Gazprom-Media to Acquire RuTube, the Russian Answer to YouTube

Files under: News, Tech, Web 2.0
Posted by: Quintura @ 09:52 [23. 01. 08]

, the largest independent online video community in Russia with over 4.5 unique monthly visitors is in talks to be acquired by media holding in a deal that could value RuTube at some $20 million.

, which has 300 thousand daily users and more than 40 million video views per month, could generate monthly revenues of $400 thousand. RuTube was launched in November 2006 by a team inspired by Google’s acquisition of YouTube. The service was developed in the provincial Russian city of Oriol and financed by its private founders.

RuTube was one of the first to online video community market in Russia. It also early released its API to allow partner sites hosting videos on RuTube.ru and displaying them on their own sites. To attract early users, RuTube started broadcasting some regional TV channels online as well as show football matches and special launch events live. The company began deploying its own backbone network in Moscow and other regional cities last fall. RuTube plans to develop video blogging and affiliate relationships with online TV content producers.

RuTube faces major competition from , a video community of the leading Russian free email service and portal with over 27 million monthly users. , which hosts more than 2 million videos and has a monthly audience of 5 million users, also started signing up regular TV channels to broadcast their entertainment content in real time as well as display recent shows.

is one of the largest media holdings in Russia and Europe. Among other properties, it owns popular Russian TV channels NTV and TNT that may start exclusively broadcasting TV shows on RuTube. The press speculation about the deal first broke last summer.

The other online video sharing sites operating in Russia include , , and .

See below Alexa traffic graph for RuTube.ru

Tags: