Social networks Now, Rosgram and Sadnogram. Do they have a future?

Now analogues of Instagram are being actively launched: the Now social network from a former Yandex employee, Rosgram and Sadnogram. Do they have a future?

Analogues are being launched, but, in my opinion, in order to become really significant sites, they will have to do a truly gigantic job. It’s definitely not going to be done quickly. Just “starting” is clearly not enough here. So, Rosgram collected about 10 thousand applications for registration, but broke down without starting. Instagram has been developing for many years, making multimillion-dollar investments – this is not a product “on the knee”, but a serious successful project, both at the technological and business levels. It was created by thousands of employees, from the most talented marketers to specialists in artificial intelligence and Big Data.

Instagram brings together an international audience; sports and show business stars, politicians, and public figures maintain their accounts there. So far, unfortunately, Rosgram, in addition to a consonant name and a similar interface (judging by the demo slides), does not offer even a small share of what is available on Instagram – both for users and bloggers and advertisers.

At the same time, there are really powerful social networks in Russia – with a long history, a significant user base, and developed business tools. It is there that a considerable number of bloggers and their audience are already migrating. Among them are Telegram, and VKontakte, and Zen. I believe that such social networks are the most promising at the moment.

This is a completely natural response of the market to changes in the usual “landscape” of the blogosphere and significant changes in the rules of the game that have arisen in connection with the ban or restriction of the work of certain social networks. Roughly speaking, the marketer who created Rosgram decided to hype and make his own project.

Yes, people use VPNs, but not everyone is comfortable with it. Some VPN services become unavailable and people are constantly looking for an alternative. Not everyone is ready to use this technology. So, according to Livedune research, since the start of the special operation, coverage on Instagram has almost halved; about half of the audience of bloggers stopped watching their stories. And, as we know, recently the share of users aged 55+ has been constantly growing on Instagram, and it is more difficult for this group to get used to new technologies and additional “inconveniences”, such as VPN.

I believe that there are no worthy analogues of Instagram yet, and in the medium term there will be no full-fledged replacement. Users have already felt what a convenient and high-quality platform means. And last but not least, influencer marketing professionals who used Instagram as one of their key business tools are now forced to look for opportunities on alternative platforms. But there is a long way to go here, and above all for the platforms themselves.

New sites appeared quickly, but they were also quickly forgotten, because, in fact, they never started work. Rosgram’s landing page collected a lot of sarcastic remarks from designers and marketers (which is worth a logo in which users recognized a stock photo). Yes, as a personal PR founder, it may have been nice, but that’s not what users, bloggers, and advertisers need at all.

Now we just “landed and look around”, but what will happen next and how the market will change, we will know only after a while. Let me remind you that the development of the social network in our country was greatly influenced by international agencies and brands (and their budgets), many of which are now gone. At the same time, it can be assumed that new players will come to replace them in the very near future. And here it is very important not to miss the right moment – to occupy your niche. Today we see a powerful growth of Telegram – bloggers and brands are massively moving to this platform.

Back in early 2022, it was believed that if a TG blogger has 100,000 subscribers, then this is a large channel, with appropriate contracts and responsibility to the audience. But already in February-March, this picture changed, and now there are TG channels with a million or more subscribers. Convenience for users and the interface of the application, constant updates contribute a lot to this: only recently have comments and reactions appeared there, thanks to which users have the opportunity to conveniently communicate and view content, and bloggers, respectively, to post it.