Social networking is a hot sector and with that comes various Internet companies wanting to do it justice and roll out their own platform. More often than not, they tend to cone or take several cues from top dogs such as Facebook and Twitter.
A Russian Internet company by the name of Mail.ru, launched their Twitter alternative named ‘Futubra’. They hope to rival the success of Weibo, a social network based out of China. So far, the launch is going pretty well for them.
Via Reuters:
“The launch of Futubra, a Russian-language site which allows users to send short messages, videos and photos to its other users, attracted 17,000 users within the first 24 hours of its launch, Russian state news agency Ria Novosti reported.”
“We are excited by the opportunity facing Futubra as microblogging is a fast growing segment which fits well into the Mail.Ru Group vision of the growth in internet communications,” said Mail.RuGroup Chief Executive Dmitry Grishin in a statement.”
In November of 2010, Mail.ru raised a whopping $1 Billion for their IPO which happens to be the second largest since the financial crisis. The company is basically a web portal with their own search engine, email service, and more, and is very reminiscent of Yahoo.
As far as catching up to Twitter, that would take a long time considering Twitter’s massive growth and over 100 Million active users, however, they can carve out their own little niche if everything is right.
“Mail.ru owns two Russian social networks, My [email protected] and Odnoklassniki.ru, and owns a significant share of the social network VKontakte – the country’s largest social media platform and domestic answer to Facebook.”
Would you ever use an alternative to Twitter or do you even use Twitter to begin with?
