Television remains the main source of “political information” for prevailing majority of Russians. Sociologists from Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) have found out that the Internet’s role in informing citizens on political issues grew since 2007. However, experts think that Web users almost never vote.

01.04.2011 BFM.ru

Half of all Twitter posts are generated by only 20,000

About one half of all the posts on Twitter are generated by about 20,000 users, according to a Yahoo! research. At that, the network has over 200 mln users globally, and up to 140 mln posts are brought to life daily, says The Daily Telegraph.

29.03.2011 Sovetnik.ru

Sokur & Partners assesses domestic PR-market again

Sokur & Partners keeps surprising PR-community with its Russian PR-market measurements. Traditionally, the agency published its market volume report late March, having said nothing of the assessment methods used. So, according to Sokur & Partners, the total volume of the Russian market of PR-services totaled $1 bln in 2010. Thus, indexes are 20% higher y-o-y and equal to the pre-crisis figures of 2008, the agency says. Over the reported period, the analysts registered the biggest growth of PR investments in pharmaceutics, automobile industry, telecommunications and IT, whereas companies operating in the real estate and financial markets, as well as players in the premium segment, are taking their time to increase budgets.

Opinions

12.04.2011 Smm3.org

Present and future of social CRM: 24 arguments and 5 questions from Graham Hill

The founder and director of CustomerThink, Bob Thompson, has recently recorded a podcast with Graham Hill about the state and the destiny of social CRM. Mr Hill was one of the first to speak about joint establishment of a value and business socialization. He has been writing his blog Customer Insider on CustomerThink.com since 2005. Mr Hill is an author of a famous social business manifest. The article features a concise digest of 24 arguments and 5 key questions that you should ask yourself if you want to ‘socialize’ business of your company.

06.04.2011 RIA Novosti

Media segment is to switch to new ways of information presenting – experts

Media experts say that the segment is on the verge of serious changes due to the rapid growth in the number of people preferring Internet media and mobile solutions to other media sources. So, in the next few years media market will change ways of information presentation, mass media will coordinate with social networks and the whole segment is to face shortage of staff. Experts’ research “New Media: Challenges and Prospects”, which had been carried out by Kontakt HR Agency and Salvador D creative communications agency, was presented on Tuesday at a press conference in RIA Novosti, which is the information partner of the research.

06.04.2011 SeoNews.ru

Efficiency of Facebook pages: what do we evaluate?

Social networks are broadly used as one more media channel to work with target audience. The increasing amount of different businesses is interested in a possibility of promoting their products via brand’s groups or pages in social networks. Many have started testing the approach: independently or via a special SMM agency. Despite that social media marketing has existed in Russia for five years, the issue of evaluating social marketing efficiency is still burning for advertisers. Expenditure on promotion in social networks is systematically increasing, and advertisers are quite reasonably worried about efficiency of the media channel.

06.04.2011 Vedomosti

How bank should develop in social networks

Igor Kogan, deputy chairman of the BoD at Nordea Bank, speaks about bank’s development in social networks. “Today, we have quite a clear understanding of difficulties, but so far we have found no reliable solutions. However, we cannot stand aside any more. It is necessary to try to turn social networks into a real business instrument.”

31.03.2011 Lenizdat.ru

Reporters Without Boarders worried about project on monitoring Russian Internet

Reporters Without Boarders is disturbed to learn that generalized online surveillance and censorship might be introduced and applied to online media in Russia, says the website of the international reporters organization. The statement is a reaction to the decision made by Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal supervisory agency for communications, information technology and mass media, to organize a contest for the design of software that it could use to monitor online media outlets for “extremist” content.

Events

06.04.2011 Media Guide

Publication of guidelines “How to Commission Research”

The Russian Association for Market and Opinion Research non-profit Partnership (OIROM in Russian abbreviation), which unites 20 leading Russian companies working in the sphere of market and opinion research, is glad to announce the publication of several articles gathered in the book called “How to Commission Research”. This collection was published on the base of the official document: ESOMAR – How to commission research, and adapted for the Russian market. It is in line with the key “Principles and Guidelines on International Research Practice of European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research”.

