Russia's VKontakte, not the ubiquitous American Facebook, remains the most popular social network in Ukraine with more than 11 million local subscribers, despite the numerous reasons for Ukrainians to boycott Russian products -- such as Kremlin's support for the separatists in Donbas and its decision to host ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.
The nation’s 18 million internet users do not seem to be politically motivated in preferring VKontakte, which is criticized for copying Facebook’s concept.
Facebook’s Ukrainian audience is two times smaller – 5.5 million local accounts in a nation of 45 million people, a small share of the social media network’s 1.28 billion global users. As a website, it’s being beaten only by Google, a search engine and online service provider, in terms of the audience size – both in Ukraine and globally.
Ukrainian social media users still see VKontakte as a native product that uses the same language that they do. “At the time of its launch (in 2006), VKontakte was the only social media site to have a Russian interface,” explains Arthur Orudzhaliyev, head of Ain.ua, an online portal devoted to covering Ukraine’s information technology sector. Ukrainian interface was introduced in 2008.
Another local peculiarity that drives VKontakte’s popularity is the ease of copyright infringement. Unlike its American rival, the Russian network contains many venues for posting music and video content without restriction, which is seen as its key advantage by Ukrainians, who are massive consumers of illegally acquired digital entertainment.
“This is one of the largest repositories of this kind of content,” says Taras Nazaruk of the Media Sapiens, an online media monitoring group. “In a region where payment for the web content is underdeveloped, this matters.”
All of the social media users the Kyiv Post spoke with agreed that they prefer VKontakte to other social media sites because of the boat loads of free stuff available. “VKontakte provides entertaining content: humor, music, films, videos, books, games etc., mostly with copyright violation, which is very easy to download. Also, 98 percent of the content is in Russian, original or dubbed,” confesses Inna Mashek, a public relations expert from Kyiv.
In addition, all the users the Kyiv Post polled about social media prefer the interface of VKontakte to that of Facebook. “I find it much easier to upload music or post photos in VKontakte,” says Olena Lytvynenko, a professional translator. “The site is better laid out, in my opinion.”
“There is a big retail section,” adds Lytvynenko. “There is a bunch of pages selling stuff. My sister, who lives in Kirovograd [in central Ukraine] buys on VKontakte clothes for herself and her kid. She recently got him a little swimming pool and a baby cot for just Hr 200.”
However, both Mashek and Lytvynenko say that they use Facebook more as an informational source for professional activity. “Facebook is considered to be more business-oriented,” argues Mashek. “All companies and business projects have their accounts on Facebook largely because the audience is older, better educated and, therefore, wealthier.”
Because VKontakte is heavily dominated by free games, music and other mass entertainments, its user profile is more youthful. “The illegal content [on VKontake] attracts a younger and, therefore, less solvent audience, which lowers the average age of users Vkontakte, unlike Facebook,” said Media Sapiens’ Nazaruk.
Meanwhile, Odnoklassniki is more popular among older age groups who are often looking for long-lost friends from their school days. “My parents, who are in their 60s and 70s, created [Odnoklassniki] accounts with my help, and they were excited to find their classmates there,” Mashek explained.
Where friends are located also affects social media usage and reinforces the east-west divide. “I use VKontakte with my Ukrainian friends and to watch movies and Facebook with my American friends, since none of them are on VKontakte,” says Kyiv-born budding Hollywood starlet Anna Kolenko. “But I don’t use Odnoklassniki at all.”
“(VKontakte) provides great possibilities for internet marketing as you can filter audience for age, gender, geographic location, school, college, etc.,” explains PR expert Mashek. The All-Ukrainian Coalition of Advertisers estimates that all forms of advertising online will rise by 36 percent this year after reaching Hr 1.06 billion in 2013, which is only 10 percent of Ukraine’s total advertising market.
VKontakte is not likely to lose its top dog status anytime soon on account of content restrictions arising from Ukraine’s bringing its legislation more in line with European norms. “TheAssociation Agreement with the EU contains a chapter on intellectual property in which the parties agreed to cooperate in the protection of copyright and related rights in various fields. But as the most popular social network in Ukraine registered in other countries, it’s hard to say who will be converted to the main claim holders of content,” Nazaruk of Media Sapiens explains.
As Asters legal firm partner Julia Semeniy explains, “According to the Ukrainian law ‘On Copyright and Related Rights’, copyright protection shall not cover ideas, theories, principles, methods, procedures, systems, concepts and discoveries whether or not they are reflected, described, explained or illustrated in a work.” But if the content itself is copied and distributed without permission, there should be hell to pay.
Kyiv Post business journalist Evan Ostryzniuk can be reached at [email protected].
