Social Networking, And Complications Of Public Relations On Social Network

The understanding of "social network" and possibilities of PR on social networks

1.1 Public relations on social media and concept of "social network"

The arrival of the very first social networking web-sites in the 1990’s had the consequence of enabling people to interact with one another remotely through the Internet. These web-sites transformed from a niche activity at the margins of the world wide web into becoming one of the most important features of modern society. Bill Gates said that The Internet is a group of computers connected together, using standard protocols to exchange information. It's a long way from being the highway, but it's the closest approximation we have, and will evolve into the highway. (Bill Gates 1995.p183)

The authors of these studies concluded that "social networks have a great potential, they provide to a new generation of public relations practitioners tools of a stunning interactivity."About ten years ago researchers have acknowledged extraordinary Internet impact on public relations. However, according to statistics, most public relations practitioners use the Internet only as a supplementary rather than primary communications channel.Although experience shows that PR practitioners are increasingly paying attention on social networks including blogs, some even trying to create a scientific basis for PR on social networks. The media environment has changed, the traditional PR-technology no longer bring the desired results. For advertisers, social networks provide a unique opportunity to contact consumers directly . Every day, millions of users are talking about companies, their products and services, sharing their opinions and impressions. As a result of separately taken participant, community can spoil (or vice versa) the reputation of the company with a multimillion-dollar turnover. By Outlining the main features of social networks and showing generally the basic mechanism of communication within the social network, we can begin to analyze the possibilities of PR-activity, which gives the social network. These capabilities will directly follow from the features

VK is one of the largest internet resources in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

vkontakte.ru (vk.com) is –

• Online resource number 1 in Russia (Alexa Internet) and number 1 in Ukraine (Alexa Internet), the most visited social network in Russia (TNS Gallup).

• 500-600 million pages opening on a daily basis (LiveInternet).

• The largest photo sharing website in C.I.S (The Commonwealth of Independent States) more than 2.3 million photos uploaded to the website every day.

• The largest video hosting in CIS: more than 400 thousand new videos every day.

• The largest audio hosting in CIS: more than 300 thousand new recordings on a daily basis.

• The most popular form of communication in CIS: more than 20 million messages sent daily.

• Daily visits starts from 70 million (LiveInternet).

• About 80% of the visitors live in Russia.

• 41% of visitors - from Moscow, 26% - from St. Petersburg (LiveInternet).

• 18% of visitors under 19 years, 18% between 19 and 25 years, 11% between 25 and 35 years old.

The main interest for public relations on ‘Vkontakte' are ‘groups' - a community of people united by common interests. The number of members of the group can