Social Networks in Russia

In last several years the difference between Russian internet (Ru-net) and Internet became minimal. There are all general kinds of Web 2.0 services: Mash-ups, AJAX Applications, web-services, "youtube-clones" and, of course, Social Networks. There are more then 10 well-known social networks with 100.000 users and more. And they double their network every month! Most of the users are students, graduated student and IT persons. Now, you can encounter with girl in cafe, that provides Wi-Fi services, which is sitting in one of this network.

Most global services has announced about its IPO. And about the half has been bought by Leaders of Ru-net. e.g. yandex bought moikrug few days ago.

here is a list of most popular:
vkontakte
moikrug
fakultet
etc.

Also, Social networks is the one of popular topic in russian blogs for several weeks.

Interesting Web 2.0 Application

I have already written about different kinds of web 2.0 application.

Today, i found an other on: web 2.0 ... database. It has very nice an user-friendly interface. Also it provides a powerful interface to data (e.g. View). Import/Export to/from off-line formats is the Ad hoc useful feature.

It has about Access + Excel base functionality and provide a rich possibility to deploy and share database.

You are going to use web 2.0 database application or nor, anyway just i advice to take a look to it.

Regional Parliament election in Saint-Petersburg

It took place this Sunday. I was very disappointed by results of this elections:
No liberal party had been elected to the Parliament :
party "Yabloko" had been removed from the electional company 10 day before the election date.
The second liberal party hadn't been elected: only 5% instead required 7%. So now, only the following parties will work in Parliament of Saint-Petersburg:
Edynaya Rossia (United Russia) - "Putin's patry"
Spravedlivaya Rossia (Just Russia) - a union of the "left" parties.
KPRF (Communist Part Of Russia) - No comments.
LDPR (Russian Liberal-Democratical Party) - Most liberal party in the current parlament.

So, the result of this elections:
There is no strong liberal opposition in Russia, but it's very important for the Business to have it, especially for the small one and IT.

WEB 2.0 Innovation Map

This is a map of "homes" of Web 2.0 innovation applications.
It was not a surprise for me that there is no any participant from Russia in this list. The nearest is from Ukraine - and this is a surprise. It looks that SW industry outside Russia is more fresh then inside. But for me, this is a benefit, because i am going to start up my first project in Russia, at least for the first time.

The second "not surprise" - position in US: there is no empty space (in default resolution of google map) on it.

But it's very strange that there are only few in the Australia, China and India.

SW Development Industry in Russia and in other countries

I was very wondered that Chinese internet has more then 200 mln of your users, and about 400 mln of Chinese citizen know Enlish at lease on the basic level. For comparison: In Russia, there is about 20 mln of internet users, and english-speaking citizen about 25 mln (by my opinion). I always thought that China is a very big village, where peasants live. I am very worried about India and China, because i am not sure that a few of Russian brilliant-mind IT employers can engage in competition with cheap and educated employers from this countries.

And about the salaries in Russia and China:
University-graduated employer earn 1200$ and 350$ per month in this countries!
But 1200$ in Russia - it's not a very big salary (the common level is about 450$, but most part of salary is "tax free", so it should be about 800-900$).
In opposite, in China 350$ - it's a very high salary, that provides a good level of live.

So: IMHO software outsourcing is not a very perspective in Russia environment, and Russian companies has only one change to survive: build products and sold them to the end-customers all over the world, like their colleagues from West Europe, USA and Australia.


Also, i am sure that everyone must think about success not only today, but tomorrow too.

Application outsourcing orders

I have found a very interesting fact: Only American customers orders Cutting-Edge Web 2.0 Application. The customers from the different countries (for example - UK), order the application with Windows GUI interface for user, Application Server on the server side and data transporting via .NET Remoting interface. It's very strange that there are such big difference between the tendentious in the difference countries that have about the same technical level.

But i am sure that most of the project will have a rich user experience web-based UI.

The Story of success

I found an interesting article about Sergey Brin (co-founder of google inc.)
Link

I think it's a very good article about Russian-born entrepreneur and his first steps.

Also, I was very impressed that Sergey's father wished to be an astronomer, because i am studying on this specialization right now.

Everyday voice meeting

I met with Skype about 1.5 year ago on my first project in OBS Group. It was a big project and i had an casual meetings with the customer about the progress and developers' questions.

Today, i am using skype for the meetings with my developer and i find it very helpful to realize all communications about the project via PC. I am sure the it works fine via Pocket PC and cell phone, connected via bluetooth. It's a great pleasure to be location-independent.

Also, i am sure that everyday meeting and discussing the status of the project with all team is very important for the project success. I am going to continue it on my projects.

All modern project management approaches contains everyday meetings in the team (Customer is the part of team too).
I absolutly agree with this practice.

Ruby in large project.