05.04.2011 RASO

Khrustalny Apelsin’s winners awarded

On March 29, 2011, Institute for Reputation Technologies Art&Image hosted the XI Final Session of the Jury and the Expert Council of the All-Russia Students’ Works Competition in the Sphere of PR Development “Khrustalny Apelsin” (Crystal Orange). The ranking compiled on the basis of the second tour results helped the participants of the session choose the winners in each of the 12 nominations. 25 members of the Jury, mass media and general public representatives took part in the discussion, headed by the President of the Expert Council – Chumikov Alexander Nikolaevich. Works in each nomination were evaluated by 5 Jury members. The short list included the works that were chosen at least by two experts. Marks of those who did not manage to participate in the Session directly were shown on the screen and were taken into consideration while choosing the winners. Participants of the competition battled for the places in the top 3 and the main prize – the Crystal Orange.

Companies

06.04.2011 Lenta.ru

New service to improve Facebook users’ image

The Web has a new service which analyzes personal data from Facebook users’ pages. Software developers expect Reppler (that’s the name of the new service) to improve the image of social network’s users. Reppler is a web application used to automatically analyze all records of both a user and his/her friends. Using its awn algorithm, the program will mark photos, posts on walls or statuses, which might be viewed as undesirable or negative.

06.04.2011 Gazeta.ru

Facebook launches a special section for journalists

Facebook is launching a special section for journalists from around the world. The social network’s heads expect the service to help journalists exchange information, spread news and search necessary contacts.

04.04.2011 Lenta.ru

Clothing stores will have mirrors accessing Twitter

London clothing stores will have gadgets allowing you to seek advice from your Twitter or Facebook friends right in dressing-rooms. The Tweet Mirror gadget designed by Nedap is a mirror with an embedded HD camera. It allows customers to shoot photos in the dressing-room and then post them on Twitter or Facebook’s status bar. Friends’ comments are sent to your phone as text messages.

04.04.2011 Media-day.ru

Who reads The Daily iPad newspaper

The new research carried out by KnowDigital, which Mark Walsh from Media Post makes reference to, shows the difference between iPad users: well grounded in technical details rarely read The Daily, while those eager to read news accept the digital paper more favorably.

01.04.2011 Lenizdat.ru

LJ can now share information with social networks

Blog hosting site LiveJournal has added a new “Share” button. It allows users to post links to things they found interesting on other websites.

01.04.2011 Сossa.ru

Google +1 button: Facebook Like won’t be killed

Google has tried to “socialize” again: the global search company has introduced the “+1” button competing with the Facebook’s “Like”. “+1” is now being tested, but in the near future it will accompany each search result.

31.03.2011 BFM.ru

Mail.ru, Twitter and Facebook integrate with LiveJournal

LiveJournal, a popular venue for keeping blogs, is becoming more open for users of other social services. On 31 March, Mail. ru announced the launch of the automation system on LiveJournal. Now, users of Mail.ru Group services may use their login from a Mail.ru account for authorization on LiveJournal. Earlier, users of Facebook and Twitter have received a possibility to communicate through LiveJournal without additional registration.

Other

05.04.2011 Articulmedia.ru

Social CRM not equally useful for everyone

Customer Relationship Management systems help increase sales and customer service levels. The concept of Social CRM appeared 5-6 years ago alongside social media popularity growth. Dennis Howlett talked with pioneers and leaders of the SCRM sphere: Paul Greenberg and Esteban Kolsky. Here is a video (27 minutes) in English and citations from the interview.

31.03.2011 CNews.ru

New social media monitoring system launched - BuzzLook.ru

In March, 2011, BuzzLook.ru, a social media monitoring system, started working on Runet. BuzzLook.ru is a search aggregator working with Russia’s most popular social media: Facebook, Vkontakte, LiveJournal, Twitter, Youtube and Flickr. Anyone can use its search opportunities – the service is free and does not require registration.

31.03.2011 CNews.ru

New social media monitoring system launched - BuzzLook.ru

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