RBC launches 3 new social networks

I have not seen this note in the tape, so let me quote the heel "Kommersant".

RBC got into social networks
// Holding will spend $ 5 million to launch three projects

The social networking market has attracted the attention of large media holdings. Managing entertainment sites of the RBC holding company Mediamir launches three social Internet projects, including the autopager.ru portal for motorists. With their help, the company wants a year to increase the audience of its portals from 2 million to 15 million users per month. Experts call these plans unrealistic: the audience of the whole RuNet in 2007 will be about 30 million people.

The social network autopager.ru is designed for car owners. It will allow its users to write feedback on specific drivers and exchange messages, including via SMS. With the help of the second resource of Mediamira, otsledi.com, it will be possible to find new friends by interests. The third project, blogi.ru, is a blog hosting site, an analogue of livejournal.com. “Blogs are still in the testing stage, we will launch them in early January,” said the Director General of Mediamir Mikhail Gurevich. With the help of new projects, Mediamir expects to bring the total monthly audience of its portals to 15 million users within a year. "Now the competition in the social network segment is high, the minimum amount for the promotion of new resources will be $ 5 million, which will be spent on advertising," says Mr. Gurevich.
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Social networks, which began to actively develop in runet this year, until almost bring their owners advertising revenue. Mr. Gurevich claims that Mediamir is working to monetize the audience of its resources: “So, on the autopager.ru website there is a service for sending a paid SMS message, the text of which will be instantly published on the website: the user can complain or praise a particular driver during a trip, specifying the car number in the SMS ”.

The Mediamir Company is a subsidiary of RBC Information Systems OJSC, established at the beginning of this year. Owns loveplanet.ru dating site, photo-hosting photofile.ru, humorous anekdot.ru website, pochta.ru postal service, social bookmarking service memori.ru, etc. According to our own data, the daily audience of sites managed by “Mediaworld” exceeds 2 million people.

Declared advertising budget is enough for the promotion of new portals. “$ 5 million a year is enough to promote and launch websites at a level of recognition similar to the loveplanet.ru portal,” says Ashmanov and Partners CEO Igor Ashmanov. ABRT venture fund investment director Nikolay Mityushin, however, doubts that following the results of 2008, the MediaWorld websites are unlikely to reach the monthly coverage of 15 million users: “This is 50% of the Runet audience in six months of this year. By the end of October, the promoted resource odnoklassniki had about 1 million Moscow users. ”

The bet on specialized social networks, however, is fully justified, says Mr. Mityushin. “People have already played enough at odnoklassniki.ru, there is a need to communicate according to interests: in the West, thematic social networks are becoming popular,” he explained. Among thematic Western social networks can be distinguished mychurch.com (85 thousand users), which allows you to create your own church. The network geni.com brings together relatives, mommybuzz.com - young mothers. According to Mr. Mityushin, now 30-40% of active Internet users in Russia are registered on the social network, and, for example, in the USA this figure reaches 80%.

The newspaper "Kommersant" No. 237 (3813) of December 22, 2007
(http://kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=839131)

It seems to me that it is not necessary to be a rocket scientist in order to understand where RBC is going.