Father of Estonian Social Networking Aims to Conquer Europe

Written on 21st November 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Toivo Tänavsuu, Next Web Estonian Web Tipr & founder of TigerPrises.com

Founder of Rate.ee, the most successful Estonian internet project thus far, Andrei Korobeinik (pictured) aims to reiterate the success in Europe with Rate clones and a brand new social networking platform.

Despite the serious doubts if there is something left to surprise with in the field of social networking, Korobeinik is going forward with a new ambitious project idea.

Depending on the market, is it The Baltics, Russia or The Balkans, his new social networking platform will use the domains MinuElu.ee (My Life), Classter.ru, Znanci.com and ClassPeople.com.

With MinuElu Korobeinik targets folks aged 20+. Similarly to what famous Russian site Odnoklassniki.ru and its US counterpart Classmates.com is trying to do, Korobeinik aims to reunite former school-, army- and workmates.

Like he says, MinuElu and other sites should become “the mirrors of our Internet life” and channels for social communication with our friends. We can import stuff from our YouTube, Flickr, Orkut, Blogger and other accounts to our MinuElu accounts, for these to become our “business cards” in the Internet.

Korobeinik aims to monetize MinuElu by selling targeted ads and services.

He sold Rate.ee couple of years ago to EMT, the biggest Estonian mobile operator, receiving 2,5 million euros. Ever since Korobeinik has focused on launching and operating Rate clones with different domains in over 20 European countries together with Estonian venture capital firm MartinsonTrigon. The joint company for the clones is called Rate Solutions.

Although Rate’s clone Karike.com is fairly popular in Serbia, and the results are not too bad in Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Montenegro either, none of the clones have gained any success comparable to glory of Rate.ee in Estonia. From Estonian population 1,4 million almost one-fourth are registered users of Rate.ee!

The goal of Rate Soultions is to become the leading European virtual social network by 2009.

Well, the only problem seems to be that Europe is already sick of social networks. Everyone (and their granny’s) has one.

Andrei Korobeinik, Classmates.com, ClassPeople.com, Classter.ru, MinuElu.ee, Odnoklassniki.ru, Rate Solutions, Rate.ee, Znanci.com

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Odnoklassniki.ru introduces SMS payments for monetization and security

Written on 2nd November 2008                                                                                                              12 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Leading Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru has recently welcomed Mr. Monetization Nikita Sherman as their new CEO. The man owes his reputation to his work at online dating platform Mamba.ru. He managed to turn that site into a very profitable one by launching several premium services. The result? Less than 15 percent of Mamba’s revenues came from online advertising. The users paid for dating, not the advertisers.

Nikita Sherman

Not surprisingly, the first thing Sherman did at Odnoklassniki’s, was introducing payment options. Quintura reports that if one of the 22 million registered members wants to use his account actively – meaning he’ll be able to send messages or browse to profiles -, he’ll have to pay about $1.3 via a SMS message.

The spam excuse

Of the 22 million users, six million members log in on a daily basis. A fairly large share of the other 16 million users consists of spammers who capitalize on high site usage once they’re active. So Sherman blamed these spammers for the $1.3 activation costs. My guess is that the average spammer is willing to make this investment.

Become invisible, pay four dollars

Anyhow, Sherman’s payment creativity goes further than just the activation costs. He also installed premium services like becoming ‘invisible’ and being able to upload more than a hundred photos. Prices vary between four and five dollars.

Revenue will skyrocket

Without a doubt, Odnoklassniki.ru’s revenue will skyrocket. Like I said, six million people log in every day. If the service is so important to them, they’re willing to pay as much as 15 dollars for the full Odnoklassniki experience. Imagine only a quarter of these six million Russians did that, it would still mean a $22.5 million boost.

monetization, nikita sherman, Odnoklassniki.ru, russia, social networks

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