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Social networks by age categories. Analytics of Russian giants: VKontakte and Odnoklassniki

Social networks covered in the article, in order
1. VK
2. fb


5. Twitter
6. periscope
7. telegram
8. ask

SCHEME FOR DESCRIPTION OF EACH SOCIAL NETWORK

  • goals, mission, who and where the owners are from, how and when they were born, dynamics and prospects;
  • audience: geography, languages, age, interests, number of users, social status;
  • features: pages, communities, groups, messages, video, audio, applications...;
  • opportunities for people to earn money: how, what people earn from, HOW MUCH they earn per month, how much time it takes;
  • promotion opportunities and promotion opportunities;
  • business opportunities, company advertising;
  • summary, the main distinguishing features of this network from others, what is unique.

Social network In contact with was founded in 2006 by programmer Pavel Durov. Initially, the goal of the project was to provide an opportunity for university students and graduates to communicate in a single network, and registration on it was possible only by special invitation and exclusively under their real name and surname. Immediately after registration became possible for everyone, the social network began to gain momentum. By 2007, VKontakte’s audience was already 3 million people, and the site itself ranked second in popularity on the Runet.

During its existence, VKontakte has undergone great changes and changed owners several times. Initially, together with Pavel Durov, the company’s shares belonged to father and son Mikhail and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, as well as programmer and entrepreneur Lev Liev. In 2011, Mail .Ru Group acquired 39.99% of VKontakte shares, and in 2014 it became the sole owner, purchasing 100%.

Now VKontakte continues to grow and develop, still surpassing the most popular Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir in the number of users. There is an ongoing trend of chasing Facebook.

VKontakte audience

By 2017, the number of VKontakte users reached 410 million. About 80 million people visit the site every day. The geography of users is quite extensive and covers countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other members of the CIS. There are not many users from European countries, but they exist. The same goes for Americans.

Due to the large geographical dispersion of VKontakte users, there is a function for selecting the interface language. The service currently works with 85 languages, including the languages ​​of almost all nationalities living in Russia.

Total: the VK audience is mostly young, Russian-speaking, the topics of the pages correspond to the interests of such an audience - music, entertainment, games...

VKontakte features

If initially VKontakte offered its users only the functions of exchanging personal messages, searching for people, profile settings, choosing a place of study and adding photos, now the possibilities have expanded significantly. Now, in addition to those listed, the social network offers such functions as:

  • – creation and management of groups and public pages;
  • – use of various applications and games;
  • – saving your favorite photos to a separate album on your page;
  • – forwarding personal messages from one user to another;
  • – creating group chats;
  • – listening and adding music;
  • – viewing and adding videos.

How to make money on VKontakte

  1. Groups and public pages. Which can be used in different ways. The best thing is to advertise in your community. But there is a condition here - the community must be well-promoted and have many subscribers, otherwise no one will simply want to place their advertisements with you. Therefore, if this option is to your liking, you should start promoting the group.
    Another way to make money through the community is to create an online store. If you manage to attract at least a small circle of clients, you can start earning good money. The VKontakte online store is a profitable business, since you don’t have to pay for the content of the site and the social network’s audience is huge, which increases the chances of getting a large number of customers.
    The third option for making money through groups is an affiliate program, that is, posting a link to a product or service in your community. If you use this link to go to the site and order a product, you will be awarded a certain percentage of the proceeds each time.
With the help of VKontakte communities you can earn up to several tens of thousands of rubles

With the help of VKontakte communities, you can earn up to several tens of thousands of rubles, depending on the specifics of the advertised product and the number of community subscribers.

  1. Work as a moderator or community admin. Creators of groups and public pages with large audiences are often looking for people who would manage these same communities. If you are well versed in VKontakte and have certain skills in working with text and photo editors, there is an opportunity to become a moderator or admin of the community and earn money. As a rule, everyone has different rates. If you want and are diligent, you can earn up to 15-20 thousand rubles a month.
  2. Working as a web designer. If you have design skills and good taste, community design will become a source of income. Here, too, the condition for getting a job is promotion, but in this case, oneself. Typically, the work of a web designer specifically for the VKontakte group is estimated at 5-10 thousand rubles, depending on the complexity of the design.
  3. Application development. This is perhaps the most difficult way to make money on VKontakte, because only experienced programmers can develop an application that would be popular among users. But, if, nevertheless, you succeeded, it is quite possible that your earnings will reach tens of thousands per month.

How to make friends and subscribers on VKontakte

VKontakte users often have a need or simply a desire to make more friends. This is necessary, for example, for online trading or for advertising. You also always want to get as many likes as possible for your posts and photos, but not everyone is able to quickly get as many people as friends as they want, or a large number of likes. This is where special services for promotion come to the rescue, which subsequently become an excellent promotion tool.

The most popular and inexpensive service today, which allows you to make friends, reposts, subscribers to a group, likes, comments, gifts for a low fee, or earn likes in the system itself, and then exchange them for any service.

You can also get likes, friends or subscribers on:

  • – a well-promoted combine harvester;
  • – very simple, for some reason people who work via a smartphone/tablet like it;
  • – service exchange, andhas slightly different interfaces for ordinary users and for advertisers.

In addition to using special services, page promotion can be achieved for a fee by contacting people whose activity is precisely assistance in promotion. The disadvantage of this method is its high cost.

In addition to services, there are programs that work from a computer:

  • – business combine for VK. There is a free version. The author is a fan of his work.
  • – sending out advertisements, VKontakte messages, conducting dialogues.
  • – promotion of VKontakte groups and accounts.
  • – a parser for finding your target audience on VKontakte.
  • – the best analogue of VkBot (VK bot), in many ways superior to it. Lots of functions, support via toll-free line 8-800.

You can try to promote the page yourself. On VKontakte this is not so easy, but you can, for example, join groups where users add each other as friends. This is a kind of mutual PR.

Business opportunities on VKontakte

As mentioned earlier, VKontakte can be used for various purposes, including making a profit, both a social one for a ready-made business, and for starting one. In both cases, VKontakte communities will come to the rescue.

An existing business can be expanded and promoted by creating a public page where you can sell goods or simply introduce a potential client to the range, if we are talking about trading, or offer your services. An excellent addition to this would be to order advertising in other large communities or on pages of users with a large number of friends and subscribers.

You can also start your own small business within VKontakte by opening the same group, but you should definitely think about promoting it from the beginning.

Thanks to ample opportunities not only for communication, but also for having a good time, and, if desired, making a profit, VKontakte has remained popular among users for many years. It is in the thoughtful organization of the service that the secret of its long-term success lies.

Facebook

Facebook- the very first, and, to date, the most popular social network in the world, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004.
Initially, there was no talk of any social network, because at that time they didn’t even know what it was. The fact is that in the school where Zuckerberg studied, there was a special book called The Photo Address Book, where photographs and contacts of all students were stored, and which, due to the long name, the students themselves renamed The Facebook. Upon entering Harvard, Zuckerberg discovered that there was no such reference book at the university, which caused him bewilderment.

The future billionaire approached the university management with a request to create something similar, but was refused. And then Zuckerberg decided to take matters into his own hands and founded Facebook, a site where Harvard students could communicate. Already in the first month, half of all students registered on Facebook, then students from other universities joined them. In 2005, Facebook ceased to be a social network only for students - now anyone could register here.

After the number of accounts on the social network exceeded 50 million, Mark Zuckerberg began to receive offers to sell it, but everyone was refused. Only Bill Gates managed to buy a 1.6% stake in the project, paying $260 million. After this, the billionaire registered on the social network, and then entered into an agreement with Zuckerberg, according to which Microsoft advertisements were placed on Facebook.

But let's not forget that, perhaps, most of the success is due to the attention in 2005 to the then startup of venture entrepreneurs, billionaires Peter Thiel (PayPal, XSpace, Palantir) and his partner, who noticed the project among hundreds of others and invested heavily in it . According to Peter Thiel, they spent a year studying the market and related information on the topic of social networks, and at the time of the meeting with Zuckerberg they had already made a decision.

Facebook audience

By 2017, the number of Facebook accounts reached 1.71 billion. Of these, a little more than a billion use the mobile version of the social network. Even taking into account that some users have multiple accounts, the number of people registered on Facebook is almost 25% of the world's population.

At the same time, the accounts belong to people of different ages and social statuses, but this is where most of the accounts of world movie and music stars, deputies and politicians are concentrated.

Due to the large geographical dispersion, the interface language can be used in almost any language.

The number of people registered on Facebook is almost 25% of the world's population.

Facebook Features

Today, Facebook is not just a site where you can exchange messages. The possibilities of the social network are wide. Here you can:

  • – create and participate in interest groups;
  • – search for acquaintances and add them as friends;
  • - play games;
  • – communicate live;
  • – communicate using audio messages;
  • – send photos, videos, music and documents to any user;
  • – upload photos and videos to your page.

How to run a business and make money on Facebook

Since Facebook is the site with the largest concentration of people, it is clear that it has long been used not only for communication and entertainment. A social network, like nothing else, will help you earn money and promote your own business.

The most popular options for earning money on Facebook:

  1. Place links to affiliate programs on your page. You can find them yourself, but if you have a lot of people as friends, some online sellers or those who want more sales for their product can offer similar things for money.
  2. Place paid advertising on your page.
  3. Become a contributor on Facebook Posts Market(“Recording Market”). Or Facebook Fanpages Market.

These methods will allow you to earn 5 thousand rubles and more per month.

Options to make money on Facebook with your own business:

  1. Create a public page for selling any goods or services, that is, a kind of online store.
  2. Create a public page to advertise your business, which operates outside the network.

Facebook in 2016/2017 introduced a huge number of innovations and revolutionary tools for fine-grained audience segmentation, providing users with unprecedented marketing opportunities. The dynamics of change are amazing, improvements appear every week.

Methods of promotion and promotion on Facebook

Promoting a page on Facebook is possible both independently and with the help of third-party programs. To gain a large number of friends, you need to either send as many applications yourself as possible, or make your page so interesting that users themselves will add you. The more friends you have, the more likes you will get on your photos.

If you don’t want to waste time, but have the opportunity to spend money, you can use special services to increase friends and likes. There are quite a lot of them now and some offer their services at very reasonable prices and with high results.

These are, for example, the ones mentioned above, plus.

Summary

Facebook in the Russian-language segment today is ahead of VKontakte in terms of audience growth, and in terms of business and earnings opportunities it is even more ahead. VK is already saturated with advertising, and FB is an unplowed field, plus a rapid increase in new participants.

An important point is that the most solvent audience - people 30-45 years old, entrepreneurs, politicians, experts, IT specialists - “live” on Facebook.

Since its inception, Facebook has topped the list of social networks for good reason. It was he who became the beginning for all other similar projects and this is precisely his main difference from them. Well, we wish our native VK not to lag behind, but to catch up and surpass its competitor.

Instagram

Now about Instagram Perhaps, only those people to whom civilization has never reached, that is, the aborigines, do not know :) But few people can imagine that this project was created in just a few weeks by American student Kevin Systrom. He was simply delirious with the idea of ​​​​creating his own application that would “blow up” the Network, and even began working on the Burbn project, which combines some of the functions of social networks. At the same time, another programmer, Michael Krieger, was working on creating his application, and Kevin, being his acquaintance, suggested that Krieger start working together. They began work on Burbn, but soon realized that the project was doomed to fail.

The idea of ​​Instagram came to Kevin Simstrom unexpectedly. He realized that he needed a service that could transform even the most unattractive photographs and make them beautiful. On the same day, he created the first Instagram filter, and he worked on others again with Krieger.

The first version of Instagram appeared in the App Store on October 6, 2010, and massive downloads began immediately. Already in the first days, the number of downloads reached 25 thousand, and the creators realized that Instagram was accepted by users, and, therefore, more people were needed to ensure its life. Thus, the Instagram team expanded to 5 people.

The fact that in April 2012 the project was bought by Facebook for a billion dollars proves how popular it had already gained at that time. Today, Instagram is a service that allows you not only to upload photos and videos, but also to conduct live broadcasts, like on Periscope, to run your own business and earn money.

Instagram audience

Probably only the laziest are not registered on Instagram. If we say that his audience is the whole world, this will probably not be an exaggeration. The application today is adapted for all existing operating systems and is popular in almost every country. The number of registered accounts exceeded 500 million by 2017. For the convenience of users, Instagram offers the ability to use the service in several dozen languages.

Instagram features

During its existence, Instagram has changed a lot. Today it offers its users such features as:

  • – uploading videos up to 60 seconds long;
  • – processing photos and videos with filters;
  • – conducting live broadcasts;
  • – restricting access to your page;
  • - conducting personal correspondence.

    • How to run a business and make money on Instagram

    Thanks to its popularity and the large number of people on its expanses, Instagram has become a service. Options for earning money in the service:

    1. Creating a trading page.
    2. Placing advertisements on your page.
    3. Placing links to products on your page, when clicking on them and purchasing this product, the user receives a percentage of the sale.
    4. Promotion of your business, which is conducted outside of Instagram, by notifying its users. To do this, a page is created for this or that organization, which provides complete information about it and its services.

    Promotion and promotion on Instagram

    Every Instagram user strives to have as many followers as possible, or to ensure that their photos receive a lot of likes. If you follow a few simple tips, then this is quite possible:

    1. Fill out your profile with interesting information about yourself.
    2. Add photos and videos to your page more often.
    3. Choose an attractive avatar.
    4. Put hashtags under photos and videos.

