Facebook is a very popular social network here in the USA. Almost every teenager's got an account there to stay connected with friends.
Well, Russia also has a popular social networking site - it's called ODNOKLASSNIKI. Word for word Russian to English translation of this word would be: CLASSMATES. This website is mainly focused on bringing together those who studied together in high-schools, colleges, universities, army units. It started operating in March 2006 as a free site. But in 2008 site's management decided to charge a registration fee - to protect the website from so-called "scammers." There are rumors going around that management itself launched computer bots that were sending spam messages to many users in order to have a reason for a paid registration. This is when odnoklassniki's downfall started...
Right now we have a stronger competitor with almost the same and sometimes even better features operate in the runet. It's called - VKONTAKTE. I guess it's the same as Facebook and Myspace in the United States.
These two Russian sites have a '.RU' ending if you want to check them out. An inconvenient thing about odnoklassniki is that it's not translated into English language, even though 'vkontakte' has an English version.
Regardless of this fact - many Americans are registering with this Russian site to make friends with (mainly) Russian women - it's like a substitution for a dating sites - and it's MUCH cheaper - registration is only $3 or something like that. You are probably wondering - how do they communicate??? - Well, they are using an online Russian English free translation tools like Google or a cheap Russian English translation service.
In this post you will find a screenshot of how a profile looks like on the website.
