Odnoklassniki.ru
Encyclopedia
Odnoklassniki is a social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...

 for classmates and old friends reunion popular in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and other former Soviet Republics. It was created by Albert Popkov on March 4, 2006.

The website currently claims that it has more than 45 million registered users and 10 million daily unique visitors. The website also currently has an Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...

 traffic ranking of 102 worldwide and 5 for Russia. Revenues in the first quarter of 2008 for Odnoklassniki was $3.3 million.
"The site has been online for at least eight years. Compared with internet averages, Odnoklassniki.ru's users tend to be under the age of 35, and they tend to be men earning less than $30,000 who have postgraduate educations and browse from home. The site is particularly popular among users in Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...

 (where it is ranked #4) and Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

 (#2).

"The server that hosts odnoklassniki.ru is located in Moscow, Russian Federation. The server is located on the Golden Telecom, Moscow, Russia network. The programming language used on the site is Java and the main language used for the site's textual content is Russian. The site is using the Tomcat web server."

The website was a recipient of the Runet Prize
Runet Prize
Runet Prize is the national award of the Russian Federation. Its founder is Russian governmental agency FAPMC which oversees country's mass media....

s in 2006 and 2007.

In February 2008, British company I-CD accused Albert Popkov of violation of their copyright. According to I-CD, Albert Popkov as an employee of I-CD worked on their projects 192.com
192.com
192.com is an online directory for the UK, based in London.Founded by British entrepreneur Alastair Crawford, 192.com Limited is the company behind the directory, which evolved from a CD ROM product called UK Info Disk, the best selling non-game CD ROM product of its time...

 and Passado
Passado
Wasabi is a social networking website in Europe, with 4.5 million members.The site was formed in 2001 as Passado, by two school friends who thought it would be interesting if people who left their school or university could just keep in touch. Passado then expanded rapidly and became one of the...

 until his resignation in November 2005. In December 2006 the company raised 10 million Euro to expand Passado in Russia. Albert Popkov allegedly used the proprietary information to create his own site very similar to Passado. He denied those allegations but was later dismissed as Managing Director by Odnoklassniki and in November 2009 after the first day of trial in the Royal Court of Justice in London I-CD and Alastair Crawford
Alastair Crawford
Alastair Crawford is CEO and founder of i-CD Publishing, the precursor to An internet entrepreneur, Crawford founded i-CD Publishing UK Limited in 1997, starting it from his sister’s bedroom with zero investment...

 completely dropped all charges against Albert Popkov and Odnoklassniki after Albert Popkov and Odnoklassniki agreed to pay i-CD an undisclosed amount of cash in settlement of the case against them.

On September 15, 2008, Vedomosti
Vedomosti
Vedomosti is a Russian language business daily. It is a joint venture between Dow Jones, the Financial Times and Sanoma, publishers of The Moscow Times....

announced that Albert Popkov spouses, founders and key shareholders have sold controlling interest in the network to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the owner of Mail.ru
Mail.ru
Mail.ru is the largest free e-mail service of the Runet. The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as spin-off from DataArt. It received an initial investment of USD 1 million from the well-known investor James...

. DST and Forticom
Forticom
Forticom is an IT company based in Lithuania. It is the owner of online social networks One.lv and One.lt . 100% of Forticom is owned by Digital Sky Technologies....

 together control 58% of the network.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK