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

Social media activity by source type

The number of "talking" authors in November 2016 was 35 million and 698 million messages were generated by them. 71.8% of the volume of all public content falls on social networks (504,940 publications). Sources of video content (YouTube and Vimeo) are in second place - 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
Instagram has 4,645,700 active contributors, with 78,185,400 posts posted in November.

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

LIVEJOURNAL
LJ remains a platform for the production, but not the consumption of content. There are 196,200 active authors here, and 6,743,500 messages. Less than on other sites, but more viral and diverging 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 - over 50%. The most popular authors on VKontakte are video bloggers.
3. "VKontakte" and Instagram have 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 algorithms for the formation of a tape have intensified the effect of the "information bubble-shell", locking people in their own beliefs.
4. Rapid growth of spambots activity. It is indicative that the growth is noted at once in several social networks - LiveJournal, VKontakte, Facebook, and the topic of spam in them correlates.
5. The prevalence of social media over classical media in terms of the level of influence on public opinion. Brexit, elections in the US, referendum in Italy - these are cases showing the decisions of large communities of people against the "official information" of the media.
6. FakeNews and the need to verify information for accuracy. The desired speed of issuing information for the media and social networks is so high that there is no time to check the 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 in Moscow.

How the data was obtained:

Brand Analytics collects and indexes everything public messagessocial networks in Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, Kazakh and some other languages, as well as data from their authors.

To highlight data around the countryfor each social network, the percentage of geo-identification is taken into account: the number of posts with geographic data is divided by the percentage of posts with geo-data. Likewise for authors.

For determining geography: data was taken from the profiles of the authors, geo-tags of messages, as well as message texts. Geo-dictionaries for all social networks are unique and expanded with all variants of toponyms spelling, including "custom" ones.

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

For determining age: taken from author profiles.

Data on 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 “only for friends” mode are not counted.

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 publications of the author per month.

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


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

SCHEME OF 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, where do people earn, HOW MUCH they earn per month, how long it takes;
• opportunities for promotion and opportunities for cheating;
• business opportunities, advertising companies;
• summary, the main distinguishing features of this network from others, what is the uniqueness.

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 students and graduates of universities to communicate in a single network, and it was possible to register on it only by special invitation and only under their real name and surname. Immediately after registration became possible for everyone, the social network began to gain momentum. By 2007, the audience of Vkontakte was already 3 million people, and the site itself was the second most popular in the Russian Internet.

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 the shares in Vkontakte, and in 2014 became the sole owner, having bought out 100%.

Now Vkontakte continues to grow and develop, still overtaking the most popular Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir in terms of 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 CIS members. There are not many users from European countries, but they are. The same goes for the Americans.

Due to the large geographical spread of Vkontakte users, there is a function for choosing the interface language. The service currently works with 85 languages, including the languages \u200b\u200bof almost all nationalities living in Russia.

Total: the VK audience is mostly youth, Russian-speaking, the topics of the pages are in accordance with 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, setting up a profile, choosing a place of study and adding photos, now the possibilities have expanded significantly. Now, in addition to those listed, the social network offers features such 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 private 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 most is to advertise in your community. But there is a condition here - the community must be promoted and have many subscribers, otherwise no one simply wants to place their ads with you. Therefore, if you like this option, 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 customers, you can start making good money. The Vkontakte online store is a profitable business, since you do not have to pay for the content of the site and the audience of the social network 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, placing a link to a product or service in your community. If you use this link to go to the site and order goods, each time you will be charged a certain percentage of the proceeds.

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. Working as a moderator or community admin. The creators of groups and public pages with a large audience are often looking for people who would be engaged in maintaining these very 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 administrator of the community and make money. As a rule, everyone has different rates. If you wish and diligence, you can earn up to 15-20 thousand rubles a month.
2. Working as a web designer. With design skills and good taste, community design development will be a source of income. Here, too, the condition for getting a job is promotion, but in this case yourself. Usually, 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 the development of an application that would be popular with users is only within the power of experienced programmers. But, if, nevertheless, you succeeded, it is quite possible that your earnings will reach tens of thousands per month.

How to wind up friends and Vkontakte subscribers

Vkontakte users often have a need or just a desire to make a large number of friends. This is necessary, for example, for the same online trade or for advertising. You also always want to get as many likes as possible for your posts and photos, but not everyone can quickly get as many people as they want as friends, or a large number of likes. Here special services for promotion come to the rescue, which later become an excellent promotion tool.

The most popular and inexpensive service today that allows you to wind up 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 wind up likes, friends or subscribers on:

• - promoted wrap-up combine;
• - very simple, for some reason like those working through a smartphone / tablet;
• - a service exchange, andhas slightly different interfaces for general users and advertisers.

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

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

• - business harvester for VK. There is a free version. The author is a fan of his work.
• - sending 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), surpassing it in many ways. A lot of functions, support by a toll-free line 8-800.

You can try to promote the page yourself. Vkontakte 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 Vkontakte

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

An existing business can be expanded and promoted by creating a public page where you can sell products or simply introduce a potential customer to the assortment, if it comes to trade, or offer your services. A great addition to this would be ordering advertising in other large communities or on pages from users with a large number of friends and subscribers.

You can also do your little business within VKontakte by opening the same group, but you should definitely initially think about promoting it.

Thanks to the wide opportunities not only for communication, but also for a good pastime, 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, by far, the most popular social network in the world, founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004.
Initially, there was no question of any social network, because then they did not 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 photos and contacts of all students were stored, and which, due to the long name, the students themselves renamed to The Facebook. Upon entering Harvard, Zuckerberg discovered that there was no such reference at the university, which caused him bewilderment.

The future billionaire turned to 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 everyone 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 1.6% of the project's shares, paying $ 260 million. After that, 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 spotted 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, slightly more than a billion use the mobile version of the social network. Even considering 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, accounts belong to people of various ages and social statuses, but it is here that most of the accounts of world movie and music stars, deputies and politicians are concentrated.

Due to the large geographical spread, the interface language can be done in almost any way.

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

Facebook features

Today Facebook is more than just a messaging site. The possibilities of the social network are wide. Here you can:

• - create and participate in interest groups;
• - look 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 do business and make money on Facebook

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

The most popular options for making 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 in your friends, some online sellers or those who want more realization for their product can offer similar things themselves for money.
2. Place paid ads on your page.
3. Become an Author on Facebook Posts Market (“Market of records”). Or Facebook Fanpages Market.

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

Options to make money on Facebook on your own business:

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

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

Ways to promote and cheat on Facebook

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

If you don't want to waste time, but there is an opportunity to spend money, you can use special services to cheat friends and likes. There are quite a few of them now and some offer their services at quite reasonable prices and with high efficiency.

These are, for example, those mentioned above, plus.

Summary

Facebook in the Russian-speaking segment is now ahead of VKontakte in terms of audience growth, and even more ahead in terms of business opportunities and earnings. VK is already saturated with advertising, and FB is an unpaved field, plus a rapid increase in new members.

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

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

Instagram

Now, perhaps, only those people who civilization have not reached, that is, the aborigines, do not know about Instagram, but few people can assume that this project was created in just a few weeks by an American student Kevin Systrom. He just raved about the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating his own application that would "blow up" the Web, and even started 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, invited Krieger to take up a joint business. They started work on Burbn, but soon realized that the project was doomed to fail.

The idea of \u200b\u200bInstagram came to Kevin Simstrom's head unexpectedly. He realized that he needed a service that could transform even the most nondescript photographs and make them beautiful. On the same day, he created the first Instagram filter, and on others they worked again with Krieger.

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

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

Instagram audience

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

Instagram features

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

- download videos up to 60 seconds long;

- processing of photo and video filters;

- conducting live broadcasts;

- restricting access to your page;

- conducting personal correspondence.

How to run a business and make money on Instagram

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

1. Creating a page for trading.
2. Placing advertisements on your page.
3. Placing links to products on your page, when clicking on which 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. For this, a page of an organization is created, where complete information about it and its services is given.

Promotion and promotion on Instagram

Each Instagram user strives to ensure that he has as many followers as possible, or that his photos receive many likes. If you follow a few simple tips, then this is quite possible:

1. Fill in the 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 are doing business on Instagram, then the best ways for people to know about you are:

1. Subscribe to as many people as possible.
2. Like.
3. Indicate information about yourself in the header.

There are also paid methods of promotion and promotion on Instagram. It:

- the use of special programs and services that also provide cheat services for money.

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

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

• - the service specializes in promoting on Instagram. It focuses on 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.
• - 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 recruiting the initial mass of users and breaking away from competitors. Then they raise prices. So take the moment.
• DOINSTA is a run-in and polished service for automated (with a minimum of manual labor) work with subscriptions, unsubscriptions, likes. Recently, the service has been unstable, we recommend others:,.

Summary

The uniqueness of Instagram is its versatility and constantly updated system operation. The owners of the service are doing everything to keep interest in it, and they do it very well.

The service is developing very dynamically, it is seriously considered as a source of customer acquisition in many niches.

Classmates

Odnoklassniki 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 large 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 make it so that in six months the number of registered accounts reached 4 million. Still, the owners' investments were not enough for the maintenance of 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.

