Odnoklassniki, the Russian Facebook

"At the age of 16, Albert Popkov left his high school to make money. He was interested in working with computers, but sold batteries on market stalls to earn his first cash. Now if Popkov's school friends looked for him on the hit web site Odnoklassniki.ru, a Russian version of Facebook, they would find a photo of him clutching a gold trophy and a link to an article in Kommersant's financial magazine, Kommersant Dengi, and learn that his fate took an interesting turn. Popkov is the founder of Odnoklassniki.ru, a site that reunites classmates from school and university and also people who met at work places and holiday destinations. Its membership has doubled to 6 million in the last three months, and anyone who's anyone, including pop star Filipp Kirkorov, the camp singer Boris Moiseyev, and the girls from t.A.T.u, is on it" (Marina Kamenev, The Moscow Times)

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