    If you do business on Instagram, then the best ways for people to know about you are:

    1. Follow as many people as possible.
    2. Give likes.
    3. Indicate information about yourself in the header.

    There are also paid ways to boost and promote on Instagram. This:

    – the use of special programs and services that also provide promotion services for money.

    The first method is more suitable for business accounts, and the second - for ordinary users.

    When using promotion services for serious income, they do not use mass services, but those specializing exclusively in Instagram promotion, fortunately, the prices are comparable:

    • - the service specializes in promotion on Instagram. Emphasizes real work - live subscribers, promotion and not cheating and everything that brings results in hard cash, and not just beautiful numbers of likes and subscribers to satisfy our EGO.
    • - an analogue of Instaplus, only almost half the price and more modern. Based on our statistics, services with such functionality keep prices so low at the stage of gaining an initial mass of users and breaking away from competitors. Then they raise prices. So take advantage of the moment.
    • DOINSTA is a proven and polished service for automated (with a minimum of manual labor) work with subscriptions, unsubscribes, and likes. Recently the service has been unstable, we recommend others: , .

    Summary

    The uniqueness of Instagram is its versatility and constantly updated updates to the system. The owners of the service do everything to ensure that interest in it does not subside, and they are doing a great job.

    The service is developing very dynamically; it is seriously considered as a source of attracting customers in many niches.

    Classmates

    Classmates is the second most popular social network in Russia. It was founded back in 2006 by programmer Albert Popkov and designer Dmitry Utkin, and was not at all perceived by the creators as some kind of major project, but in a short time the social network gained great popularity. Having found investors and developed Odnoklassniki, the creators of the social network were able to ensure that within six months the number of registered accounts reached 4 million. But still, the owners’ investments were not enough to maintain the project and in 2010 they decided to sell Odnoklassniki to Mail .Ru Group. By that time, over 45 million users were registered on the network.

    Odnoklassniki audience

    By 2017, about 300 million accounts from more than 100 countries were already registered on Odnoklassniki. The social network is viewed in 13 languages. Almost the entire Russian-speaking population of Europe, America and Australia is registered on Odnoklassniki and visits the site regularly.

    Odnoklassniki features

    In addition to messaging, Odnoklassniki allows you to:

    • – create and communicate in groups;
    • – play games and spend time in exciting applications;
    • – give each other virtual gifts;
    • - listen to music;
    • - watch the video;
    • – add photos;
    • – restrict access to your page.

    How to run a business and make money on Odnoklassniki

    Today Odnoklassniki is actively used to make money online. The opportunities for running your own business and making money here are quite extensive. People who have their own business offline, but want to attract more clients, can do this using a social network. To do this you can:

    1. Create a group dedicated to your business where potential clients can learn about you and your services or products.
    2. Notify about your services or products on your page.
    3. Order advertising from popular groups.

    You can earn money on Odnoklassniki:

    1. Becoming an administrator or moderator of a large group.
    2. By creating your own online store group.
    3. By posting advertisements in your group or on your page.
    4. By placing links to affiliate programs.

    Earnings are very different, depending on the specifics of the activity - from several thousand to several tens of thousands of rubles.

    Promotion and promotion in Odnoklassniki

    Promoting your page or group on Odnoklassniki is necessary primarily for those who do business online and who need a large audience.

    You can easily gain subscribers to a group or friends - simply by inviting them to the community or sending friend requests. If they are interested in you, they will definitely reciprocate, and in order to attract attention, you need to work on your page or group, constantly updating and posting interesting content.

    Despite the constant confrontation with VKontakte, Odnoklassniki remains a unique project that is interesting to users. This is largely possible due to providing its users with a wide range of options for leisure and income.

    The Facebook audience is more likely to be active people who are looking for something, achieving, fighting, proving, changing the world,

    VKontakte’s audience is largely young people and teenagers who are passionate about music, parties and the search for the meaning of life,

    Odnoklassniki’s audience is calm homebodies who love to look through photo albums, kill hours with sapper cards, stroking a well-fed cat :)

    And there are many such people!

    The Mail.Ru Group company researched and compared the audiences of the most popular social networks in Russia - Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir, VKontakte, Facebook and Twitter.

    The study touches on basic demographic indicators, geography, and identifies similarities and differences in the behavior of social network users. To obtain the most objective results, data from TNS, comScore and Brand Analytics were used.

    The largest monthly audience belongs to In contact with And Classmates who visit more 52 and 42 million. users accordingly. Near 30 million. people come every month My world, a little less - in Facebook. Russian audience Twitter an order of magnitude less - 11.6 million.

    The highest percentage of women is among Odnoklassniki users (56%) , and the highest percentage of men among Twitter users ( 47%).

    The average Odnoklassniki user spends time on the social network twice as long the average VKontakte user (20 minutes versus 10). Hence the almost twofold advantage in the number of pages viewed in one month.

    Users often have accounts on different social networks. Monthly audience My World most often intersects with VKontakte (87%) And Classmates (80%). 68% users In contact with also visit Classmates.

    Almost half of the audience Odnoklassniki (43%) lives in small towns with a population of up to 100 thousand people. The opposite situation is FacebookAndTwitter, 34% And 35% whose users live in large populated areas (more than 800 thousand people).

    What do social media users write about?

    • About Me: 15-20% of the flow consists of messages about what they are doing, where they are, what they eat, think, feel.
    • Share news from the media and discuss it: 40% posts are reposts of news, events, comments, discussions. During high-profile events, the number of discussions increases sharply.
    • They create the news themselves. This type of information is gaining momentum thanks to the development of mobile Internet access, cameras and video recorders.
    • Discuss goods, services, events.
    • Post entertaining content: memes, cats, beautiful photos, etc.

    Less: discuss hobbies, publish creative works, advertise something, etc.

    Russia ranks second in the world in terms of population involvement in social networks

    Russia is in second place among the countries in the world in terms of population participation in social networks - 78% of Russian Internet users are present on some social network. Russia is surpassed in this indicator only by Japan, where 88% of Internet users use social networks. Russia follows with 75%, Sweden with 74% and the Republic of Korea with 72%.

    Such data is contained in the publication “Digital Economy: A Brief Statistical Collection” of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) for 2019. Specifically for this indicator, the circle of countries studied, in addition to those already mentioned, also included Germany, Italy, Finland, France, the Czech Republic and Estonia. Information is provided for 2017 or for the coming years for which data is available. The population of Russia refers to persons aged 15 to 74 years.

    Social media users in Russia published 1.8 billion messages in a month

    We are talking about resources with the highest citation (by citation, experts mean the number of short or full hyperlinks provided). To identify the most popular resources, experts analyzed 1.78 billion Russian-language messages that were published on social media in August 2018 and assessed the proportion of people under 18 years of age among all authors.

    According to this study, the top 25 most popular resources among users under 18 years old included the social network “VKontakte” (first place, cited by this audience segment - almost 492 thousand times), Instagram (third place, more than 274 thousand links) and Facebook (fourth place, cited 85.3 thousand times), YouTube video hosting took second place (363.1 thousand links), and Telegram messenger took fifth (almost 52 thousand links).

    The overall rating also included the online store AliExpress (seventh place, cited almost 35 thousand times), the entertainment community pikabu.ru (18th place, 7.3 thousand links), the news agency RIA Novosti (20th place, 6.5 thousand links), WhatsApp messenger (24th place, slightly more than 5.2 thousand links). In last place in the ranking is the personal recommendation service Zen (about 4.3 thousand links).

    Experts note a strong gap between the top three leaders and Facebook: this platform is the most “adult” of all those in the top 25, the share of youth authors on it is only 0.6%. Also, the attention of specialists was attracted by the fifth place of the Telegram service, which almost caught up with Facebook. “It does not appear that the blocking of the messenger has seriously affected its use. And public Telegram channels are also not all about politics,” the study notes.

    2017

    VTsIOM: About a third of adult Russians do not use social networks at all

    The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) presented research data on the use of social networks by Russians. It turned out that 45% of respondents over 18 years of age use at least one of the social networks almost every day, 62% - at least once a week. About a third are completely excluded from social media (20% due to the fact that they do not have access to the Internet and another 10% do not have a single account).

    The maximum level of involvement, as expected, was among young people - in the group of 18-24 years old, 91% use social networks almost daily, among respondents 25-34 years old, 69% (in the group over 60 years old - only 15%).

    VKontakte and Instagram turned out to be the most “youth” platforms. The largest share of the audience of VKontakte users - 40% - falls on people aged 25–34 years. Among Instagram users, 38% are aged 18-24 years, 37% are aged 25-34 years. Among the daily audience of Odnoklassniki, the most common group is also 25-34 years old (28%). At the same time, the distribution of the Odnoklassniki audience by age is the closest among all social networks to the general distribution of the Internet audience in Russia. In the social networks Facebook and " My World" is dominated by an older audience. Among the Facebook audience, the majority of people are aged from 35 to 44 years (28%) and from 45 to 59 (26%), the core of the "My World" audience is 45-59 years old (39%) .

