Forbes Launches Online Version in Russia, Forgets Russian Users

Forbes is obviously a well-known international brand for all the business-related news, analytics, interviews, and just about everything a business person may need to stay up to date with the market. Unfortunately this very professionals-oriented brand has just demonstrated a huge lack of professionalism in one particular local market - in this case in Russia.

The thing is that in Russia Forbes magazine has been published since 2004 and accumulated significant experience in offline publishing over the time - and popularity among the target audience which includes more than 800 thousand people for every issue. But in terms of the web presence, it simply did not demonstrate any existence until today when Forbes has finally launched its official web presence for Russia.

The content of the newly launched business website will partly consist of the materials available in the print magazine (they will constitute 5-10% of the entire online content) and the materials that will be prepared specifically for the online version of the publication.

Unfortunately for Forbes, it has not managed to grab the forbes.ru domain that is now owned by a local travel agency and will be a subject of court proceedings soon. As a result, the online publication is launched on a pretty long domain ForbesRussia.ru which will probably confuse some of the potential users who will simply type the brand they hope to reach in their browser address bar.

Of course the newly launched Forbes online publication will compete with the existing market leaders in the online business publishing but for some reason from the very beginning they start with pretty high advertising rates - that are actually higher than those offered by their main competitors. And this obviously raises questions given that advertiser loyalty should probably be deserved first.

But advertising price is obviously the issue to be decided on by Forbes management only and it will only be impressive if they do manage to sell all their inventory at the price that is higher than that of their more established competitors - as they expect the Forbes brand is strong enough to persuade advertisers pay higher (though I can’t help but mention that in Russia the brands of their major local competitors are probably even stronger than the international Forbes).

But the most questionable aspect of the website that is launched today by Forbes is their obvious lack of interest in anything local and specific to the Russian market, in particular in the field of social media and social networking.

The good part here is that the creators of online Forbes version do pay attention to social media tools and include various bookmarking links to help promote Forbes content online virally. But the selection of the bookmarks is very limited and makes Russian reporters raise eyebrows in surprise: we have LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter here. The three of them are probably the best selection for an international business publication focused on the audience from the US or Europe but unfortunately neither of the three has gained significant popularity in Russia.

At that I do not mean to suggest Forbes to offer bookmarking tools that will cater to the users of the local social networking leaders like Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte because their target audience hardly spends any time on the local social networks either but the problem is they hardly use LinkedIn and most certainly have no idea Facebook exists at all or what Twitter is intended for. In fact, Twitter has not even reached any mainstream popularity here in Russia and still has a very geeky audience so I’d only expect to see some tech news published by Forbes actually shared using the bookmarking tools offered here - but I can’t help but feel this is hardly the audience Forbes advertisers pay a lot to be able to reach.

And while of course the buttons for local social networks could not work any better here because they have a younger audience in general (and I would not expect local business people to actually know why they would share an article with their former classmates on a social network like Odnoklassniki), I am definitely at a loss why the team over at the Russian Forbes has decided to ignore the almighty LiveJournal.

I know that the words “LiveJournal” and “almighty” may sound strange in the same sentence to anyone living outside of the countries of the former Soviet Union, but here LiveJournal is really a huge power and everyone who wants to be heard definitely blogs on LiveJournal - including many business people as well. And various online business publications do use LiveJournal bookmarking buttons on their articles - and get plenty of reactions from the blogosphere as a result. Unfortunately Twitter is not in a state that could make it possible at all here in Russia.

In addition to the bookmarking buttons that accompany every article, Forbes goes one extra step and features a whole Facebook widget on the homepage of the website - along with some content added by the editorial team and the fans count. If you happen to want to become a fan of Forbes Russia online, here is the link to their fan page - it has almost 500 fans at the time of writing which is hardly impressive for an established international publishing brand launching its much-advertised and much-discussed online presence locally.

The reason for such low numbers? The problem is that Forbes target audience hardly knows anything of Facebook existence at all. I know that in the US and in many other countries of the world Facebook is the social network of the day and the audience is mature enough to include just about anyone but in Russia only the geeky and young people who also happen to have many international friends use Facebook - and I can’t imagine a Russian decision maker using Facebook at all and actually fanning some pages over there as well.

At that I have to mention that Forbes plans of finally launching an online presence for Russia and the problems with the domain have been heavily discussed here so it is no wonder that this peculiar approach to social media promotion raises questions from local internet industry reporters today.

Of course I perfectly understand that the team must be trying to demonstrate that Forbes is an established international brand and they want to differentiate Forbes as much as possible from the local competition - and avoiding local tools is probably yet another way to demonstrate that Forbes belongs to the international market, not the local Russian market only. But ignoring your local audience and the places where it actually exists and socializes (complicating them additionally with the icons of the services they have never heard of) hardly sounds like a good idea when you launch a website that is monetized by demonstrating ads to this very audience. Not very much business-like, ugh?

Via (in Russian)