comScore has aggregated some data based on its World Metrix audience measurement service and put together a study on social networking worldwide. Surprisingly, it appears that the Russians are more engaged with social networking than the rest of the planet (or the biggest slackers at the office, depends on how you look at it). The study found visitors in Russia to spend 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month on average, at the same time – once again – confirming Vkontakte.ru’s leadership in terms of popularity with 14+ million monthly visitors.
To put that level of ‘engagement’ in perspective: the average world-wide is 3.7 hours and 525 pages per visitor. Among the 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Brazil ranked closest to Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The United States is ranked number 9, with 4.2 hours and 477 pages per visitor per month.
According to comScore, 65 percent of the worldwide Internet audience engages in social networking activities. More precisely, of the 1.1 billion people age 15 and older worldwide who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in May 2009, 734.2 million visited at least one social networking site during the month.
Also noteworthy: local social networks are much more popular with Russians than international websites. The most popular of these sites was Vkontakte.ru with 14.3 million visitors, followed by Odnoklassniki.ru (7.8 million visitors), Mail.ru – My World (6.3 million visitors) and Fotostrana.ru (1.6 million visitors). Facebook is the first international service to be ranked in the list of most popular social networks – it attracted 616,000 Russian visitors in May 2009 (up 277 percent compared to May 2008).
One caveat, though: the comScore study does not count traffic from public computers (e.g. Internet cafes) nor does it measure traffic coming from mobile devices.
there is no link to their article/research?
link f**ker.. seems descended right from wikipedia
Apologies. PR: http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=ind_focus.story&STORY=/www/story/07-02-2009/0005054011&EDATE=
At least glancing at the numbers, about 25% of Americans use social networking vs. 10% of Russians, so I’d guess that this just says that early adopters use spend more time on social sites, which isn’t a huge surprise.
Russia is not the only country with Internet penetration significantly below US level. So Russian leadership is not only about early adopters – but also about success of two local projects
I wonder what the stats are on Russians who actually run these websites. Facebook is partially Russian owned, and I know a Russian runs http://www.anonboard.com and that’s kind of like a social network. More like a twitter for retards though…
Wrong explanation. Vkontakte and Odnoklassnilki users are definitely not early adopters. The typical user of those social networks don’t know what Internet is at all, his view of the Internet is limited to either vkontakte or odnoklassniki network, so he has nothing to do but to hang there for hours.
Early adopters here use Twitter, FriendFeed etc.
Khm, early adopters in Russia prefer LiveJournal, twitter-like services are popular with a narrow group.
There’s only one reason … the weather is too cold! to get out and make friends, that’s why Canada is in that list too, associated with the total numbers of internet connections canada has. Best Regards.
John
http://www.encuentratujob.com.mx/jobCountry/JobUsa.htm
————————————–
USA Job Seeker
Source: http://bit.ly/14vEPZ
http://www.comscore.com/layout/set/popup/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/7/Russia_has_World_s_Most_Engaged_Social_Networking_Audience
I knew it! those russians…
This kind of stuff seems highly addictive for the Russian guys. I tend to hope I’m not as addicted
As a Ukrainian (our social network usage patterns resemble that of Russia), I think the phenomenon of Russian’s obsession with Vkontakte/Odnoklassniki social networks is highly correlated with their limited world view. Let me explain it a bit:
In the U.S. and Europe typical users are aware of a greater number of social services, and, along with social networks, they frequently use specialized services that better do the job for several tasks, for example Flickr for photos, YouTube for videos etc. In Russia and other post-Soviet countries typical user is not aware of such specialized services and thus uses Vkontakte not only for social networking, but for photo/video hosting as well.
Comments like this are why I keep reading TC.
I don’t think this is something unique to Russians – in other countries too, most of the Internet users aren’t aware of Youtube or Flickr and use Facebook (or other popular social networks) for photo/video sharing.
what you are saying is not true..u loser..
Pavlo is pretty right about the limitations of many our users. I’ll tell about Russian ones:
There’s only things our office workers like to do at their free working hours:
– chatting via ICQ®,
– social networking,
– casual games.
Many of them knows absolutely nothing about internet at all — I saw a girl who started IE, waited for her start page to load (it is replaced by some malware, the page full of AD, with search field), entered «V kontakte main page» in search, then she loaded the first search result — the vkontakte page itself.
Social networks speculate on that situation — they tend to restrict URL liks on their pages. They are fully restricted on odnoklassniki (I was deleted once a time for placing a link), and are limited and automatically moderated on vkontakte. that’s when they click the link they are transfered to a pretty big page describing how bad internet is, and asking if user wants to continue.
There’s also a «Critical mass» effect in action: the only way to see something about my friends is to get registered (enumerated, hehe), ’cause our networks show absolutely nothing to unregistered users. Odnoklassniki even made the registration cost about $1, and it works pretty well.
