Whilst China’s Twitter clones have flourished, as it approaches its first anniversary, Mail.ru’s Futubra is to be closed. According to a message on the website:

“Every day since launch, we have improved and developed Futubru.Unfortunately, this was not enough for sustainable growth of the project. So, we decided to close the project.

“For us, it was a great experiment, and the knowledge gained in the course of it is extremely valuable. Our team has switched to new projects, which you will hear about in the future.”

Figures for Futubra’s user based are not available. East-West: “Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin had publicly conceded this past July that Futubra’s audience was not meeting expectations.”

What is known is that Grishin and Mail.ru’s largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov are hoping to add to their 39.9 percent stake in leading Russian social network Vkonakte (VK).

“If there is a reasonable market opportunity, we plan to increase our share in Vkontakte. Concrete negotiations are being held on a continuing basis … and we’ll [soon] reach our goals,” Usmanov said last week (via East-West).

“We are interested in acquiring any [additional] stake in Vkontakte. I believe in this company, which will be the phenomenon of the Russian internet.”

But, despite some recent examples, search engines are not supposed to be amongst the list.

Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) has issued a “clarification” to say Web search, image search, news search, video search and other content cached by search engines like Google, Yandex and Bing should not be included in the recently-launched Zapret web blacklist.

This is despite recent inclusion of Google image search and YouTube, which is put down to a “mistake” (via Roem.ru).

Such a distinction by the Russian government is an important one at a time when Google is facing growing international challenges to its long-held operating model. An Australian court ruled that Google search had been a publisher of material deemed defamatory, while a proposed German law would require Google pay a license to publish excerpts of third-parties’ news articles.

Some campaigners out there, like former Formula One boss Max Mosley, want Google to pro-actively strip out excerpts from “illegal” websites, alleviating complainants’ need to go to dozens of individual end sites to which Google points. But the Russian government’s position seems sensible since it blocks access to illegal material at source, not at the signpost.

The blocked IP address has nobbled Chrome browser fonts and plugins and is an especially wide ruling affecting the whole service for what is likely only a handful of alleged breaches. But could Google soon find the commercial sector, as well as the state, freezing it out of Russia… ?

The big Mail.ru portal, which has used Google to serve some of its search queries since 2009, will let that contract expire without renewal in February 2013, according to Russian newspaper Izvestia.

Right now, Mail.ru serves its own search results at home in Russia and uses Google to answer a remaining 40 percent of queries on its sites in other countries.

Citing unnamed Mail.ru sources, Izvestia says Mail.ru is now changing its mind having embarked on further globalisation using contextual advertising technology under its own steam. It is possible that Mail.ru is simply negotiating with Google.

Mail.ru has not yet responded to paidContent’s request for comment.

A Mail.ru spokesperson tells paidContent: “This is press speculation, nothing more.”

The launch of the iTunes Store, which had been scheduled for today, has now been “delayed indefinitely”, according to local news reports.

Two reasons: Apple does not yet have all necessary music licenses, according to Vedomosti, and “retailers do not have gift cards at their disposal so far,” according to RIA Novosti.

While Apple remains on the sidelines, a rival music service has managed to launch. Browser maker Opera Software has debuted Muz in Russia and the surrounding CIS countries.

Priced at 150 rubles ($4.78) per month for a subscription, Muz offers unlimited downloads. The service works in the Opera mini browser and including on iOS. Opera could get 1.5 million active users by the end of 2013, an analyst tells Vedomosti. The outfit is hoping for bundling carriage with mobile operators.

Russia will need such services. Digital music sales revenue there has actually been falling in recent years, blamed by the music industry on social network VK, which has built-in file sharing.

“If Russia’s burgeoning legitimate business can effectively protect itself against such infringement, the country could become a top 10 music market,” International Federation of the Phonographic Industry CEO Frances Moore wrote in her organisation’s annual report in March.

CTC Media Inc launched Videomore in December 2010 with chat and sharing functionality. Until now, the service has contained only catch-up shows from its founder’s own free-to-air TV networks CTC, Domashniy and Peretz.

But now CTC Media Inc says it has agreed to jointly operate Videomore with RTL-owned National Media Group (NMG), allowing the addition of the both catch-up and archive shows from its channels Ren TV and Channel 5.

The formation gives Videomore a greater shot at becoming a more definitive TV portal. Both linear TV and broadband internet audiences are growing attractively in Russia. Videomore claimed an average nine million monthly uniques for the first nine months of 2012.

However, NMG’s Channel One, Russia’s leading broadcast channel, is a notable absentee from the additions — whilst NMG owns a majority of Ren TV and Channel 5, it has only a minority stake in Channel One.

CTC Media’s strategy chief Viacheslav Sinadski explained the partnership rationale in his company’s announcement:

“These two years have given us invaluable experience and a better understanding of the modern viewer’s demands. We have come to the conclusion that our future success depends on three factors:

1. “the availability of high-quality new content
2. “the ability to advertise on television
3. “as well as the overall scale.

“The first two criteria have always been at our disposal, but we can significantly expand the scale of our business only by attracting new strategic partners including media holdings, TV channels and copyright holders.”

Ren TV’s own web video player was already slick-looking.

While Hulu includes shows from several U.S. broadcasters, Project Kangaroo, a UK broadcaster effort to form a single JV portal through which to commercialise their shows, was struck off by regulators a few years back on advertising antitrust grounds.

Mail.ru Group made more than half of its money this fall (54 percent) from user payments (up from 49 percent a year ago), it reported in Q3 earnings.

Those sales are coming from virtual gifts in Mail.ru’s Odnoklassniki social network, its own My World social service, the love.mail.ru dating site, from social games Mail.ru syndicates to third parties and from freemium massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs) like Warface and recently-launched Dragon’s Nest.

Asked by analysts whether he would now start to wring more money from each user, COO Verdi Israelian told analysts the priority is first to get people to pay at all: ”When you have enough people paying consistently, then you can start growing ARPU – at this stage, that’s not the focus just yet. Pay penetration is to grow significantly more.”

Operators that publish content for free tend to fund themselves with advertising. Mail.ru’s growing strength in user payments gives it shelter, should Russia’s advertising market slow down.

Mail.ru Group display ad sales have grown just seven percent over the last year. The company blamed two things – a deliberate reduction in inventory on its own Odnoklassniki social network, and competition from TV.

“(Advertisers’) budgets have been reallocated to TV because the prices have gotten much much cheaper in TV,” CEO Dmitry Grishin told analysts.

Mail.ru paid MMO game revenue boomed by 72 percent while non-game paid content revenue grew 31 percent. Contextual ad revenue grew 48 percent, with the company admitting it lags rivals in the space.

Grishin said Mail.ru will focus on shooting games but is considering adding card and sport games in future, explaining that not many of these are available in Russia.

Now a Russian equivalent site is hoping to grow its own influence, by taking American funding to go global.

Startup Afisha, which already operates a Russian-language web database of tech startups and investors in the country, is due to launch an English-language site, RusBase, in November.

For the new launch, it has just taken $3 million from New York-based early-stage digital media investor and incubator Black Ocean, which says it wants the site to showcase Russian tech startups to an audience of investors.

“The competition for such a database is, of course, CrunchBase as well as Angellist,” according to a GoalEurope article endorsed by Startup Afisha.

Black Ocean and Startup Afisha, led by CEO Marusya Podlesnova have not spelled out why the money is needed. After all, the whole idea is for the sites to be low-maintenance. According to the announcement:

“Initially, the data about startups and investors is collected by Startup Afisha, but, once the database gains a critical mass, it is expected that the organizations themselves will maintain their own record.

“The business model of the project is to provide business analysis and consulting. The first partners of StartupAfisha are Runa Capital, Fast Lane Ventures, RVC, Skolkovo, Moscow Seed Fund and Digital October.

“Western venture funds and investment banks will be target customers which will be offered a subscription to the database at 500 Euro per month.”

Russia is a fast-growing internet market with the largest online population in the wider European area. Although the industry has been treated to the sight of Russian investment in firms like Facebook and Twitter through DST, Startup Afisha is also betting that western investors will regard the site as a qualified source of information about potential investments in Russia itself.

Last week, Russian web portal Mail.ru unveiled its own branded web browser based on Google’s chrome.

