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Facebook Is Gaining Friends Among Russians

Local social networks Vkontakte.ru and Odnoklassniki.ru remain more popular in Russia than Facebook, although they are lagging the U.S. site and the microblogging service Twitter in audience growth, Vedomosti reported Monday.

Facebook showed growth of 345 percent in the first 10 months of the year, bringing the number of Russian users to 6.5 million.

Twitter grew in Russia by 257 percent to 2.5 million over the same period, the report said, citing data from Internet marketing research company Comscore.

Vkontakte.ru’s audience grew 80 percent to 31 million, while Odnoklassniki.ru had gains of 96 percent to 20 million, the report said. The overall number of users in the Russian segment of the Internet increased 17 percent over the period to 45 million.

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