You are calling to ‘Khohlosrach’ with such comments (Rus-Ukr dirty-mess)
almost everybody in Russia and Ukraine use vkontakte. Its crazy how social services got so popular.
thats only cause they are busy using social engineering to hack our accounts
чтобы ни делали русские и как бы ни поступали, всё равно их будут ругать и унижать, мол. примитивные, другого-то и не знают, кроме как вконтакте.ру! но самое смешное, что ругаю-то сами русские или украинцы, пишущие по-английски! это что-то, а не народец!
да уж :] судя по комментам выше в России как будто только вчера интернет провели
Почему же ругают и унижают? Ничего подобного, просто высказывают версии, почему именно такие показатели активности русских в соцсетях.
Как по мне, так среднестатистический русский пользователь интернета ничуть не глупее среднестатистического английского или американского пользователя (на то он и среднестатистический пользователь – он туп независимо от страны). Но есть объективные факторы, которые привели к такой неимоверной активности русских (точнее, россиян) в соцсетях; интересно поразмыслить над тем, что это были за факторы.
Весьма странная версия. Там уже выше написали про пользователей Фейсбука, которые тоже, якобы, не знают что такое Фликр.
в таком случае, более уместно было бы употребить термин жители стран бывшего Союза, а не россияне!
Well what else are they going to do? Eat their potato, and freeze?
your response shows very primitive knowledge about Russia. How typical for North Americans!
А чё такого? Я не против таких шуток, не вижу ничего плохого.
Well, at least a potato is tastier than popcorn…
Вот правильная реакция! Картошка то здоровее будет их попкорна и колы!
Did you know? Social networking is adding to carbon levels by leaps and bounds. Checkout – http://webcoherence.org/featured-stories/the-social-smoke-cloud/
It’s sad that i can’t read russian.
Why is that?
Surprised!
I would have guessed Nigerians.
Some knowledge of history may actually help understand why stats of social network usage are so high. (Robin, when you make comments like “slackers”, it just indicates less of your understanding of the world, not of “slackers”. Read the last paragraph to get to why the traffic might be high. )
History and present:
First, I want to make a correction, between ‘Russians’ and ‘Russian speaking people” — there is somewhat a difference. There are probably 500 + mil of Russian speaking people around the world, and maybe 30-50 mil of Russians online in Russia.
After/as a result of the Soviet Union breakup, Russian speaking people with roots in the Soviet Union (now 20 +years old) are probably the MOST disbursed population in the world (This fact by itself is worth exploration for its impact on the world, but I digress).
After the Sov. Union breakup, many ‘Russians’ or actually Russian speaking ‘Soviets’ were ‘forced’ (not by government, but by new life conditions) to move from their homes to other countries. Many people from former Soviet Union Republics (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, each with its own language and traditions) moved to Russia or Ukraine, or other foreign countries (USA, Israel). The only way to effectively connect with former classmates and friends is via networks.
Once you think of the 500 mil (vs 30-50 mil) who might be using Vkontakte i Odnoklassniki, and many of the actual users might be outside of Russia, the stats above start making a bit more sense. People outside of Russia (US, Israel) and people in the former Soviet Union Republics try to connect with their former classmates, friends, colleagues, relatives. Networks are a more efficient way to first connect and then communicate than international calls or emails, all in one place, with many at the same time.
Going back to networks:
There is at least two ‘groups’ who use Russian social networks. (1) Russian speaking people who live in Russia and post Soviet countries, and (2) Russian speaking people who leave abroad (outside of the post Soviet countries).
The use of the internet by the two groups is different.
(1) Russian speaking people who reside in Russia and former Soviet Union Republics who use v kontakte, i odnklassnki, use mostly just the networks (as the commenter above suggested). They do not use internet like we do in the US. They do not go to Yandex or (Russian ‘Google’) for ALL answers. They do not frantically read news online refreshing pages every few minutes to read the latest news, they do not come to popular blogs to read popular tech or celebrity news several times a day. They do not have meetups, tweetups, so on. Not because they are ’stupid’ as someone above tried to assert, but because they have other things to do (think of Maslow pyramid and hierarchy of needs). Needs of most Russians in Russia and former Sov. Union Republic are mostly offline and mostly around the first two stages of the pyramid.
(2) Russian speaking people who live outside of Russia use these networks and the rest of the internet.
We use these networks to with friends who are all over the world and are part of different “networks” within the Odnoklassniki network. Like, one may have my classmates network, my basketball teammates, and my neighbors within Odnoklassniki. These networks rarely crossed in life, and they do not cross in Odnoklassniki.
To find them, you have keep clicking to through pictures of “friends of friends” until you may find people you were close to 10-20 years ago. Here is where you get high page traffic.
