive, with high interest rates, activation [...]]]> If you’re considering targeting the Russian audience, one of the first hurdles to overcome is how to deal with the local online payment methods. Credit cards have started to be distributed but they are expensive, with high interest rates, activation charges and a general lack of transparency in the charges. Many students and employees are now receiving debit cards or restricted credit cards, which let them withdraw and spend their student loans or wages but can not be used online.

To cover this gap in the market, many turn to online payments systems such as Yandex Money and WebMoney. Yandex is reported to be signing up 3000 new users each day and WebMoney now claims to have 5m users. There are still issues with these systems, transferring money to and from them is hardly convenient. Dedicated top-up machines have sprung up in shops and supermarkets which allow Russians to transfer cash to a range of services, from WebMoney to their mobilephone. Other methods include scratch cards or money transfers via the banks or post offices. Yandex has recently announced a partnership scheme with Russian banks, to allow the same functionality at their ATMs.

DGCmagazine.com has covered WebMoney in depth for their April magazine and I would recommend it to anyone looking to trade in Russia. WebMoney are very open to relationships with foreign companies and this magazine contains a good introduction to their service.

View the April Edition of DGC Magazine (free PDF)

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Yandex, the leading search engine in Russia has announced a partnership with the Russian Development Bank (RBR). This will allow users of their online payment system, Yandex Money to transfer funds to and from the virtual account via the [...]]]> Yandex, the leading search engine in Russia has announced a partnership with the Russian Development Bank (RBR). This will allow users of their online payment system, Yandex Money to transfer funds to and from the virtual account via the ATM machines owned by the bank.

Yandex Money is a system similar to PayPal. Registration in the system is free and depositing money into the system is done without commission. Withdrawing money is charged at 2%. The system is open to merchants dealing in Russia but is currently restricted to Russian registered businesses.

“Together with the Russian Development Bank, we have developed a reliable and secure scheme of interacting between the virtual bank account and card withdrawals” said Yevgeny Zavalishina, CEO of Yandex.Money.”We’re ready to join other Russian banks and are open to cooperation with all market participants.”

Source: Yandex

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Yandex, the leading search engine portal in Russia has signed a deal with Kaspersky Anti-Virus to bundle their product into their desktop application, Ya Online.

Ya Online is free desktop software, which connects to their mail service (Yandex Post), [...]]]> Yandex, the leading search engine portal in Russia has signed a deal with Kaspersky Anti-Virus to bundle their product into their desktop application, Ya Online.

Ya Online is free desktop software, which connects to their mail service (Yandex Post), allows users to search and gives them information on the weather and traffic in Moscow. It will now also provide free anti-virus cover for the users. Yandex estimate they have 200,000 users of the Ya Online service.

Ya Online can be download here

Source: Yandex News

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ComScore have released new statistics showing that the Chinese search giant, Baidu is now the third largest worldwide search property. In December 2007 there were 66.2billion search queries made worldwide, 3.4billion of them were done at Baidu giving [...]]]> ComScore have released new statistics showing that the Chinese search giant, Baidu is now the third largest worldwide search property. In December 2007 there were 66.2billion search queries made worldwide, 3.4billion of them were done at Baidu giving it 5.2% of the audience share.

Of course Google dominated the study, with 62% audience share, followed by Yahoo! with 12.8%. Microsoft came in 4th with 2.9%. Yandex the Russian search engine now appears on the statistics, with 0.9%.

Source: ComScore

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New figures published by CyberSecurity.ru have shown the number of internet users in Ukraine rose by 1% between January and February of this year. There are now 7767005 (7.8m) unique users per month online in the country. That represents [...]]]> New figures published by CyberSecurity.ru have shown the number of internet users in Ukraine rose by 1% between January and February of this year. There are now 7767005 (7.8m) unique users per month online in the country. That represents massive growth of 74% on the same period last year (4475888/ 4.4m users)

The Kiev region leads the way with 58.8% of the total audience, the Chernivtsi region was the least active with only 0.12%. After Kiev, in descending order of popularity were Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lviv and Zaporozhye. These amounted to 30.74% of the total audience.

According to Ukrainian IPs, the search leader in the country is currently Google with 67.15%. Next come Yandex (17.72%), Rambler (3.09%), Bigmir.net (3,08) and the Ukrainian directory Meta.ua (2.90%).

The top queries in the country were: weather, work, chat, the map of Kiev, car markets and news.

Source: CyberSecurity.ru

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The third annual “Internet and Business” conference has been announced in Russia this week. CIB-2008 is the largest internet conference in Russia and last year attracted over 2000 visitors. All the leading lights of Runet will be in appearance, [...]]]> The third annual “Internet and Business” conference has been announced in Russia this week. CIB-2008 is the largest internet conference in Russia and last year attracted over 2000 visitors. All the leading lights of Runet will be in appearance, including Yandex, Begun, Mail.ru, Rambler and Google.

The conference itself is free of charge and will take place on the 16th-18th April 2008 at the luxurious BOR hotel just outside Moscow. There were over 120 sessions last year with a banquet held on the first night.

