Russia’s media conglomerate, Gazprom Media, is now the proud owner of video-sharing site RuTube. This deal has been in the works since at least June, 2007 and is believed to be in the $15 million range.
RuTube is the YouTube of Russia. Or, rather, it wants to be. According to comScore, YouTube is actually the YouTube of Russia. In September, RuTube attracted 2 million unique visitors in Russia, versus 2.9 million Russian uniques for YouTube. RuTibe is seeing some nice growth, though. It has doubled its audience since June. (All caveats about comScore estimates apply here. Their numbers for Russia should be looked at as indicative of the trend rather than as absolutes).
TechCrunch reader Andrei Taraschuk, the founder of UMapper, translated the following Russian press story about the deal into English for us:
Gazprom-Media completed the acquisition of video service RuTube. The news came today from TNT – Teleset (TNT-Telenetwork) is the largest television network in Russia. According to sources inside TNT, RuTube is going to be headed by TNT’s Michael Ilitchev.
Ilitchev told Lenta.ru that RuTube will continue its focus on three main areas: video service, online video hosting, media platform. Down the road RuTube might expand its services to brands like RuTube movie, RuTube sport, RuTube music, RuTube news, RuTube humor.
Ilitched pointed out that RuTube founders will continue their involvement in RuTube from the technical side. The rest of RuTube team will continue as subcontractors to support, develop and host the project.
The exact acquisition amount is yet unknown.
It took Gazprom-Media over a year to purchase RuTube. Gazprom-Media announced their acquisition plans back in June 2007, the legal (purchase) process was started in March of 2008. Russian newspaper Kommersant (Коммерсант) wrote that Gazprom-media valued RuTube at 15million USD and had plans to become primary shareholder. It was expected that after the acquisition, RuTube will start hosting videos from TNT and other media properties of Gazprom-Media.
RuTube is the biggest video hosting service in RUNET (Russian internet). According to Gallup, in September 2008, RuTube had over 4mln visitors. Over 5,8 had watched videos.
See all
Post
let the ‘in Sovien Russa’ comments begin
p.s. congrats to RuTube team…
Wow it took them a year and a half to complete the acquisition… thats brutal. congrats to them though.
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
So $1.5 Billion is $15 Million in Russia?
Compared to YouTube’s success, the acquisition is a bargain…
Michel
http://www.flidge.com
I doubt that YouTube would have gotten the same amount today. Still, RuTube’s price is a bargain.
Why is it a bargain? $15m is no pocket change…
Of course, Gazprom Media is a holding company that’s part of Gazprom, the biggest company in Russia and notoriously scandalous. It’ll be interesting to see if any controls are applied to RuTube.
It’s working like Youtube:
Videos are taken down upon request from copyright holders (just need to write the notice in Russian for a swift answer). I know this from experience…
Also, there is a real control filtering videos that are too racy or violent (if uploaded they are sooner or later categorized as +16 years old)
I suppose such a control is possible because the video inventory is smaller than youtube’s.
As a recurrent user of Rutube I can but tell that they’re providing with a service of great quality!
Hope that Gazprom - Europe’s money sucker - will back Rutube with more cash for its development.
How can you say its a bargain if you don’t even know their income stream. Look at the economy. Nobody is speculating.
Typo in second paragraph. RuTibe.
I was just wondering about Gazprom, as well as http://www.gazprom-media.com/ and RuTube.com
Any of these sites have a blog in Russian or English ….. cannot find any. Amazing, here we have Gazprom investing in traditional and new media…. but the social media - blogs in particular - are not being used to communicate.
Can anybody help please with a link to a Gazprom blog or one of its subsidiaries? Thanks
There’s a press center http://www.gazprom.com/eng/art.....2858.shtml
So, whats next? When Gazprom will aquire Google ?:))
When Google will acquire GazProm? - that’s right question)