Today, Yandex, Russia’s leading search site, is announcing two products in one day that, whilst based on Google software, will nevertheless prove problematic for Mountain View.

It is introducing its own web browser based on Chrome‘s Chromium framework and is launching an alternative Android app store that will let mobile users get their apps from Yandex, not Google.

The web browser goes further than Chrome by integrating Kaspersky malware detection and Opera’s page compaction technology.

The Android app store, Yandex.Store, is being hailed by the Russian outfit as “yet another building block in Yandex’s mobile ecosystem”:

“The company can now offer an alternative package of mobile solutions to any Original Equipment Manufacturer around the world who would like to build their own Android-based smartphone or tablet. Yandex’s mobile ecosystem now has all key components to provide OEMs with an opportunity to customize their devices: 3D user interface Yandex.Shell, a bunch of out-of-the-box mobile apps, including Yandex.Search, Yandex.Mail, Yandex.Maps-based services, and, finally, Yandex.Store with a wide range of applications from Android developer community.”

First of those  OEMs will be MegaFon, the Russian mobile telco, which will be using Yandex.Store to power Android apps on its handsets.

The tactic is interesting because Yandex doesn’t have its own Android-based full mobile operating system, as some other services do, but is inserting itself in to the mobile value chain as an Android interlocutor.

Google’s desktop and mobile software is beginning to support large businesses overseas. Each time it does so, it leaves a smaller emerging-markets opportunity for Google itself to gobble up. By launching their own web browsers, Mail.ru and Yandex will get to lock users in to their own sets of services. In mobile, Yandex says it will take a 30 percent cut of transactions processed through Yandex.Store.

The investment advisory shop GP Bullhound’s recent 2012 Russia market report said ivi.ru was raising $30 million from Tiger Global and ru-net, in February. That this round has become larger, and joined by Baring Vostok in the lead, suggests investor confidence in ivi.ru’s prospects.

And why not? Russia is Europe’s largest internet audience, with 53 million users (comScore Media Metrix, 2012) – 37 percent on broadband, but up to 91 percent in Moscow. Only 26 percent of users have so far paid for online video (J’son & Partners Consulting).

“We will use this investment to broaden our content offering to our audience including new premier movies, series, TV shows and latest cartoons,” ivi.ru founder and CEO Oleg Tumanov says (via release).

GP Bullhound:

“Recent studies suggest that 13 million Russian internet users are willing to pay for content online, but do not always understand whether content is legal or not.”

“Content rights owners view Russia as a lost market due to piracy and are likely to provide content at lower cost to content distributors who offer at least some monetisation.”

Baring Vostok senior partner Elena Ivashentseva (via release):

“Russian viewers are already used to watching video online, although until recently it has been mainly unlicensed movies and shows. Decreasing levels of piracy should help the growth of legal sites such as ivi.ru.”

Since ivi.ru, unlike Chinese counterparts Youku and Tudou, is not public, we have little site of its operating costs. As well as content licenses from the likes of Hollywood movie studios, Chinese video operators are also spending heavily on intelligent delivery to overcome poor consumer broadband infrastructure. Russian services are likely to need to spend here, too.

Business paper Vedomosti reports local music industry sources as saying Apple is currently negotiating for licenses, with launch likely in Q4 2012 or Q1 2013, and tracks priced below $0.99.

The apparent opening comes as Apple is also reportedly gearing up to launch iTunes Store in South Africa, too.

This appears part of a broader emerging markets strategy. Nearly 12 years after it first launched, iTunes Store finally went live in Brazil and 15 other Latin American countries, often plagued by difficulties in credit card processing, in December 2011.

That expansion has been credited as one of the key reasons global digital music sales have lifted in recent quarters.

The Russian market is crying out for an effective legal digital music service. Physical sales there are in precipitous decline, but even digital sales fell by 40 percent last year, to 2009 levels.

The music industry’s IFPI says: “It is currently being held back by a culture of copyright infringement that is epitomised by the music service run by the leading social networking site vKontakte.” The network includes built-in file-sharing.

Smartphones comprised 21 percent of mobile shipments in Russia in 2011 – up from just five percent in 2005, according to IDC.

Apple’s share of Russian smartphone shipments barely grew between 2011 and 2012, from eight percent to nine percent, IDC says.