In mid-December, while trying to understand what was happening in Russia, I checked Twitter and found a tweet that somehow signified everything. It was from a young woman, and it said, in Russian: “Gotta sleep! Tomorrow I’m going for a [facial] peeling, then to the meeting and then shopping.” All three words — peeling, meeting, and shopping — were in fact the English words, rendered in Cyrillic.

What this reveals is that the Russian protests — called митинги — are no longer just for old people, radical extremists or jobless, unskilled and wild youth. They are for sociable people who have time and money not just for politics, but also for shopping and, yes, even cosmetic procedures.

That is a big change from just a few years ago. My Russian friends — many of them computer programmers, but also some shoppers and business executives — routinely dismissed politics as the province of the naive or the corrupt. Many of the older ones chose careers in science — and then software — because it was the only kind of desk job you could get where politics mostly did not matter (and where Jews were allowed). These people avoided politics on principle, but also because they were afraid of losing their state jobs, or of disappearing altogether.

The younger ones were not afraid. They were simply not interested in a spectator sport of politics that seemed irrelevant to their lives. Of course, no one could affect the outcome of a football match, either, but at least it was fun to watch — and the rules were clear. In Russian politics, as the old joke goes, the outcome is fixed in advance, but the rules are unpredictable.

So, what changed? Everyone points to Facebook and its Russian analogue, Vkontakte. And they do matter. But the point is not just organizing a protest “meeting.” Protests have been organized before — in 1917, for example. The exciting difference is in people’s minds, not just in their tools.

I once wrote that “every time a user gets information, it reinforces a little part of the brain that says: ‘It’s good to know things. It’s my right to have information, whether it’s about train schedules, movie stars or the activities of the politicians who make decisions that affect my life.’”

In the same way, every time someone posts on Facebook, they feel empowered to speak as well as to read. One of the slogans of the protests is, “We are not cattle.” On Facebook, people are not cattle. They can comment and like things, and their votes are counted.

Compare that to the old days, when the state ran everything. It even picked the public’s heroes — not just people like cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, the first human in outer space, but wholly invented characters and achievements, like Pavlik Morozov, the child martyr who allegedly denounced his traitorous father and was murdered by his family in 1932, or Alexei Stakhanov, who supposedly fulfilled 14 times more than his production targets. Actors succeeded or failed not on the basis of popularity, but on the state’s direction. Imagine a world with only one movie studio deciding which stars to promote.

Now, the kids are not afraid, and they pick their own heroes. Yes, they have seen oil baron and former Yukos CEOMikhail Khodorkovskyimprisoned on questionable charges and inconvenient opposition journalists beaten or killed. But they have also seen their friends posting on Facebook with impunity and can see their own comments there. They cannot imagine disappearing without a trace, as many of their ancestors did under the old regime, when it was dangerous even to mention those who were gone.

Indeed, they are also not worried about losing their jobs. By the standards of the protesters in the Middle East, for example, they are well off. Russia does not have the same demographic crisis — a large cohort of unemployed youth — that has catalyzed change in the Arab world. On the contrary, its demographic problem is just the opposite: not enough young people. Russia’s crisis is far more political than it is economic.

But what does this all mean? How much more will things change, and how persistent will the changes be?

It is fairly clear that Prime MinisterVladimir Putinwill be re-elected to the presidency in March. The votes will be counted properly, even though some may argue that the slate of candidates is unduly restricted. What is not clear is what will happen after that.

Today’s protesters do not want a traditional revolution. They are mostly educated enough about the past to fear blood in the streets. They want Putin gone, not necessarily punished. They realize that it is the system that produced Putin, who then reinforced the system. They want to reverse that cycle, putting an end to corruption, official impunity and being treated like cattle.

Unfortunately, however, there is no obvious alternative to Putin. In the most benign scenario, Putin himself would evolve. After all, former Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachevmanaged to change the system that produced him, although you could argue that he did not change it enough.

If Putin and his team were to start changing the system — for example, genuinely fighting corruption and perhaps releasing Khodorkovsky — the response would be positive. But that may be as much of a dream as Stakhanov’s legendary feats.

News from The Moscow Times

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/how-protests-and-shopping-changed-russia/452028.html

Vkontakte.ru founder Pavel Durov, 27, presented key indicators of his social network yesterday at Digital Life Design, a global conference on innovation, digital, science and culture held annually in Munich (see video)

The site – which has just been renamed VK.com – stands as the largest social network in most Russian speaking countries, Durov said. With 31 billion page views per month, according to ComScore, Vkontakte.ru is also the 4th most viewed website in Europe, behind Facebook (163 billion), Google (89 billion) and Mail.ru Group (35 billion).

But Vkontakte.ru is ahead of all its competitors in terms of user engagement, Durov said, quoting ComScore figures. VKontakte users spend no less than 430 minutes each month on the site, compared to 348 minutes for Facebook, making the Russian site “the most efficient tool to waste time,” Durov joked.

During his speech, Durov also announced a $1 million donation to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales welcomed the generous donation. “I wish I could give away $1 million when I was 27,” he joked.

https://www.apecdoc.org/site/russia/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post

News from Russia now.

While Twitter is gaining traction among the connected Russian elite, Mail.ru Group, the Russian LSE-listed Internet group, announced on Monday the launch of Futubra, a remarkably designed microblogging service.

Although some observers have nicknamed it “the Russian Twitter,” Futubra seems closer to Tumblr in terms of functions, with its focus on multimedia content sharing and immediate access to all users’ content. But Futubra distinguishes itself with more advanced news group and comment functions.

“While developing Futubra, we aimed to offer what we feel is lacking in existing microblogging services and social networks,” explains Anna Artamonova, Mail.ru Group’s Vice President for Strategic Projects. “On the one hand, it has beautiful and bright content representations, on the other, there are no limitations on accessing information from interesting people. As a result, we’ve created a service that falls in between social networking and media, providing users with the possibility of reading news feeds from one another.”

Although it does not hide its strong ambitions for Futubra, Mail.ru Group acknowledges that the project is still in an experimental stage. The company has not set yet any precise traffic or revenue targets for Futubra.

Mail.ru Group, however, is already considering international expansion for Futubra. “The service was designed with a multilingual perspective from the very beginning. We don’t have any precise roadmap for other countries yet, but our primary area of interest includes Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. Furthermore, we may introduce Futubra in other European and Asian countries,” said project head Alexey Terekhov in an exchange with East-West Digital News.

After just six months, Futubra, the first project of Mail.ru Group’s new in-house project incubator, now has a dedicated team of  20 employees. But the group declined to comment on the cost of the project.

Last July, Twitter, which launched its Russian version less than a year ago, had reached  one million Russian users. Tumblr also has a Russian version, but it is used by approximately 10,000 Russians, CNews.ru quoted Mail.ru Group General Manager Dmitry Grishin as saying, out of almost 40 million world wide.

http://www.ewdn.com/2012/01/18/futubra-russias-response-to-twitter-aims-to-set-new-standard-in-microblogging/

News form Russia Now.

RTI, a large Russian group of high-tech research and production companies, announced on Tuesday the acquisition of NVision, a Moscow based system integrator with regional representative offices in Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, as well as in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

RTI will pay $200 million in exchange for a 50% stake in NVision, while the remaining 50% will be swapped through an additional share issue by RTI. The deal will be finalized by the end of Q3 2012, NVision’s press service told ComNews.ru, a Russian online publication covering the IT and telecom markets.

This acquisition was expected since last November, when AFK Sistema, a diversified conglomerate and RTI’s parent company, performed due diligence on NVision. Previously, in 2010, NVision had attracted the attention of Rostelecom, the national telecommunications operator, and became its subcontractor for state e-government projects.

RTI already holds one system integrator, Sitronics IT, but the question of a possible integration has not been discussed yet.

Among the goals of the acquisition is to reinforce Sistema’s presence in the IT market and, in particular, its capacity to conduct e-government projects, Russian business daily Vedomosti noted.

Last May, NVision estimated that its 2011 revenues could reach 21.2 billion rubles, or approximately $700 million.

http://www.ewdn.com/2012/01/27/high-tech-holding-rti-to-acquire-system-integrator-nvision/

News from Russia Now

Rallies against election fraud delivered an unforeseen bonus of at least $137 million to IT manufacturers such as Lenovo and Fujitsu, as the government moves full steam ahead to ensure online monitoring of the March presidential vote, an official said Friday.

The Communications and Press Ministry shortlisted “primarily” Lenovo and Fujitsu to supply some 100,000 personal computers — one for each polling station — as part of the government’s effort to allow people to watch elections via the Internet, Deputy Minister Ilya Massukh said. The effort also stipulates delivery of two web cameras for every polling station, but Massukh declined to name the manufacturers.

Planeloads from China and Taiwan and truckloads from a Fujitsu plant in Germany will start arriving Monday, Massukh said.

“In terms of the number of computers and their gigabytes, the project is unrivaled in the world,” he said at a news conference, apparently implying deliveries to a single customer over a tight timeline. “Not a single Russian assembler is able to make a decent amount of this equipment in the time we required.”

Deliveries are starting after a testing commission worked through the New Year’s holidays, which ended last week, to select the most reliable PCs and cameras for the type of service they will provide, Massukh said. Shipments from Asia will be on their way to Russia by Jan. 23, the day of the Chinese New Year.

Prime MinisterVladimir Putinordered web cameras to be installed at polling stations following the first of two rallies where staggering crowds of Muscovites last month protested against ballot-stuffing and other vote-rigging at the Dec. 4 elections to the State Duma. Cameras will feed images to a computer at the station that will upload the video to a web site that, the ministry expects, will draw at least 20 million people wanting to keep a watchful eye on election officials, Massukh said.

Detractors have said the measure, which will cost 26 billion rubles ($838 million) — to pay mostly for the laying of transmission lines — still leaves a lot of room for abuse. The federal budget and Rostelecom, the government’s contractor for the project, will split the costs.

Procurement of 100,000 personal computers is “quite large” for a one-time deal, said Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner, a U.S.-based information technology research company. It would measure almost 3 percent of the total number of PCs shipped to Russia in the third quarter of last year, she said.

On a global scale the equipment supplies are not impressive, compared with worldwide PC shipments of 353 million units last year, as estimated by Gartner. But they could provide a backstop for the world’s slowing PC market, in which shipments increased a mere 0.5 percent last year as consumers looked more to multimedia tablets such as the iPad.

“Our suppliers are opening separate assembly lines for the contract,” Massukh said. “Usually, January provides for a lull in sales.”

Coming in at this sluggish time, the government was able to win a discount, he said without specifying its size. Of the federal budget’s 13 billion ruble contribution to the project, a quarter will pay for the PCs, cameras and Internet servers.

The Moscow offices of Lenovo and Fujitsu declined comment Friday. A spokeswoman for Fujitsu only confirmed that the company is participating in the project.

The Communications and Press Ministry and Rostelecom initially planned to buy only laptops but couldn’t find that many on the market, Massukh said. That’s why Fujitsu will supply 25,000 desktop computers, while Samsung will deliver as many monitors from its Russian plant near Kaluga.

Laptops are lighter and smaller, which makes them easier to deliver, Massukh said. He declined to name the other suppliers.

Spokespeople for Samsung in Moscow requested e-mailed questions but didn’t respond Friday.

Massukh said the servers will have a total disk capacity of 5.4 million gigabytes, or double what major international telecoms operator AT&T uses per day. About 247 years’ worth of video footage will be filmed by the cameras throughout the day, dwarfing YouTube’s daily average upload volume of about four years’ worth of video.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/election-watchers-create-it-windfall/451056.html

News form Russia Now