Today I had the first experience with Ruby in the large project with 10 developers.
I was very impressed by code, because it's very messy. Yes, Ruby is very laconic. Yes, It's easier to write on ruby then Java or C#. BUT: It's very difficult to support large projects, because the is no strict layer separation (Why this code "<%=User.find(session[:id]).name%>" can't been written in view?), something like ASP.NET's code-behind practice, Java's and .NET's Data Layer.

Of course, it possible to write the understable code using it, but it's not easy to do in outsourcing environment, especially if the project is written by few geo-distributed teams.

I am sure the the most important part of ruby project is Agile development. So the first milestone of every Ruby project is "Apply Agile development practice in the team".

The second ruby "benefit" example:
Currently, the company where I am working, provides the testing services for Polish outsourcing company on the ERP system development.
This project is been writing using Ruby on rails framework. Only Ruby experts work on it. It has been developed very fast. But it contains a lot of bugs.

I have already started a development of small eCommerce site using Ruby and i am sure that it's a good choice. But i am not sure about the large projects.

Feed provider

I know 2 ways to provide feed to the users:
- via RSS/Atom
- via provider of media distribution (for example feedburner.com).
I saw that very popular blogs providers their feeds via it.

What are the benefits of this services?
1. Statistic count about the readers, guests and comments. That would helps with blogs search engines and attract the attention to your or site.
2. An other way to add advertisement and earn ad hoc moneys.

So today, i registered my blogs into feedburner

Russian Startups on the internal market

I found that some web startups are trying to sell theirs self immediately after the start. That means, "the entrepreneur" created the nice site, had found the idea and then he likes to sell all the business to someone else. I can't understand that. I know that performing of the idea is the most difficult part, but it's wrong to sell business without any implementation.

I am sure that idea cost much less then realization.

Example:
Initial investments: 2000$ (very much)
Investments to be added: 20000$
ROI: 300%

I can't imagine how it possible to calculate the ROI (a very big ROI) at the start of business without the real results.


I think this is not a good practice.

GooglePage Rank & SEO

Google page rank - "is a link analysis algorithm which assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references"

Wikipedia

Search Engine Optimization - "as a subset of search engine marketing seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. The quality of visitor traffic can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword leads to a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase or requesting further information. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors"

Wikipedia

What are the benefits of the high page rank?
1. Google & others search engines will respect you: that mean in the search result, the result from your site will be higher than from the others with lower page rank and it's very important to receive the new customers for your service.
2. Ad (Google Ad) on your site will be more expensive

Today i have found that corp site of my company (OBS Group) has google page rank "1". I think that it's a progress for it and for me, because it was my first SEO experience. Now, I am going to continue training on it. I am sure that expert knowledges in SEO area are very important for everyone success start-up.

What's a Start-up Plan

What's a Start-up Plan?

According
"A simple start-up plan includes a summary, mission statement, keys to success, market analysis, and break-even analysis. This kind of plan is good for deciding whether or not to proceed with a plan, to tell if there is a business worth pursuing, but it is not enough to run a business with." - from the site Bplans.com
This site provided me an information about business plan content and i think it's helpful for me.

Aslo, about business plan examples:
At first, i tried to find Business Plans (BP) on Russian language (I know, i am very lazy to read on English and my native language is Russian). I received a very funny results: my compositions in school was more helpful and contained more information then all results i had found.

So now, i am going to prepare my start-up plan for both of my possible businesses (my previous post) and then i'll be able to make my decision. I'll write them on russian because i have to discuss them with my partner and he is russian-speaking, and sometime after I'll translate them and publish here. So it takes few days before the publication.

How To Start

At first, I have to decide what business I'd like to start at first. I have one - "OBS Group" and now i am going to start an other one. I am sure that the most perspective business is e-Commerce and Web 2.0 Application designed for the end-user. What are the difference between investments to them:
- e-Commerce requires for much investments at the start of business.
- Web Application requires much fewer investments at the start, but then it will require much and much more.

Also i decided that i must select the idea not by first time investments, but by the ROI
(ROI - return of investments, some venture capitalists have ROI more then 1000%), That's i the most important criteria. At first, Entrepreneur have to think about the win and the feedback not about the possible losses.

As known, in 10 start ups:
2-3 - return money and generate some positive cash flow
3-4 - only return money
3-4 - loss money of investor.

No one shouldn't forget about that, every one must think about possibility of the win.

Common Information about this Blog

As my first post I'd like to write about the future content of this Blog.
Here I'll post information about my experience in web 2.0 startup development. Also I'll try to write about interesting technologies (like AJAX, Flex, Ruby on Rails) that give opportunities for web development that may help to safe time and increase ROI during it.

"Entrepreneur" - on the wikipeadia there is a good article about this comprehension
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneur