It’s no big secret that the Russian market has been a tough one to crack for major western companies. Nintendo wouldn’t even bother trying to sell the Wii there as they feel Russia just isn’t ready for social gaming and the internet seems to hold less cultural value when compared to other countries.
However, Google are trying desperately to get a firm foot-hold in the market and as such have made a bid of around the $200 million mark for the country’s most popular instant messaging service; ICQ. Skype are also rumoured to be interested in the deal.
AOL owns ICQ at the minute having bought it in 1998 for $400 million (they’ll be making a loss). It now has over 30 million users with in excess of eight million of them living in Russia. So getting such a huge chunk of the market instantly would be a huge help for Google. Or whatever Western company manages to close the deal for that matter.
Skype is the most popular method of making online voice calls across the globe. It’s free, fast and effective. Recently they have brought out numerous updates and upgrades that only improved the service making for better video calls and streamlining the call process. However, a recent surprise concerning Skype came not from the company, but the Kremlin.
In Russia, an activist group called the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs are lobbying to have the service removed or at least hindered in Russia. They argue that the service is not giving Russian services a fighting chance as Skype dominates the market. Other VoIP providers on the hit list were Google Voice which operates a service similar to that of Skype.
“Most I.P. telephony market brands, such as Skype and ICQ, are foreign, and that is why we have to protect the domestic producer.” These domestic producers such as MegaFon would indeed do better if there was no Skype in Russia but it would have disastrous consequences.
For one thing, may Russians rely on Skype as a lo-cost business tool. If it were to be taken away the only way to communicate with other devout Skype users across the globe would be regular phone or a less popular Russian service that would undoubtedly have compatibility issues with foreign VoIP services.
Another is that this would represent a step backwards for the Kremlin towards 1988. I don’t know what I would do if my Skype suddenly vanished – business costs would increase a ton!
US based FriendFinder Networks (formerly Penthouse Media Group) has filed a registration statement with the SEC to go public. The story was broken by Techcrunch and this seems like a huge leap for the adult network.
Little known Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital is representing them in the deal. The company hopes to raise $460 million in the IPO.
Penthouse acquired Adult FriendFinder in December 2007 for approximately $400 million. Currently the network has $244 million in revenues from the first three quarters of 2008.
This seems like a very interesting move by FriendFinder Networks. It shows that there is simply just so much money in the adult industry online and now they are looking to move public and grow the services even faster, while cashing out at the same time.
Out of Russia comes one of the best alternative search engines in the market today. Quintura provides visual searching via tag clouds in with basic text search results. The service currently pulls its search results from some of the leading search engines, such as Yahoo!, MSN, Google and Technorati.
Quintura seems to be quite a basic concept that is still in development, but it seems to be making search a little more visual and fun. Im not totally sure about the idea and where this product is really headed, mainly because I havent spent enough time using the product, but I can see its benefits. Using the tag cloud can offer quicker searches, different ideas about what to search and also related search possibilities.
Quintura seems to be quite a noval idea and is definitely still a work in progress. They have just recently launched an affiliate program that seems to be an interesting idea, it is based by using one of their search widgets on your site. The program seems to be a different way to get their name about in the marketplace, and im sure it would be worth a try. That all being said I would like to find out more about where the company is heading and what the product is going to evolve into. Quintura.com check it out today.
It’s no big secret that the Russian market has been a tough one to crack for major western companies. Nintendo wouldn’t even bother trying to sell the Wii there as they feel Russia just isn’t ready for social gaming and the internet seems to hold less cultural value when compared to other countries.
