Facebook weapons for conquering Russia are local developers

Russia is one of the few countries in the world where Facebook is not a leading social network and does not even reach 50% of its popularity among Internet users. The situation needs to be changed, and now Facebook has begun to take active steps.

The company is negotiating with Russian developers, urging them to release applications for the Facebook platform. If Facebook is able to attract application developers, then users can follow them.

In Russia, several social networks at once have a larger audience than Facebook: these are Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and LiveJournal.
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Facebook Platform Development Director Julien Codorniou told Business Insider in an interview about Facebook's strategy to conquer the Russian market. He is confident that the key to success is applications from Russian developers.

“When we first arrived in Russia with Mark Zuckerberg, there was only one Russian company on Facebook,” Codornu says. “We said:“ Guys, here you can enter the global market! ”12 months after that trip, we saw a real tsunami of Russian companies that came on Facebook.”


Mark Zuckerberg and Dmitry Medvedev at a meeting at the Gorki residence, October 1, 2012

“From the point of view of the platform, we are focusing on the fact that Russian developers can through us enter the world market. You can be the king of Russia in "Vkontakte", but this does not help you attract players from the United States. Facebook allows you to get these solvent users.

I thought about who is developing applications for Android, and there are many authors from Eastern Europe. Russian developers are choosing Android because of the large audience and, perhaps, ease of development. They like the opportunity to release a new version of the application every day. I see this trend, and it will intensify. The quality of applications from Eastern Europe is also very high. I mean not only Russia, but also Ukraine [and Belarus]. Look at Wargaming, the most profitable gaming company in history, it is located in Minsk. This was unexpected. If you have the opportunity to make just one trip around the world, then go to Eastern Europe and Israel. This is where the next billion dollar companies will appear. ”