    The most popular means of accessing the Internet is a mobile phone/smartphone – it was named as a common device by 52% of users. Access via mobile phone is maximum among daily users of Instagram (92%) and VKontakte (84%), for other networks – about 70%.

    In addition, almost three-quarters of respondents noted that they use instant messengers: 62% sent at least one message in the day before the survey. The leaders are WhatsApp (44%), VKontakte messenger (32%), SMS (32%) and Viber (30%). The choice of a program for exchanging short messages is also closely related to age - among respondents over 60 years old, SMS is most often used (43%), and in the group of 18-24 years old - the VKontakte messenger (69%).

    Levada Center: Sudden decline

    The number of social network users among Russians has sharply declined. Back in March 2017, 66% of adult users in Russia used social networks; now the figure is 59%. The decline came as a surprise, since this indicator grew continuously from August 2011 to 2017, with the only minor decline in July 2014. Analysts came to these conclusions “ Levada Center", who published the corresponding study.

    Even earlier, in March 2017, the number of Russian users on social networks remained at 66% of respondents. In August 2016 it was 63%, in February 2016 - 62%, in August 2015 - 61%, in July 2014 - 57%, in March 2014 - 60%, in July 2013 - 56%, in October 2012 - 47%, in August 2011 - 35% of respondents.

    In the current study, 37% of respondents admitted that they access social networks almost every day. Another 15% go there several times a week, 4% once a week, and 3% visit social networks a couple of times a month. Compared to the previous study conducted in August 2017, the share of daily users remained unchanged, but the number of respondents visiting social networks several times a week decreased from 17% to 15%, and the number of weekly users fell from 7% to 4%.

    The survey of respondents was conducted by Levada Center specialists from December 1 to December 5, 2017. It covered 1.6 thousand representatives of the urban and rural population aged 18 years and older. The survey was conducted in 137 settlements in 48 regions of Russia through personal interviews of respondents at home.

    The study revealed that 65% of Russians who use social networks spend time on VKontakte, 63% on Odnoklassniki, 23% on Instagram, 20% on Facebook, 14% on Google +, 9% on in “My World” on Mail.ru, 7% on Twitter, 3% on LiveJournal, and 1% on other social networks.

    Over the past six months, the number of users who prefer VKontakte has increased - in August 2017, 60%, not 65% of social network users spent time there, notes Levada-Center. Also during this period, Odnoklassniki and Instagram lost 1% each, Moi Mir decreased the result from 13% to 9%, and Twitter from 10% to 7%. At the same time, there is an increase in Russians’ interest in Facebook (from 18% to 20% of all social network users) and Google+ (from 10% to 14%).

    The study also showed that 33% of Russians who generally use the Internet spend from half an hour to an hour a day on social networks and instant messengers, 26% spend on this from one to 4 hours, 21% - less than half an hour, 3% - from 4 to 8 hours , and another 3% use social networks and instant messengers throughout the day. 11% of Internet users do not use them at all, and 3% find it difficult to answer the question about the amount of time spent there.

    2016

    Facebook was mentioned most often by Russian media in 2016

    Domestic media mentioned Facebook more than 559 thousand times (compared to more than 430 thousand in 2015), VKontakte - more than 528 thousand times (compared to more than 330 thousand in 2015), Twitter - more than 479 thousand times ( versus more than 410 thousand in 2015), follows from data from the SCAN-Interfax media analysis system.

    Thus, VKontakte and Twitter have changed places in the new ranking.

    Instagram ranks fourth with more than 221 thousand mentions. In fifth position is YouTube, which was mentioned more than 214 thousand times.

    Kaspersky Lab predicted a mass exodus of users from social networks

    The company specializing in cybersecurity issues, Kaspersky (formerly Kaspersky Lab), predicted in 2017 the beginning of a mass exodus of users from social networks due to people’s reluctance to put up with leaks of their private information.

    Speaking at the company’s traditional event dedicated to the results of the outgoing year, the chief antivirus Kaspersky Lab expert Alexander Gostev noted that in Russia and a number of other countries the public discussion regarding user data is becoming increasingly active. For example, there are statements from some industry representatives that “your personal data is actually not yours, but the property of the state.” “And at the same time, we see that the same social networks and global services are not able to protect our data,” says Gostev.

    In his opinion, the information that a person is forced to provide about himself when registering on a social network or intending, for example, to watch a movie online, in practice, other countries, third companies and hackers have access to. It, in Gostev’s understanding, is not protected, as is clearly evidenced by recent leaks from Yahoo and LinkedIn.