I’ll be attending the conference as usual, with several of my team. Although the talks are usually in Russian, the conference can arrange personal translators. If any Multilingual Search readers do want to attend leave a message in the comments and I will be glad to help you.

Google Translated version of CIB-2008

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The Moscow Times reports that the leading Russian search engine, Yandex, plans for float shares in an IPO on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange this fall. They have accredited this to a “banking source with knowledge of the [...]]]> The Moscow Times reports that the leading Russian search engine, Yandex, plans for float shares in an IPO on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange this fall. They have accredited this to a “banking source with knowledge of the matter”. Yandex is currently the most popular search engine in Russia with approximately 55% market coverage. In comparison, Google currently holds 17-20% of the market.

Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital have been hired to organise an offering, according to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti.

“The size of the offering has not yet been defined”, the source continued.”The company has no emergency need of money, and the bulk of the proceeds will go to the shareholders who decide to sell their shares”

The search engine could raise as much as $3 billion in the IPO, making it the country’s biggest high-tech flotation, according to Kommersant, another Russian national paper.

We have been here before though, with IPO rumours circulating in March 2006. As before, there has been no official comment from Yandex confirming or denying this move. Although it is widely accepted that Yandex will make an IPO, anyone following this story knows there is no rush on their part. It will be interesting to watch their movements running up to this autumn but continued slow down in the global markets may well change their plans.

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Techcrunch reports that social networking site Badoo has received $30m from Russian investor Finam for a 10% stake in the company. The funds are to build the service in Russia, where the social networking market has reached around [...]]]> Techcrunch reports that social networking site Badoo has received $30m from Russian investor Finam for a 10% stake in the company. The funds are to build the service in Russia, where the social networking market has reached around 10m users in January.

Badoo’s social networking site with photo and video sharing has 12.7 million registered accounts, mostly in Latin America and Continental Europe. Badoo was launched from London in November 2006 and was the number two fastest rising search term on the Google Zeitgeist list for 2007. It will go up against several other russian sites including Odnoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte.ru and Moikrug.ru which have all attracted several million users each. And now the Russian version of MySpace, which launched only last week.

Badoo’s main pitch is that it carries no advertising, avoiding the kinds of issues Facebook had with Beacon. Instead, Badoo derives its main revenue from offering users the chance to pay to be popular. Instead, Badoo derives its main revenue from offering users the chance to pay to be popular.

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Russian search leader Yandex, has released their Autumn report on the current state of the blogosphere in Russia. As you might expect, the report is in Russian so I’ll give you some of the highlights here.

- There are [...]]]> Russian search leader Yandex, has released their Autumn report on the current state of the blogosphere in Russia. As you might expect, the report is in Russian so I’ll give you some of the highlights here.

- There are now 3.1m blogs in Runet, 2.6 times larger than this time last year.

- The blogosphere in Russia represents 3% of the global total but this figure is now larger than the share of Russian users (2%)

- Now there are more Russian language blogs than French, German or Portuguese ones, but less than blogs in Spanish, Italian, Chinese, English or Japanese.

- More than 75% of Russian blogs host on liveinternet.ru, livejournal.com, blogs.mail.ru, diary.ru and loveplanet.ru

- About 7000 new blogs appear daily in Runet. There are about 120′000′000 recorded there now.

- Most blogs (60%) belong to female bloggers. However this figure has fallen since the first quarter this year (64%).

- The average blogger is 22 years old (1 year increase on last year)

- About 70% live in Russia, largest other geographic locations are USA and Ukraine.

- 1/3 of Russian bloggers have 10 friends

Blog Usage

The diagram below shows the total number of active blogs (yellow) per platform. The blue lines indicate abandoned blogs.

The full report in Russian can be downloaded here.

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Vanessa Fox over at SearchEngineLand describes a new feature in Google Webmaster Central which allows you to set the geographic preference of your site. One of the main issues for people new to multilingual marketing is how to [...]]]> Vanessa Fox over at SearchEngineLand describes a new feature in Google Webmaster Central which allows you to set the geographic preference of your site. One of the main issues for people new to multilingual marketing is how to set up their website to be well ranked in a specific country, or even to be included in the local results for that location.

To date Google has looked at the following five factors to help them correctly position and rank a website geographically:

1. Domain Extension
2. Page Language
3. Document Language Type
4. Physical Location of Site
5. Inbound Links

Google is now offering a new method of setting the preferred location yourself. You can only set one location for each site but could use this method on sub-domains as Vanessa points out:

www.example.com/ (U.S. site)
france.example.com/ (French site)
russia.example.com/ (Russian site)

If your domain extension already determines your site location, such as .ru for Russia, then Google will not let you change this but will display the associated country in the control panel. Although the ccTLD approach is usually recommended for ensuring inclusion in local engines this tool will be very useful on existing com/net/org sites or sub-domain structures and may mitigate the need to buy local hosting.

Source: SearchEngineLand

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