Auditorium "Odnoklassniki"

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

Opportunities "Odnoklassniki"

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 do 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 customers, can do it using the 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 make money in Odnoklassniki:

1. By becoming an administrator or moderator for a large group.
2. By creating your own online store group.
3. By placing an advertisement in your group or on your page.
4. By posting 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

To promote your page or group on Odnoklassniki is necessary, first of all, for those who are engaged in online business and who need a large audience.

You can easily recruit subscribers to a group or friends - just by inviting to the community or sending requests to friends. If they are interested in you, they will surely reciprocate, and in order to attract attention, you need to deal with your page or group, constantly updating and posting interesting content.

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

facebook audience is rather active people who are looking for something, achieve, fight, prove, change the world,

the audience of Vkontakte is largely young people and adolescents, passionate about music, parties and the search for the meaning of life,

the audience of Odnoklassniki are calm homebodies who love to leaf through photo albums, kill hours with cards-toe-noughts, sappers, stroking a well-fed cat 🙂

And there are many such people!

Brand Analytics presented data from a regular survey of the active audience of social networks in Russia, winter 2015-2016.

The study provides data on the audience, age, gender and regional distribution of authors on social networks in Russia and includes data on the most popular authors and groups for each social network.

The main focus of the study is on the active (writing) audience, since Brand Analytics studies social networks as a means of public communication and their influence on the formation of public opinion.

Social media activity

One of the key indicators of the “vital activity” of a social network is the number of “speaking” users who openly express their position in public messages on social media. There were about 37 million such active authors in Russia in December 2015, they generated 588 million messages per month. Active authors who create public content make social networks an actual indicator of public sentiment, making it possible to capture “live” social problems at the very beginning of the formation of significant trends.

In terms of the number of "writing" Russian authors, VKontakte is in the lead - 18.8 million unique authors. The next in second place is Instagram - incredible growth rates, in December this network recorded 10.6 million authors, almost 5 times more than in the spring of 2015.The third place - Twitter - the number of active authors here continues to decline, in December it was recorded just over 1 million people

As for the number of posts posted on social networks every day, there is no such dramatic change. In the first place, as before, "Vkontakte", in the second - Twitter, then - Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter traditionally leads in terms of engagement, although the average number of posts dropped slightly in the winter - an average of 90 posts per month per active author on this network. The second place - LiveJournal - on average, 49 messages per author, the third - Facebook - 39 messages per author. VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are very close in terms of this indicator - 15 and 14 messages per author, respectively.

Social media audience

According to TNS, the monthly audience of most social networks has declined slightly, but there are also sources showing growth. So, the audience of VKontakte stopped at 46.6 million people, the second place was taken by Odnoklassniki (31.5 million people). The audience of Facebook in December 2015 amounted to 21.7 million people, close further is located "My World" - 16.6 million people and "Live Journal", with an audience of 15.2 million people. By December 2015, the Instagram audience increased by 2 million people. and amounted to 12.3 million people. Twitter's audience remained virtually unchanged at 7.7 million people.

Statistics for Russia for each social network

The monthly audience is 46.6 million people, 40% of whom - 18.8 million - have shown public activity.

As for the age structure of VKontakte authors, one can note an increase in the number of authors 25-34 years old, their share was 32.1%, the share of authors aged 18-24 years is slightly higher - 32.3%, authors under 18 years old - 24%, over 35 years old, only 11.6% of active authors.

The geographical distribution of VKontakte authors is smoothly redistributed towards a more even regional penetration - St. Petersburg is in first place with a network penetration rate of 31.7%, Moscow is in second with 23% of the registered population, then Murmansk and Kaliningrad regions and Sevastopol - 19 , 4%, 19.3% and 18.8% of population activity, respectively.

Instagram's monthly audience in November 2015 was 12.3 million people, and the number of active authors was 10.7 million people.

Instagram remains the most feminine of all social networks in Russia; in the winter of 2015-16, 77.1% of active authors are women.

The penetration rate on Instagram has remained practically unchanged - the Leningrad Region is still in the lead - 38% of the population, Moscow - 22.3% of the population and the Sakhalin Region - 17.2%.

In the age structure of Facebook, categories from 25 to 34 years old and 35-44 years old are still in the lead - their share was 35.3% and 32.6%, respectively. 6.1% of authors are under 24 years of age, and authors over 44 for a total of 26.1%.

It should be noted that Facebook remains a unique social network in the Russian Federation both in terms of the age structure of authors - more than 65% of whom are between the ages of 25-44, and in terms of public content - this is a network focused primarily on business contacts and business.