    He notes that previously, deletion from this social network was mainly a form of protest by American teenagers who were painfully aware of their parents joining Facebook. “Now we see that more and more people are leaving social networks, because there are so many people who want to lay their hands on your data that it’s easier just not to use social networks,” says Gostev. “And next year the number of these refuseniks will grow significantly.”

    Two out of three residents of Russian cities use VKontakte

    According to Mediascope's updated Web Index for 100 thousand+ cities, more than 65% of residents of Russian cities use VKontakte. At the same time, almost 40% of the audience prefers a mobile application as the main method of daily access to the social network.

    Expanding the measurement of the audience of Web Index mobile applications in cities with a population of 100-700K+ thousand led to an increase in the measured audience of the OK application by almost 3 times, from 3 to 8.8 million. The total measured audience of the desktop version of OK and mobile applications increased by 2.5 times. At the same time, the number of users of the social network’s mobile application in cities 100-699K is almost twice as high as in cities 700K+. Every second resident of these cities visits OK at least once a month.

    Russian officials must provide personal information about social media accounts

    Russian officials were required to report their accounts on social networks or blogs to the Russian Ministry of Labor by April 1, 2017. Such measures are taken to ensure that civil servants comply with the rules of professional ethics.

    Before April 1, 2017, the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation must conduct a survey and collect data on whether officials have accounts on social networks or blogs. All government officials must provide information, but it will not be public.

    In Russia, about 1.5 million officials are involved in the civil service, 70% of them use social networks and write blogs. The purpose of the innovation is to ensure that civil servants comply with the rules of professional ethics.

    Experts are of the opinion that banning the use of social networks for personal purposes by officials will not bring results. To solve operational issues, it is necessary to use applications with certified encryption tools.

    Data from Megafon

    Social networks are becoming the most effective and influential channel for disseminating information, surpassing classical media in terms of audience size: newspapers, radio and television. MegaFon compiled a popularity rating of social networks and instant messengers for October 2016, and also analyzed their average daily audience and the volume of traffic transmitted through them.

    Growing rapidly. ", in the Russian-language segment

    Focuses on an active (writing) audience. The publication presents data on the audience, age, gender and regional distribution of authors of social networks in Russia. Data on the most popular authors and groups of the most popular social networks is also included.

    Social media activity by source type

    The number of “talking” authors in November 2016 was 35 million and 698 million messages were generated. 71.8% of the volume of all public content comes from social networks (504,940 publications). In 2nd place are video content sources (YouTube and Vimeo) - 12.7% of the total volume of public content, and Twitter moved to third place, its share was 8.7%.

    IN CONTACT WITH
    VKontakte has 13,278,000 active authors; in November they published 317,508,100 messages.

    INSTAGRAM
    There are 4,645,700 active creators on Instagram, with 78,185,400 posts published in November.

    FACEBOOK
    In the Russian segment of Facebook there are 1,021,700 active authors, 50,909,500 messages were published in a month.

    LIVEJOURNAL
    LiveJournal remains a platform for the production, but not the consumption, of content. There are 196,200 active authors here, and 6,743,500 posts. Fewer than on other sites, but more viral and spreading far beyond the source.


    Social media trends in Russia 2016
    1. A significant increase in the activity of thematic (“club”) forums and public channels in messengers.
    2. The growth of video content and broadcasts in almost all social networks. The activity of the Russian segment of Youtube has increased. On Instagram, the share of videos averaged 7%, and among viral content – ​​more than 50%. On VKontakte, the most popular authors are video bloggers.
    3. VKontakte and Instagram launched “smart feeds” that determine the interests of users by their activity and adjust the news feed to them, similar to the Facebook feed. Such feed generation algorithms have enhanced the effect of an “information bubble-shell” that locks people into their own beliefs.
    4. Rapid growth in the activity of spam bots. It is significant that growth is observed in several social networks at once - LiveJournal, VKontakte, Facebook, and the topic of spam in them correlates.
    5. The predominance of social media over classical media in terms of influence on public opinion. Brexit, elections in the USA, a referendum in Italy - these are cases showing the decisions of large communities of people contrary to the “official information” of the media.
    6. FakeNews and the need to check information for accuracy. The desired speed of issuing information for the media and social networks is so high that there is no time left to check publications. In 2017, the industry must find a solution to counter this trend.
    7. The Russian part of Facebook has become practically Moscow - 50% of the authors are from Moscow.

    How the data was obtained:

    Brand Analytics collects and indexes All public messages social networks in Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, Kazakh and some other languages, as well as data of their authors.

    To highlight data around the country For each social network, the percentage of geo-determination is taken into account: the number of messages that have geographic data is divided by the percentage of messages with geo-data. Likewise for authors.

    For determining geography: Data is taken from author profiles, geo-tags of messages, as well as message texts. Geo-dictionaries for all social networks are unique and expanded with all variants of spelling toponyms, including “custom” ones.

    For determining gender: data taken from author profiles and supplemented with gender data obtained through linguistic analysis of the author's first and last name.

    For determining age: data taken from author profiles.

    Data for Odnoklassniki is not included, since the API of this social network does not allow such research.

    Basic research terms:

    Message– any open (public) post - in status, on the wall, in groups, comments, etc. Messages in personal correspondence or in the “friends only” mode are not taken into account.

    Engagement Index(EI) is an indicator of the audience’s reaction to the author’s publications. It is calculated as the sum of comments, likes and reposts to all the author’s publications for a month.

    According to various sources, the social network VKontakte is either the first or second most popular site in Russia. Be that as it may, no one gives third place to the “living legend” of VK.com. The social network's monthly audience is approaching 54 million people, of which almost 22 million are authors, that is, they leave public messages at least once a month. Thus, the importance of presence on this site from an SMM point of view seems obvious and undeniable. But who do we appeal to, to whom do we offer goods and services, who do we mean by the phrase “VKontakte audience”? We will tell you about all this.

    "VKontakte" - a social network for schoolchildren?

    If another popular Russian social network - Odnoklassniki - has a reputation as a site “for pensioners”, then VKontakte suffers from the opposite stereotype - they say that “one school kid hangs out here”. Because of this, the platform is often not taken seriously, because what can be taken from unreasonable children and teenagers who sit here due to carelessness and insufficient study load?

    If we move away from “couch sociology” and turn to professional sociologists, then a completely different picture will open to our eyes. According to media experts, the VKontakte audience today covers almost the entire population of Russia and some other countries of the former USSR. VK attracts users with ease, convenience and intuitiveness of use. It is noteworthy that the ranks of VKontakte continue to be replenished by users of other social networks. For example, in recent years, the so-called upper segment of the audience has moved to the territory of VKontakte - educated, solvent citizens who previously, as a rule, preferred Facebook. The share of users in the age category 35+, who were traditionally considered the inhabitants of Odnoklassniki, has also increased. At the same time, of course, different age groups are not homogeneously represented on the social network.

    Who makes up the core of the VKontakte audience? According to some estimates, these are people 18–24 years old, and there is a trend of gradual maturation of the audience. According to other estimates, these are people 25–34 years old, which, by the way, coincides with the core audience of Odnoklassniki. In any case, talking about VK.com as a social network for schoolchildren today is stupid. Apparently, this stereotype goes back to 2007, when young people actually spent hours on VKontakte and produced relevant “youth” content. Since even today the most viral content begins to spread from old public pages launched back in the era of “schoolchildren,” the site cannot completely free itself from its “school” image.

    It is important to understand that schoolchildren who mastered the social network almost ten years ago have since grown up and become students, or have even already received degrees in higher education. Currently, VK users are quite mature, socially and economically active people.

    It is also interesting to look at statistics on geography. According to representatives of VKontakte, the social network is used in all regions of the Russian Federation, as well as in the countries of the Customs Union, near and far abroad. Among Runet users, the social network “VKontakte” is most loved by residents of large and medium-sized cities – the leaders can be expected to be seen in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and other megacities. An interesting detail: on average, each user spends about 40 minutes on the social network every day, and spends this time very actively - reading news, creating content and communicating in dialogues.

    To summarize, we can say that the target audience of VKontakte is current or “yesterday’s” students, young professionals and people of early middle age. As for geography, here too the site practically knows no boundaries. The social network is a little more interesting to Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents than the somewhat provincial Odnoklassniki, but it is also very popular in the regions.

    What distinguishes VKontakte users from regulars of other social networks?

    Do VKontakte users have some kind of uniformity, a common identity, a mentality, or is it a motley world of people who are different from each other? Experts insist that certain features of perception and behavior are still characteristic of the vast majority of users.

    Thus, the VKontakte audience is predominantly visual people who love collections, photo stories, and infographics. Even in purely textual content, they value clarity and visualization of the main points. Unlike Odnoklassniki users, who are more focused on personal communication, VK users actively read the news feed, which means the frequency and volume of posting matter. It is necessary to maintain a balance: not to bore you with constant flashing, but also to regularly remind you of yourself with bright, meaningful posts.

    When working with an audience on VKontakte, it is important to avoid a one-sided approach and take into account all relevant parameters - age, geography, wealth, user interests and much more. Act in accordance with the objectives of your business and rely on real numbers. Speak to users in the same language, and they will definitely hear you!