Odnoklassniki.ru (Odnoklassniki means classmates in Russian) is a social network which has been recently launched (march, 2006). It was made by the developers who took part in creating passado.com (European social network). The great amount of users joined the service since March. Even me living in a small town with really poor internet access managed to find some old friends.

You can not only search for the classmates but also get some information about them, send messages and probably meet them offline.

So Odnoklassniki.ru is a multi-functional service, let’s go into details. Which tools and functions are offered to us? First it’s profiles with photos. You can add your personal info, schools, companies and even military service to your profile (may be also added in a free form). In  photos” section you can post several pics, one of which will be the main.

There are several ways of searching your old friends. For example search by first and last name (last name is enough). It shows the list of profiles and bulletins with required data. (By the way there is a possibility to post a bulletin). There is also photo search. You choose the city and get the pics of all users from this city. I think this way is effective enough when you can’t remember last name. Besides you can view all users who studied or worked at the place you did. By the way every school and work place has its own guestbook and photos section, where photos of students/employees are posted.

As for social elements there is  add a friend” widget on the site. Of course it can’t do without IMS. There is no use to search for people if you can’t contact them. They are going to launch forums soon. There is also  Dating” section based on mamba. I don’t think it’s worth mentioning.

What suggestions can I make?

I couldn’t follow the index of schools, companies, military units and view their members, so I thought that there is no such possibility. Later one of the project developers, Albert, assured me that there is one. But the service is very uncertain and not obvious. I’m sure that if I wasn’t able to find it, others will also fail.  Speaking about all those institutions (schools, companies, military units) I must say that they lack complete profiles. It would be cool to add not only guest book, but also school photos, stories about teachers, address etc. Of course some of these things can be fulfilled with the help of the guest book. But this idea doesn’t necessarily occur to everyone. By the way here comes one more source of income: payments for additional info in companies profiles.
I failed to understand how to organize a meeting. Evidently the guestbook should be used. I don’t think it’s the best variant. It needs improvement. I also don’t like that you can come across different versions of the same school. Here a couple of mods will be helpful. I can imagine the number of everyday additions, but autoimmunization will serve the efforts.

About business model

You can download your personal horoscope ($1) from the site now and pay for it with the help of your mobile. Besides the  money transfering company is being advertised. The authors themselves write:

The project is completely free and is being promoted by developers only. We are ready to discuss any questions regarding investments

By all means the site is very promising. Its main idea (people search) and great domain name will surely provide its success. And I’ll be watching their growth.

(original article in russian)