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The blocking of western platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) led to the transition of bloggers and audiences to domestic platforms. Will local platforms become as popular as Instagram and other popular social networks?

Instagram has been used as a marketing tool for small and medium businesses in recent years. Advertising tools and smart algorithms opened up a straight path to the hearts and minds of the target audience, and at the same time unlimited opportunities to earn money online. According to representatives of the business community, also operating online, blocking Russian media channels from monetizing their content hit them hard. The same applies to popular performers, bloggers, actors and models as well as opinion shapers.

Massive Digital Migration

Content makers of such platforms as Telegram, Vkontakte, Yandex Zen, Odnoklassniki consider domestic platforms as a plausible alternative to western platforms. Will they be able to beat the competition with Instagram and other social networks, whose volume of digital advertising in Russia amounted to 150 billion rubles?

According to experts and market players, a period of turbulence is inevitable. However, it is recommended not to lose optimism. Domestic platforms have an intuitive user interface, somehow familiar to Russians, and some missing functionalities are already being developed by IT specialists. And this will open up new ways to monetize one’s products as well.

VK reports a two-fold increase in views and downloads of new videos in VKontakte Clips. “We are noticing massive registrations of content authors from other platforms and an increase in activity from clippers who have been with us for a long time,” the message says.

Alexey Anosov, Vice-Rector for Digitalization of the Financial University, shares, “We are monitoring the transition of users to domestic social networks. Somewhere it is not as fast as we would like it to be, but it depends on the social networks themselves — they have already begun to adapt to the increased number of users, and today, it can be said that they are fully competitive. It is also worth understanding that the transition of this scale cannot be instantaneous. Instagram was blocked only on March 14, and since then only three days have passed, and still not the entire audience has moved into Russian counterparts.

By the way, when speaking of “Russian analogues”, one should not forget about such social networks as ЯRUS and TenChat. Of course, these two social networks were not previously known to as many users as Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, but, judging by statistics, at the beginning of last week they fell into the top 10 most downloaded social networks on the iOS platform in Russia, which suggests that users have a choice and it is quite wide”.

Virtual emigration is inevitable, it is a fact. Switching to other channels is not fatal, it is only an opportunity to expand our horizons.