Russia’s second largest social network Odnoklassniki (OK.ru) has started carrying content from BBC Russian.
It includes TV news bulletins, videos on demand and other material, with the BBC Russian News Feed page live-streaming BBC Russian TV news bulletins at 19.45 Moscow Time (16.45 GMT), Monday to Friday, as they are broadcast live from London.
The BBC’s presence on Odnoklassniki was pioneered by BBC Uzbek and the group now attracts around 100,000 Uzbek-speaking followers who share stories, pictures and videos from bbcuzbek.com.
Odnoklassniki is one of the largest social networks within Mail,ru Group and currently has around 73 million users. Mail.ru Group also includes Novosti Mail.ru, a leading Russian news portal which syndicates stories from the BBC Russian website bbcrussian.com. The OK website and app reach almost half of all internet users in Russia and feature major Russian and international media.
Artyom Liss, BBC World Service Europe region editor, commented: “Our presence on a prominent Russian resource such as Odnoklassniki will help to showcase BBC Russian’s TV and video content via the social-networking platform. We welcome these new audiences – from across Russia as well as Russian-speakers in the wider region and around the world – to the BBC’s independent news and information which they now can sample within their social network.”
Both BBC Russian and BBC Uzbek are part of the BBC World Service.