RB.ru

Main article about the company: Rusbase

History

2016

Rusbase buys RB.ru

After the announcement of news of closing of RB.ru Maria Podlesnova (CEO of Rusbase) and Natalya Moiseenkova (CEO of RB.ru) began to conduct negotiations on acquisition of an asset with the Rusbase company. An important desire of both sides was to preserve the results of the 10-year work of the team RB.ru.

The transaction was closed on May 24, 2016. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

Under the terms of the contract, Rusbase becomes the owner of the entire RB.ru publication, including the site itself and its user base, the rb.ru domain name and a number of trademarks.

The monthly audience of RB.ru was 1-1.5 million unique users per month. After the closure of the project, the site continues to be visited by an average of 0.6 million unique users per month (which is slightly less than the monthly audience Rusbase.com at that time).

The publication RB.ru positioned itself as "Russian Business Insider" and wrote about both business and the lifestyle of company owners and employees.

Natalya Moiseenkova, ex-publisher of RB.ru, now - SEO Villacarte.com:

I understood, as a supervisor, that RB.ru should be closed, being a non-core asset for Viadeo. But even then, by all means, I decided to do everything in my power to preserve the life of a project with almost 10 years of history. I remember all the zero and early days of the resource, all our victories and mistakes, I definitely had a "burden of parental responsibility." About 10 companies talked to me about the acquisition of this asset, but it was when the message came to Facebook from Masha that I felt - this is the same Union. I think its energy and creativity, the strength of the entire Rusbase team will create in the market the strongest and most influential project, in which there will be features RB.ru.

It was announced that all previous RB.ru materials and the entire user network will remain in the current domain, while all content and services will Rusbase.com be moved to a new address. A single media about business and technology will develop under the Rusbase brand, which increases its audience by 2 times.

Such a media asset will be managed by Maria Podlesnova (CEO) and Anastasia Atkina (COO), who previously announced her transition to Rusbase from Computerra. Elina Kirillova remains the editor-in-chief of the Rusbase publication in the rb.ru domain.

Maria Podlesnova, CEO, Rusbase:

I don't know what words they say at such moments. I have been torn from emotions and joy for a month. And believe me, it was very difficult for me to be silent and not say anything to anyone:) I sincerely thank Natasha for choosing us and agreeing to close the deal with us. Many thanks to our Black Ocean investors, who supported me and gave "good" for 24 hours. I am proud that we independently earned the money that closed the deal, rather than attracting additional funding. I feel like a great media manager and I know that we are building the coolest edition about business and technology in our country. We will not fail!

Viadeo decides to close the site

At the beginning of 2016, the parent company RB.ru the French Viadeo (which had previously bought a stake in Sanoma Independent Media) made a number of strategic decisions that affected the Russian branch. Viadeo's main business is a professional social network. The Russian office was an exception, since it also had a media resource. The entire market for professional social networks at this time is not going through the easiest times (the fall in capitalization of LinkedIn, the same - at Viadeo). In early 2016, the board of directors fired CEO and the founder of the company, Dana Serfati, and then, as part of the new course - not for expansion, but for a sharp reduction - it was decided to focus on the company's operations only in France and close all local offices - in China, Africa... and in Russia. The decision on Russia was made last. In this regard, from April 2016, the update of the RB.ru was stopped.

The publisher of the RB.RU portal at the time of closure is Natalya Moiseenkova.

2012: Weak audience performance

2011

Joint project with Viadeo

In December 2011, it became known that Viadeo was creating a joint project with the Finnish Sanoma Independent Media (co-owner of Business News Media, which publishes the Vedomosti newspaper). We are talking about a Russian-language network of professional contacts.

The project will bring together the professional community that has formed around the SIM-owned rb.ru business portal and Viadeo resources. The Cyrillic shell for the network will be available in early 2012.

Viadeo expects the active growth of the Russian market - according to the chairman of the board of directors of SIM Elena Myasnikova, "in the next few years Russia will become the largest media market in Europe." Viadeo's goal at the end of 2012 is 2 million participants in Russia, writes The Wall Street Journal^[1].

Reorganization. Social network transformation plan

In January 2011, it became known that the Independent Media Sanoma Magazines publishing house was preparing to reorganize the RB.RU^[2] business website^[2]. Management has already fired most of the editorial staff. As expected, in the future the portal will turn into a social network, and the content of RB.RU will be filled not by professional journalists, but by amateur users. An Independent Media partner in the creation of a social network will be a foreign company. This was reported to GZT.RU by several employees of the company.

According to them, only three people will remain from writing journalists in the company. The rest of the staff will leave the editorial office. They have already signed documents on the termination of the labor contract by agreement of the parties with the payment of three salaries.

2007: Launch of the publication

The RB.ru project was launched in 2007. Then its name completely sounded like "RB.ru Business Network."

Notes