Friday, 3 July 2009
Russian users of social networking sites spent a monthly average of 6.6 hours on the sites in May, more than users in any other country, a Russian business daily said on Friday citing a recent study.
They are followed by Brazilian online social networkers with 6.3 hours, compared to the global average figure of under 3.7 hours per user, Vedomosti said, citing data from the U.S.-based internet marketing researcher comScore.
The research company singled out VKontakte.ru, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, and Odnoklassniki.ru, a service for classmates and old friends, as the most popular social network websites in the Russian domain, the paper said.
The vice president of Mail.ru, Russia's leading email provider and one of the country's main web portals, said the figures "look like the truth."
Interest in social networking sites has subsided in the United States and Europe, while Russians "have not lost interest in the toy yet," Anna Artamonova said as quoted by the daily.
However, total internet usage in Russia remains lower than in most developed countries, with nationwide internet penetration at a mere 27%, compared to 60-70% in Western Europe, according to Internet World Stats.
