Delovoy Peterburg's Social Media App Off To Strong Start

In Russia, Facebook has yet to make a breakthrough - and might never, on account of social media site vkontakte.ru. With over 110 million members, the site serves the same role as Facebook for Russians. So when the Russian business daily Delovoy Peterburg wanted to make a splash in social media, the natural choice was to create an application for vkontakte.ru.

Editors had been watching the rise of vkontakte.ru, and in summer 2010 already plans were made to create an app for the successful social media site, with serious work beginning in September so the service could be launched in November.

For Delovoy Peterburg, the new app was a way to stay ahead of the social media curve - the DP app is one of only two existing news apps that have been launched so far, with the first vkontakte.ru's own news app. "Being so soon out was really important," says Delovoy Peterburg editor-in-chief Oleg Tretyakov.

But the DP app is about more than beating competitors to the punch and getting a leg up in Russia's biggest social media site. It is also about reaching a completely different kind of audience: The printed and online editions have very targeted readerships, but vkontakte.ru has a much more general audience - and a much younger one. "Which meant that the kind of news we're featuring had to be created specifically for the app," says Tretyakov. "People who download the app are interested in reading about how to make money off of social media and on the web, in promoting their businesses that are sometimes just getting off the ground, in talking about what's going on in the web in terms of business."

The app shows a range of news, including featured stories, as well as embedded video, links, lists of most popular contributors, and more. Perhaps the most important aspect of the app, however, is the interactivity. Each news item generates a range of comments - sometimes one, sometimes 20 or more. Most importantly, those who respond eloquently and bring up interesting issues are often asked to write stories for the app - the readers become the writers.

"It's a great way to connect with our public, and we've also found people to write for us," says Tretyakov. Delovoy Peterburg typically pays EUR 100 per month to contributing writers for 10 articles for the app. And articles generated for the app sometimes make their way to the printed paper - for example, a story about the popular vkontakte.ru game app Prison ended up in print as well.

So far, the app has been downloaded by 16,000 users. At the 100,000 mark it will have reached critical mass for monetization, says Tretyakov, through banner ads at the top and on the right. "We're requesting that our journalists have a minimum of 1,000 friends on vkontakte.ru," he says. "Which should give us easily an audience of 100,000 for every post."