The FINANCIAL — One of the most hotly debated aspects of Russia’s military operation in Georgia is how Moscow has managed to lose the war in the international media while winning the battle on the ground, reported Russia Profile.
While the social networking site Facebook is not the best tool to influence policy makers, it is quite effective at reaching an influential demographic – highly educated 18-35 year olds. One Facebook group “Stop Russian Aggression against Georgia” has 22,000 subscribers, more than the registered subscribers for both the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin groups. As a point of comparison, the Facebook group “Georgia Attacked Russia, Russia Responded” has 537 subscribers. Many of these young and educated Facebook subscribers supporting Georgia have turned the blogosphere against Russia, whipping up Russophobic sentiments not seen in such abundance since the Cold War.
Russian pullout from Georgia was “followed by criticism on Facebook”, says newsbiscuit.
Political analysts were still reeling last night following the disclosure by sources within the Kremlin that Russia had only “buckled under pressure” when reviewing group membership statistics on the social networking website Facebook.
Russian military chiefs panicked when confronted by the concerns of ordinary internet users from around the world including ‘An Open Letter To Moscow’ signed by nearly two dozen History of Art students at Oxford Brookes.
According to Russian Kommersant, the Russian analogue of Facebook is called Vkontakte (Incontact). It has 13 million users. The most popular social website in Russia is Odnoklassniki (Classmates), which has 18 million users. According to the Romir market research company, 90 percent of active internet users in Russia are familiar with Odnoklassniki. Moi Mir (My World) is known to 71 percent, and Vkontakte to 66 percent. Fourteen percent of Russian internet users know MySpace and 12 percent know Facebook.
In its poll of 1,300 Russian internet users over the age of 18, Romir found that 72 percent of respondents had Odnoklassniki accounts. Forty-four percent of respondents had Vkontakte accounts. Two percent of respondents had MySpace accounts and the same number had Facebook accounts.
As for the Russian social network odnoklassniki.ru, the latter as well as any other Russian website were also blocked for Georgian users. Just before the war was started odnoklassniki.ru was a big success in Georgia, every third Georgian was a registered user of the site. Today, only a few Georgians visit ondoklasniki.ru by means of special unblocker websites.
Odnoklassniki.ru was launched in March, 2006. According to the website officials, 20 million users were registered within 2 years. As experts say, USD 3-4 million was invested in the project. Till 2008 no financial details were revealed, but as Albert Popkov, the founder, claimed in the 1st Q of 2008, the three months banner ad revenue was – USD 3 million and contextual ad revenue – USD 300,000. By the end of 2008 odnokassniki.ru anticipates overall UDS 25-30 million.
According to the Herald Tribune, one of Odnoklassniki's most famous members is President-elect Dmitri Medvedev, who said he was one of 630 people registered under that name on the site. “Some of them look very much like the original, and that's good,” Medvedev joked during an internet forum last month.
Fuelling speculation that the websites are used for government intelligence, SpecLab, a company based in Ivanovo that produces security systems for computers, offices and personal use and counts the FSB as one of its main clients, claimed last month that German intelligence services had acquired Odnoklassniki and were using its data. Citing former FSB officers on its staff, SpecLab said in a statement that it had obtained “unverified data from the FSB” that German intelligence had bought the web site from its Russian creator “for a fabulous price”. SpecLab also said that former FSB officers considered Odnoklassniki a serious security threat because the FSB lacked a database of a similar size, and that members of the intelligence community, including officers from the FSB, had been banned from posting personal information there under threat of dismissal. A SpecLab spokeswoman, Irina Orlova, said she could not comment beyond the statement. The creator of Odnoklassniki, Albert Popkov, denied selling the website to German intelligence. “I should say, 'Das ist fantastisch!’,” Popkov joked by telephone.
Odnoklassniki’s members include at least several hundred intelligence officers, the Vzglyad Internet newspaper reported, without citing any sources. It said the members included 46 officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate, 197 officers of the General Staff, 85 officers of the FSB and the Federal Guard Service and a few hundred workers from the Defense Ministry’s map-making facilities. In addition, more than 3,000 military units and their precise locations are represented on the site, Vzglyad said.
Popkov said Odnoklassniki provided information, including private chats, to law enforcement agencies when given court orders to do so. “We believe we must fulfill our civil responsibility,” Popkov said.
According to DigitalJournal, Google helped Georgia get back online after the Russian cyber attack.
Even after the Russian President declared a ceasefire, Russian hackers continued their cyber siege over Georgia. Hundreds of Georgian websites were brought down by Russian hackers in just four days.
It was an indicator of how modern day wars are fought on the cyber front, with Russian hackers launching an all out cyber attack on Georgia.
Many government websites had to change their platform to Google’s blogger service. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs opened a temporary site in blogspot domain and many other government departments followed suit. Even Georgia’s official website Civil.ge was running on blogger for some time.
Georgia is also getting help from its neighbors Estonia and Poland in defending these cyber attacks. Estonia is sending a team of cyber defence advisers from its NATO Cyber Defence Centre to Georgia. Estonia’s internet infrastructure had come under attack from Russian hackers in April last year. Polish President, Lech Kaczynski offered his own website to Georgia to aid in the dissemination of information.
While the real war between Russia and Georgia may be over, the internet war lingers on, with virtual battalions continuing to fight on sites like YouTube, reports the San Francisco Chronicle (SFC).
The point of contention is a short clip of a Fox News program, in which Shepard Smith, the host, interviewed two South Ossetians: a 12 year-old-girl from Walnut Creek, Amanda Kokoev, and her aunt, Laura Tedeeva-Korewiski, who happened to be in the region when the war broke out. The interview went fine until she blamed Georgia for the war. Smith, in a rather abrupt manner, interrupted and asked for a commercial break – only to have the aunt call on the Georgian Government to resign when they returned on air. “That's exactly what Russians want,” whispered Smith, as he cut them off again – this time for good.
With nearly 900,000 views and 14,000 comments on YouTube, the video has become a potent symbol of Russia’s suspicions toward the West and its media.
But the buck did not stop with Fox News. As the video started accumulating thousands of viewings, some Russian bloggers began to observe another conspiracy – this time perpetrated by Google-owned YouTube. Because of the way YouTube gathers statistics about views for their video, the updates are delayed; thus, even if a million people suddenly watch a video, it would still take a few hours for those numbers to show up.
International social networks also seem to be popular in Russia. When MySpace launched a localized version in Russia, tonnes of people were very sceptical about its future with some of the Russian experts predicting that MySpace only has chances for growth of the Russian-language audience if the company spends at least USD2-3 million a year on marketing and promotion. The explanation for scepticism (my own one included) was simple: Russia already has plenty of social networks of its own with some of them gaining truly mainstream popularity.
Online social networking is huge and growing strongly, but what happens when all those virtual friends hit the road? Increasingly, they will be able to keep in touch via mobile versions of their favourite social networks, running on their cellular phones. ABI Research forecasts that in 2013, more than 140 million subscribers will share “anytime, anywhere” experiences this way, and they will generate subscription revenues in excess of USD 410 million.
Yet, as MediaPost reported, apparently tweeting, friending and linking have not infiltrated popular culture as much as one might think.
A new study from Synovate reveals that well over half (58%) of those surveyed do not know what social networking is. Even more surprising, more than a third of those who do engage are losing interest in it.
By Kate Tabatadze
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