08.02.2010
Newspaper "Business Class Arkhangelsk", Svetlana Korelskaya
Original article on the newspaper's website
As it turns out, roughly 1,200 people a day are looking for the answer to this question. The weekly audience of the Arhnet.Info portal — a web resource covering news about everything happening in the Arkhangelsk region — has exceeded 6,500. Step by step, it is merging into Russian-language online communities, including the wildly popular social networks of today.
The idea to build a database of all the region's websites came about in 2006, conceived by Arkhangelsk-based web publisher Viktor BELOUSOV. The goal: to find channels for promptly obtaining information from the districts, gather everything in one place, and systematize it so that valuable data from Arhnet would become easily accessible to users far beyond the region. The project started out as an amateur endeavor.
Viktor created the first directory. He gauged the response. Once he was convinced that his future partners — editors of news agencies and print media, and, most importantly, the users — had taken his initiative seriously, he set about drafting a business plan for an information-and-search portal.
Without undue aggression
"Building a unified information space in the Arkhangelsk region and helping people navigate the endless expanses of information" — this is the mission the current three-person Arhnet.Info team has taken upon itself. They started with a news feed and a directory of regional websites, then launched a classified ads service, built a search engine, placed weather forecasts and meteorological reports for cities around the world on the homepage, and added interactive maps of Arkhangelsk and district centers in thematic sections. A cultural events calendar and an expanded version of their new "Cities" service will appear here soon.
Unlike some predecessors, the Arhnet.Info team never bet on a wealthy investor from the start. The internet does not promise outsized profits, and costs are recouped slowly. Almost everything currently on the portal was built at their own expense.
"When promoting internet projects like this, the crudest mistake is spending money on external aggressive advertising," believes Viktor Belousov. "How much do you think has been spent on advertising for Arhnet.Info? A tidy sum — 0 rubles. And that's with the current growth dynamics! I'm confident that by summer we'll reach several thousand people a day, and within a year I expect at least 10,000 daily users."
Anyone who navigates the global web with ease will quickly spot some of the "know-how." If you visit Arhnet.Info and hover your cursor over the "Internet" bookmark, a panel appears listing the most popular communities — and there, where the lives of millions are bubbling around the clock, you'll find the Arhnet.Info logo with key project information.
Without going into specifics, I'll report that according to the company's blog on LiveJournal, Arhnet attracted its first thousand visitors in a single day on January 11, its community on VKontakte exceeds 14,000 people, and there are also microblogs on Twitter and a Wikipedia page — all of it, in places, "stitched together" with links to the portal.
As soon as interesting IT solutions emerge, they are reflected on Arhnet.Info. Content in a simple, convenient, and familiar format gradually unlocks the technological capabilities of the global network while, along the way, unobtrusively teaching people how to use them efficiently.
Simply progress!
"Initially, we set ourselves the task of giving every resident of the region, no matter where they were — in Kotlas, Velsk, Koryazhma, or any other settlement — the ability to find out what's happening right now anywhere in the world," Viktor recalls. "So a person wakes up, brews a cup of coffee, opens a laptop, pulls up their city's page, checks the news and classifieds, and then switches to the page of the village where their grandmother lives…"
Nearly three and a half years have passed. The long-standing vision is taking shape and growing into a company. Portal visitors use all 10 core services and 3 additional youth-oriented services on a daily basis.
The only paid service is the interactive directory of Arkhangelsk organizations, "Guide." Soon, alongside clubs, cafes, restaurants, and shopping centers, it will feature other regional enterprises — these will be illustrated corporate pages with addresses, price lists, and listings of goods and services. Some of these companies may currently be going through the same stage of evolution as Arhnet.Info itself.
"The development of Arhnet is happening before our eyes," Viktor shares his observations. "Not long ago, we gained partners in district centers — in particular, news agencies that supply the portal with fresh news. All of our technological processes are automated. I hope that sooner or later there will be time for analytics, because for three years running we've been preparing something like reports on the state and dynamics of regional internet resources."
The wider the circle of communication, the more new business ideas emerge in the Arhnet.Info organizational field. Professionalism is growing. Even now, this portal can be regarded as one of the most competitive next-generation web resources in the region. Although Viktor Belousov doesn't like the words "competitor" and "struggle"…
"We don't strive to outdo anyone and we're not fighting anyone — we simply do everything the way we think it should be done." That was his closing remark in our conversation.
