Today marks the birthday of Runet. On this day, 28 years ago, the domain.ru was registered for Russia.
April 7 is a significant date for all users of the Russian-language Internet. On this day in 1994, the Russian .ru domain was included in the international database of national top-level domains. This meant that Russia had officially declared itself on the global network.
The ground for the further rapid development of network technologies in the country was prepared back in the days of the USSR. In 1987, the Demos cooperative was formed, whose employees later had the honor of becoming the “fathers” of the Russian Internet. The proclamation of the UNIX Users Association (Soviet Unix Users Group) in early 1990 and the rapid development of the domestic segment of the Fidonet network confirmed the readiness to enter the global computer community.
A few years later, administrative rules were developed in Russia, the domestic market of Internet providers expanded, and the construction of Internet highways was financed.
“From the moment of its birth, Runet lived a rich life, despite all the difficulties, including a large number of time zones and low bandwidth communication channels (mainly dial-up via landline telephone). Runet users have always balanced on the brink of technology and the romance of new discoveries. The Internet in Russia was rapidly developing and improving, changing dramatically,” said Alexey Tselykh, IT Director of the Institute of Computer Technologies and Information Security of the Southern Federal University . He noted that he has been an active user of the Russian-language segment of the Internet since 1996. By 2000, 25,000 “users” were subscribed to his mailing list Technews.ru.
Alexey Tselykh Alexey Tselykh
In mid-2000, the total Internet audience in Russia was about 7 million people; 15 years later – 86 million; now it has exceeded 120 million.
They were approved in 2008, and a couple of years later the first websites with the Cyrillic domain .рф went live. They became president.rfigovernment.rf.
Now, under the conditions of sanctions, the policy of import substitution opens up new opportunities for the Russian-language version of the World Wide Web and pushes for the development of its own virtual platforms.
“Michelangelo also said that perfection comes from attention to detail. Such large-scale projects as RuTube and Rossgram are full of details. It is impossible to implement them at a decent level “on the knee”. We need our own, high-quality and competitive products, adapted to Russian conditions. This requires time and exceptional commitment from the development team. For example, the first version of the State Services website opened back in 2009, but more than 10 years passed before it became the main portal of the country,” concluded Alexey Tselykh .
It is assumed that Rossgram, created by Russian developers, will be able to become a full-fledged replacement for Instagram (owned by the Meta company, which is recognized as an extremist organization, its activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation). Experts from the Southern Federal University believe that it is premature to make such forecasts.
According to the dean of the Faculty of Business “Captains” Marina Shustova, Rossgram may not be able to cope with the competition in the Russian market.
“So far we don’t see a unique selling proposition, and it’s not entirely clear why businesses should invest in a new resource. It would be naive to say that Rossgram will completely replace Instagram. In addition, in Russia there is already a copy of Facebook “VKontakte” and Telegram, which is increasingly popular all over the world. A significant part of the audience has acquired accounts in these social networks. Over time, these social networks will add more and more features to their functionality with images and short videos, which will completely compensate for the nostalgia for Instagram. And if the temporary ban on publishing new videos on Tik Tok is lifted, then, unfortunately, this will not leave Rossgram any chance to take off. I’m afraid that there is a great chance of repeating the fate of the social network Clubhouse. We, of course, will register and test the site, but most likely in the form of a business card in order to redirect the audience to our other social networks,” says Marina Shustova.
Senior lecturer at the basic department of automation technology in business at SFU, Alexander Ostafiychuk , noted that the Rossgram developers announced paid access to content, crowdfunding and a referral program. There was no such thing on Instagram.
“Does this mean that some posts will be unavailable until someone pays a certain amount? We will see this after the release. On Instagram, they planned to implement a similar thing just before the social network was banned in the Russian Federation – there it was expressed in the form of stories that could only be seen by subscribers who had paid for a subscription to the content,” noted Alexander Ostafiychuk .
According to the expert, among the undoubted advantages of switching to a new platform are stability, legality, the ability to conduct business and promote your page in the same way as before, or simply stay in touch with friends.
“The main disadvantage is that the new platform is unlikely to be popular abroad. And it’s not a fact that foreign users will even come to it. Or it will be a slow process (the audience at first will be limited to users in our country),” he noted.
It was planned that the launch of Rossgram would take place on March 28. However, difficulties arose with the operation of the application – the presentation was postponed.