print versionThis year the viral term "blog" has become actively incorporated in the minds of people with surplus cash. And this is the result: co-founder of Ingosstrakh insurance company, Corbina Telecom and the Bookberry bookshop network Alexander Mamut, along with the creator of the Afisha.ru portal Andrew Paulson, plan to launch Russia's "largest blog portal" . The investment into the project could comprise tens of millions of dollars, while it will generate income from contextual advertising. A company called Sup-Fabrik has been created to realise the project, and former Rambler President Anton Nossik has been invited to become one of the directors.
The Vedomosti newspaper reports on rumours of Sup-Fabrik's pending deals: negotiations on the purchase of the Russian part of LiveJournal.com and its Russian equivalent , talks with AOL, Google, News Corp and others. Sup representatives for now refute any talk of deals, but they do not deny that they are actively recruiting programmers and well-known players from the .ru zone into the project. A 500 sqm office has been rented in central Moscow, in the Smolensky Passage, where rates are $700-800 per 1 sqm a year. We only have to wait for the next virus-terminology, such as "social networks", to penetrate the minds of the people with money.
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