Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube top the list of social networks in the world, but users from Russia (and other post-Soviet countries, for example, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine) often prefer regional replacements for these platforms.
And this difference in popularity can make a big difference to companies that use such sites for advertising, as it can completely change the marketing strategy (which is used in other parts of the world). In addition, social networks, whose rating in Russian-speaking countries differs from the global one, can provide great opportunities for international communication. Currently, the most popular are eight social networks.
"In contact with"
VK (formerly known as VKontakte) is nowadays the most widespread social network in Russia, with more than 46.6 million visitors per month. Undoubtedly, this resource tops the rating of social networks in the post-Soviet space.
There are many interesting opinions about this site, but it can best be described as a combination between Facebook and a data exchange service. Like Facebook, each user has a profile, and he has the ability to search and add other users as friends to see updates on their status, new photos and videos.
Along with these traditional functions, users can also upload audio and video files of any kind and share these resources with other people. Previously, this was subjected to rigorous scrutiny, because from time to time it crossed legal borders, however, recent reports show that VK now works with large record labels. This allowed the launch of a subscription service, which allows you to legally share media files. That is why VKontakte has been leading the rating of social networks in Russia for several years.
"Classmates"
While VKontakte may be the most popular service among young users (aged 18-35 years), older groups usually prefer OK among social networks (originally Odnoklassniki). This service has more than 31.5 million visitors per month, with more women (69%). This platform, by the way, was the first in Russia and, one might say, gave rise to such a phenomenon as social networks. The rating of sites of this category will always remain incomplete without mentioning it.
Like VK, OK enables users to create profiles, search for friends and share status updates and images. The main goal of creating the platform is communication with classmates and friends with whom users could lose touch many years ago, so the search options are quite detailed.
In addition, the site has a function that provides information about who visited your page (regardless of whether you are their friend). To view profiles of other users, there is an anonymity function for which you have to pay (to enable "Stealth Mode").
"My world"
Perhaps the best recognized counterpart of the Russian “My World” is Google+. Both of these services are an extension of the Internet provider of electronic mail (in the case of "My World" - mail.ru). “My World” struggled to find its own unique niche on a wider level, but the popularity of the network is not so great. At the same time, more than 16.6 million people use this service monthly for exchanging images, music and video, as well as for games and meeting new friends, therefore it is included in the rating of social networks. The search strategy in the My World network contains several parameters that are not available on other platforms.
Facebook
Social networks, the rating of which is great all over the world, have not bypassed the post-Soviet space. Despite the fact that Facebook is not the most common site in Russia, its popularity has definitely begun to grow - now it receives more than 21.6 million Russian-language visitors per month. This is not surprising, since Facebook is constantly changing its platform to better meet the needs of users.
Analysts believe that one of the reasons Facebook is becoming increasingly popular in Russia is business communication. According to some sources, more than 30% of business discussions in Russia take place precisely on Facebook. Therefore, it will not be surprising if this platform eventually leads the rating of the most popular social networks.
"Livejournal"
Livejournal is a blogging platform that has been around since 1999, but has not been used in most countries since then. This trend is far from the truth in Russia, where over 15.1 million users visit LiveJournal every month. This figure is more than half of the total website traffic.
Personal blogs are a great way to foster discussion and share your opinions and perspectives on the Internet, in a way that allows you to think and discuss more. This gives much more than short messages, the ability to post which provide their users with other social networks.
The rating of the blogging platform is still high, and the integration of LiveJournal is still supported by a number of online services that allow it to maintain its important role in Russia and abroad.
Twitter
Twitter is another classic social media site that works well in Russia. Although he does not receive as many unique monthly visitors as the other services on this list (about 7.7 million visitors per month), he boasts the largest number of subscribers for each user. Thus, despite the fact that Twitter cannot be a support for most Russian users of social networks, those who decided to use it do it on a large scale.
Rutube and YouTube
Rutube is, in fact, Russia's response to YouTube - a platform for social networks focused on video sharing for all types of content. Despite the fact that this service has not reached the same reach as YouTube, it has collected a lot of content from a variety of users.
Rutube hosts both licensed content and user downloads. The vast majority of downloads occur in Russian. This high percentage of Russian content makes the platform an incredibly valuable resource for those trying to learn a language.
Instagram
The first social media platform on this list, Instagram, has become extremely popular in the past few years, and its popularity in Russia is no exception. Instagram is rapidly advancing in the ranking, and today has 12.3 million users per month (of which 77% are young women).
This shift in popularity is largely due to the cross-placement between Instagram and other platforms where users can use great photo editing tools. This allows you to improve and capture the photo, and then publish it both on Instagram and on other popular social networking sites.
While the main functions of Instagram continue to be easy to access and use, there are several options for tools and third-party applications that most of the users are not even aware of. It is anticipated that this platform will soon top the popularity rating of social networks in most countries.
Concluding this review, it is worth noting that the success of such unique social networks as VK and OK in Russia and neighboring countries may surprise those who are used to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which have a complete monopoly in the world.
There are definitely a number of advantages for sites targeting a specific user base, either geographically (as in these examples) or based on demographic data (user age).