Odnoklassniki is a bit different from how facebook works. The general news feed from all your friends is less important than true one on one connection. Users actually send each other notes (“emails”) via the network. Calling someone is less convenient (8-10 hours difference in time, confusing international phone codes, and a need to pay for international calls). So, sending someone a note via odnoklassniki, and updating them on what’s going on is more convenient than making a phone call or sending email. You have an effect of all in one place.
So, if you add highly disbursed population among many time zones and in many countries, need/want to connect (calling, driving, flying, visas are all more cumbersome and expensive), and a different way the networks are used – for personal connection, not for general “stream of thoughts/where I am/what I think/do/eat/see/feel/read” purpose, you get high traffic.
Hey, are “russian speaking” mentioned in the article or just “Russian”?
Wow Natasha, I think this is the smartest comment I read in months on TechCrunch – thank you!
Russian spending 6.6 hours on social networking sites per day!?!?!?! the unemployment rate must be pretty high there.
per month.. u idiot..first read the article before commeting
you’re all worng american moron..
i’m a russian..
we all know flikr, youtube etc..
but we have lots of our photo & video sites..( Rutube, Smotri, photofile, ipicture etc..)
in russian no.1 site is yandex(search site), no.2 is VKontakte(socialnetworking), no.3 is @mail.ru( search and socialneworking), no.4 is Одноклассники(socialnetwoking), and no.8 is YouTube , no. 9 is LiveJournal(blogsite)….
we just think our sites r better than the other country sites for us.
and the reason why the socialnetworking sites so popular in russia is that ” we like socialnetworking on internet.
that’s it.
Красава!
I have hundreds of friends and I never saw anybody placing a video on youtube (or rutube, no matter). But I see every day people sharing their (and usually not their) videos on vkontakte. The same about the photos: either I see person’s own website with photo gallery, ether I see all the phoros on person’s vkontakte photo album.
…and LiveJournal is now Russian-owning site too!
Just curious, what is your unemployment rate anyway?
about 8.1%.. anyway lower than usa
Well, it’s good! I like Russians! And people are just so narrow-minded about Russia… Potato is good, too!
It’s very interesting this idea of different social networks for different countries. While Facebook seems to be highly popular in a lot of countries, in China Facebook is not no. 1.
I am curious to understand if the differences are only connected to historical reasons (maybe specific social networks started in a country before Facebook) or if each and every social network brings a touch of their country’s culture.
Finding American husbands and desperate Internet social networking sites that will launder your mob money takes alot of online research time…
F***ng stereotypes.
1. I guess scilly american husband-wannabes spend equal amounts of time researching online looking for them scilly russian wifeys.
2. Mob money you say. Launder you say. Funny that. Coz I hear 80% of the funds circling in Russia are US-oil-dollars.
I think that Russians like to spend more time using social networks not just because the working conditions are more relaxing there, but because Russians don’t panic about their privacy and thus posting more interesting stuff from personal life online very often, which makes other people (their friends) spend more time on reading\viewing new posts, photos and video content.
Dear Ms. Cow:
What an appropriate name for someone to leave such highly generalized comment. It also explains the reason why American men want to get married with educated and notice, beautiful ladies…not, pardon my language, Cows from the USA.
It is my suggestion to you, AnonCow, to get more education perhaps, that goes beyond liberal arts or specialized technical knowledge that is often limited within the scope of our highly globalized world nowadays.
It also interesting if you are able to write anything in language other than English…and if you read anything beyond blogs…
Vikroriya — molodets!
Dear Ms. Cow:
What an appropriate name for someone to leave such highly generalized comment. It also explains the reason why American men want to get married with educated and notice, beautiful ladies…not, pardon my language, Cows from the USA.
It is my suggestion to you, AnonCow, to get more education perhaps, that goes beyond liberal arts or specialized technical knowledge that is often limited within the scope of our highly globalized world nowadays.
I am even curious if you are able to write anything in a language other than English…and if you’ve read anything beyond blogs…
It’s funny how both, the American and the Russian-speaking sides take this so personally…
))
+1
just no cold war, please..
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I am surpised nobody mentioned the most obvious reason for this. Bloody distances.
It’s not like you can take a quick London-to-Brighton ride, enjoy the company of your mates and come back the same day. Russia is absolutely humongous. It may well take a week or two to get to your mom. And some places are just not reachable by car.
That and around 300-400 mil russian speakers living abroad.
Шрифт трудновато читается у вас на блоге
Жаль не мое…..
I saw a girl who started IE, waited for her start page to load (it is replaced by some malware, the page full of AD, with search field), entered «V kontakte main page» in search, that goes beyond liberal arts or specialized technical knowledge that is often limited within the scope of our highly globalized world nowadays.
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