Новое исследование Гэллапа привело к когнитивному диссонансу среди контентщиков: оказывается, многие рекламодатели интересуются портретом аудитории, а не чистотой ссылающихся страниц. СМИ срочно бросились собирать урожай в блогах и социальных сетях.

Aleksandr Mamut, owner of the Internet company Sup, said in a live interview with Echo of Moscow radio that his acquisition of the Russian-language segment of LiveJournal is a purely commercial move, not a political one. Mamut does not have a blog of his own, but says he would not mind publishing some of the LiveJournal bloggers. The interview was occasioned by Mamut's acquisition of a 100 percent stake in the publishing group Inostranka. It turns out that the book mogul Mamut is skeptical about the success of e-books. Yet he hinted at what he called an invisible link between his acquisition of LiveJournal and publishing houses and the bookstore chain Bookberry which he owns. "I have a strong emotional affection for book publishing," Mamut said.

In 2007 and 2008 the agency IMHO VI (Video International group of companies) will have exclusive rights to sell advertising space on the premium banner positions of Vzglyad.ru. Based on the results of a survey of the portal's readership conducted as part of the TNS Web Index project, the agency hopes to get its clients' ads across to the most affluent segment of Internet users. The survey suggests that the publication's monthly readership in Moscow exceeds one million visitors, of whom 39 percent are specialists, 23 percent managers, and 15 percent students. Notably, among online publications Vzglyad has the highest index in the group of managers, which is determined as a ratio between the percentage of managers among the publication's target readership and the percentage of managers in the population of Moscow.

Loic Le Meur, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the blog platform company SixApart in Europe, who came to Russia last week to promote TypePad, seemed unprepared for the fact that LiveJournal and Sup dominate the interest of Russian users. Le Meur believes that LiveJournal only makes money from paying users and users of advanced accounts where sponsors can place unobtrusive advertisements. Le Meur knew nothing about office construction projects along Moscow's Sadovoye Koltso, or Garden Ring Road. He explained this by saying that he is not directly involved with Russia, as SixApart will promote its products in the Russian market only via its partners. One of the services, LiveJournal.com, is now co-managed by the Internet company Sup. Meanwhile, TypePad has been handed over to PPE Group (specifically to Weblog Russia), which has the exclusive right to market the platform within the CIS.

Last week the Government of Moscow staged the first four electronic auctions to buy goods and services for the city's needs. Three of the auctions took place in the electronic trading system SETonline and the fourth on the platform of the company Intertech. SETonline general director Anton Emelyanov told Business that electronic auctions are much cheaper than the conventional ones, costing only 400 US dollars instead of 2,400. Meanwhile, lot prices can go down by as much as 15 to 30 percent. Yet at the last week's auctions prices came down by no more than 11 percent in the face of the small number of suppliers participating in the first round of auctions.

The company Internet-Audit, owner of the online music store Alltunes.com, has filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court against Rosbank and its affiliate United Card Services (UCS), which have stopped accepting payments from Visa and MasterCard holders for music purchased at the online store. According to Vedomosti, Visa and MasterCard accounted for 95 to 99 percent of all payments for music bought from Alltunes.com. In a comment to Webplanet, UCS general director Vladimir Komlev pointed out that under contract terms his company may disconnect a client from the system without explaining the reason. But in the case of Alltunes.com the company followed the instructions of the payment systems, which have found the online store to be in violation of copyright laws. A little more than a month ago, Visa and MasterCard ordered their partners to stop processing payments for music bought from Allofmp3.com.

According to the latest report by J'son&Partners entitled "Russian Wi-Fi market 2006-2008", by year's end the number of public hotspots in Russia will exceed 7,000 in what will be an 11-fold market increase. Analysts predict that by the end of 2010 the number of hotspots will reach 13,000. Most of the existing hotspots work as part of the Golden Telecom Wi-Fi project. The market is also growing in other areas of application of the technology. By year's end the number of corporate wireless networks will exceed 500. Analysts point out substantial growth in the Wi-Fi market in the regions, particularly in Privolzhye, Siberia, and Urals federal districts (over 50 new hotspots in 2006). Half of all hotpots work in Moscow. J&P analysts predict that the next step in the spread of the Wi-Fi technology will be the provision of additional paid services on public transport.