The gender distribution of the Russian-speaking part of Facebook continues to shift towards the weaker sex (58% of authors).

The geographical cut shows stability - most regions have retained their positions: Moscow - 6.4% of the population, Altai - 3.75%, Yaroslavl Region - 3.2%.

"Odnoklassniki", as before, remain primarily a platform for interpersonal communication. The network has a monthly audience of 31.5 million people, while only 1.1 million authors demonstrate public activity in groups.

In Odnoklassniki, as before, the bulk of active authors is in the 24-34 age group - 26.6%. Almost equal shares are in the groups 35-44 and 55 and older - 20.7% and 20.9%, respectively. Only 15.8% of active authors are under 24 years old.

In November 2015, Twitter reached 7.7 million people and had 1 million active contributors.

The share of men among authors continues to grow on Twitter, in December 2015 the share is already 51.6%. A year ago, in December 2014, there were 45.6% of men on Twitter, and in the spring of 2015 - already 50.6%.

In terms of Twitter penetration, the leadership remained with St. Petersburg -2.1%. Almost the same penetration was recorded in Moscow - 2% of the population. The third line was occupied by the Novosibirsk region, with a penetration rate of 1%.

The monthly audience of the network decreased by 10 million people and amounted to 16.6 million, and the number of active authors - 830 thousand people.

The gender structure of My World has practically not changed, 41.8% of men and 58.2% of women.

LiveJournal remains a platform for those who like to “read, not talk”: out of 15 million people with a monthly audience, only 111 thousand authors are active.

The age structure of LJ is stable, the largest share of authors falls on the groups of 18-24 years old - 37.2% and 25-34 years old - 35.8%.

Comparison of socio-demographic characteristics of the authors

Over the past six months, social media has matured, the share of authors under 18 has declined, authors 18-24 and 25-24 years old prevail in LiveJournal and VKontakte, and authors 25-34 and 35-44 years old in other networks.

For Twitter and Instagram, there is no data on the age of active authors.

Trends and forecasts

There is a significant increase in the activity of the Russian Instagram segment. Moreover, most of the authors of this social network are active users of other social media - the share of cross-posting from Instagram to other social networks exceeds 50% of messages.

The Russian part of facebook continues to grow. Moreover, this growth is observed primarily in the field of business contacts and business. Facebook's share in the analysis of business topics is often more than 30% of the total volume of social media data on a topic.

The active growth of sites with reviews continues - both in the number of new reviews and in traffic.

The Russian part of Twitter is slowly losing activity. At the same time, the activity of spambots on Twitter also decreases, but nevertheless, it still accounts for more than 30% of the flow.

Basic research terms:

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

Audience - the number of people who have visited the site at least 1 time per month.

Odnoklassniki project's response to Brand Analytics research

Last week, Brand Analytics released a survey on social media audience in Russia. Unfortunately, this is not the first study published on behalf of the agency. According to our observations, these reports are often used by brand managers and SMM specialists for work and strategic planning. We not only disagree with the results of the study, but also have to report the incorrectness of the numbers and methods of data collection. We would not like partners and colleagues to be misled by false information. We took the amazing BA methodology as a basis and calculated real data. We share them with you.

In December 2015, Odnoklassniki in Russia recorded 24 million “authors” in the terminology of Brand Analytics versus 1 million, which they mention in their research. The Jewish Autonomous Region, which is in the first place in the list of BA, is actually in 7th place from the end.

• Krasnodar region
• Samara Region
• Khabarovsk region
• Moscow (as a city)
• Sverdlovsk region
• Saint Petersburg (as a city)
• Primorsky Krai
• Voronezh region
• Saratov region
• Irkutsk region.

And here is the top regions in terms of the absolute number of authors, in which Moscow is expected to come first:

• Moscow
• Krasnodar region
• Sverdlovsk region
• St. Petersburg
• Samara Region
• Rostov region
• Stavropol region
• Novosibirsk region
• Saratov region
• Irkutsk region.

Last year, following a similar study by Brand Analytics, we decided to open data and provide extended access to the API for more correct data processing. Unfortunately, this did not affect the relevance of the study in any way.

Starting today, we officially close access for Brand Analytics to our API and prohibit the use of grabbers.

If your company is engaged in data analysis and processing, you can get advanced access to the API by writing a request for [email protected] with the theme "Analytics".

Commentary Brand Analytics

Brand Analytics is in dialogue with representatives of all major social networks, seeing its mission in the further development of measurements of the social media market, in the development of technological cooperation to solve the stated problem. The degree of discussion of fresh data proves once again that we are only at the beginning of this path. We appeal to all market participants with an open proposal to discuss mutual steps in this direction and will continue to invest our own resources in the development of research.

A little more about the figures for Odnoklassniki (OK). The study relies solely on data from 100,000 OC groups. The explanation about using data only by groups is given in all relevant places of the presentation - next to tables and charts. This decision is due to the fact that, unlike the APIs of other Mail.ru Group social networks that we use, the Odnoklassniki API provides data only by groups and does not provide data outside the groups.

Despite the insufficient completeness of the data, even such figures, the assessment of the social demographic, activity and geography of OK authors in a situation of a lack of information on this social network are important for the market - the target audience of many brands is concentrated in Odnoklassniki.

The incorrect interpretation of the presented data on the geography of the authors of the OK in a number of discussions of the study results also requires comments. Figures by the number of authors in groups and penetration in the regions are sorted according to the second metric - the penetration of authors in the region, normalized to the population of the region. Correct reading of the presented data removes questions about activity in the regions of OK users.

Finally, we note once again the usefulness and importance of the current discussion for the further development of the dimensions of the social media segment. We are confident that our partners from OK will be able to find the right organizational and technical solution in order to expand the representation of data on one of the main Russian social networks in the near future.

According to various sources, the social network VKontakte is either the first or the second most popular site in Russia. Be that as it may, no one gives the third place to the "living legend" VK.com. The monthly audience of the social network 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 being on this site from the point of view of SMM seems obvious and undeniable. But to whom do we turn, to whom do we offer goods and services, whom do we mean by the phrase “VKontakte audience”? We will tell about all this.

Is VKontakte a social network for schoolchildren?

While another popular Russian social network, Odnoklassniki, has a reputation as a site for pensioners, VKontakte suffers from the opposite stereotype - they say, “one shkolota hangs out here”. Because of this, the platform is often not taken seriously, because what can you take from unreasonable children and adolescents who are sitting here out of carelessness and insufficient study load?

If we move away from “sofa sociology” and turn to professional sociologists, then a completely different picture will open to our eyes. According to experts in the field of media, the audience of VKontakte today covers almost the entire population of Russia and some other countries of the former USSR. VK attracts users with its ease, convenience and intuitive use. It is noteworthy that the ranks of VKontakte continue to grow 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 townspeople who, as a rule, previously preferred Facebook. The share of users of the age category 35+, who were traditionally considered residents of Odnoklassniki, also increased. At the same time, of course, different age groups are not uniformly represented in the social network.

Who is the core of the VKontakte audience? According to some estimates, these are people of 18-24 years old, and there is a trend of gradual maturation of the audience. According to other estimates, these are people aged 25–34, which, by the way, coincides with the core of the Odnoklassniki audience. In any case, talking about VK.com as a social network for schoolchildren is silly today. Apparently, this stereotype goes back to 2007, when young people actually spent hours on VKontakte and produced the corresponding “youth” content. Since even today the most viral content begins to spread from old public pages launched in the era of "schoolchildren", the site cannot finally 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 even have already received crusts about higher education. Currently, VK users are quite mature, socially and economically active people.

It is interesting to look at the 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 - as expected, you can see Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and other megalopolises as leaders. An interesting detail: on average, each user spends about 40 minutes a day on a social network, and spends this time very actively - reading news, creating content and communicating in dialogues.

In summary, we can say that the target audience of VKontakte is current or yesterday's students, young professionals and people of early middle age. As far as geography is concerned, even here the site practically knows no boundaries. The social network is a little more interesting for Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents than the somewhat provincial Odnoklassniki, but it is very popular in the regions as well.

What distinguishes VKontakte users from the regulars of other social networks?

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

So, the audience of "VKontakte" is mainly visuals, who do not cherish souls in collections, photo stories, infographics. Even in purely textual content, they value clarity, visualization of the main theses. Unlike Odnoklassniki users, who are more focused on personal communication, VK users actively read the news feed, which means that the frequency and volume of posting matters. It is necessary to maintain a balance: do not bother with constant flickering, but also regularly remind 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 the relevant parameters - age, geography, wealth, interests of users and much more. Act according to your business goals and rely on real numbers. Talk to users in the same language and they will surely hear you!

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

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

The most significant monthly audience is In contact with and Classmateswho visit more 52 and 42 million... users respectively. Near 30 million... people come every month to My world, slightly 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 user of Odnoklassniki spends on a social network twice the time the average user on VKontakte (20 minutes versus 10). Hence the almost double advantage in the number of page views per month.

Users often have accounts on different social networks. Monthly audience Of my world most often overlaps 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 has FacebookandTwitter, 34% and 35% whose users live in large settlements (more than 800 thousand people).

What are social media users writing about?

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

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