Mark Zukerberg in Russia to talk business and promote Facebook to local audience
Issue:
October 2012, Vol. 7, No.9
Tags:
Zukerberg
Mark Zukerberg, the young multibillionaire founder and co-owner of Facebook, the NASDAQ-listed, world’s largest social network that has revolutionized human communications, stopped over in Moscow in October as a part of a global programming tour designed, amongst others, to popularize the company’s services that are currently playing “a second fiddle to the local peers” as well as attract outstanding local technological talents to the California-based Internet giant.
However, Zuckerberg, reportedly worth about $12bln, claimed his mission in Russia was only to popularize Facebook to greater Russian audience, connect with local Internet-based technological startups with a view to boosting the social network’s presence in the country. He has flatly denied any headhunting plans among his tour’s key objectives.
Apart from the traditional Moscow tour routes for visiting foreign dignitaries and celebrities that usually include the Red Square and other city landmarks, Zukerberg’s schedule included a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, known for his affinity for Internet gadgets. Other notable stops included the Moscow State University and the headquarters of local peer Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed, Moscow-headquartered Russian leading Internet search engine, amongst others.
Meeting with prime minister in his suburban Gorky residence
The young entrepreneur had to temporarily put away his famous signature dress code — a Facebook emblazoned T-shirt, jean trousers and pair of snickers — for a smart business-style suit with a tie to match, to meet the prime minister in his suburban residence in the exclusive Gorky village, just outside the Russian capital, a special treat traditionally reserved for a select category of visiting foreign VIPs.
The meeting focused on several issues, ranging from technological innovations, investments in IT-projects and protection of intellectual properties rights in the country as well as the ways to boost Facebook’s cooperation with the country’s robust innovation sector.
“Apart from the traditional Moscow tour routes for visiting foreign dignitaries that usually include the Red Square and other city landmarks, Zukerberg’s schedule included a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, known for his affinity for Internet gadgets.”
The meeting presented Medvedev with the opportunity to showcase his IT-literacy as a tech-savvy, social networking politician that counts himself among Russia’s estimated 10mln Facebook users, and also to boast of his country’s abundance of IT talents that have proved their proficiency in all major global IT competitions. “As you probably know, Russia does not have only abundance of oil and gas, gold and diamonds, etc., but also a flourishing IT-industry,” Medvedev boasted to the visiting social network tsar.
Speaking on the issue of copyright protection in Russia, the prime minister noted that it was important to find a balance between traditional copyright protection on one hand, and the ways that will legally allow for free use of some objects, unique to the Internet, under lawful copyright protection requirements. After their meeting, Zuckerberg presented Medvedev with a Facebook T-shirt featuring the URL address of the prime minister’s Facebook account page. He also posted a photo with Medvedev on his Facebook account page, with a comment: “Good conversation with Prime Minister Medvedev.”
“It was a good discussion, during which Medvedev and Zuckerberg talked about the development of IT business in Russia, Skolkovo as a place for start-ups of mutual interest, as well as the development and role of social networks in the world, Russian prime minister’s spokesperson, Natalia Timakova, said. “They discussed Facebook’s possible presence in Russia, not only as a social network, but also as a company that uses the most advanced products of Russian firms in its operations.”
Lingering charges of headhunting objectives
However, the groundless fear that the “Internet wunderkind” was in the country on a massive headhunting mission was so palpable that even the Internet-savvy Russia’s young communications and mass media minister, Nikolai Nikiforov, reportedly tweeted the prime minister to dissuade the Facebook owner from “poaching” young Russian computer scientists to the United States. Instead, the minister requested the prime minister to press for Facebook to bring part of its businesses to Russia to tap the nation’s mathematical and engineering skills. It seems this goal was finally achieved, according to the minister’s tweets. “Facebook’s R&D center may appear in Russia in the future, as the issue was raised at the prime minister’s meeting with Zuckerberg.”
For historical, economic and social reasons, the issue of brain drain has always been acute in Russia partly because unlike most countries higher education is still mostly free here, while labor until very recently was poorly rewarded, thus forcing most of the professionals in their fields to look for greener pasture abroad. This means Russian universities graduates, trained free-of-charge by the state for its internal use, are lured away to overseas by richer corporations and 
governments at little or no cost in form of pre-investments into their capital-intensive education.
governments at little or no cost in form of pre-investments into their capital-intensive education. Some Russian IT industry leaders, such as Anatoly Karachinsky, the founder and president of the IBS Group, a major Russian IT corporation, have openly speculated that Zuckerberg’s goal was to lure local top IT professionals to Facebook. “Recently, several top Russian IT programmers were openly invited for interviews with Zuckerberg, whilst those that attended later said they were offered immediate different job options at Facebook headquarters and instant immigration to the United States,” Karachinsky noted.
The IBS founder saw the tactic as a continuation of a time-tested and efficient practice frequently used by U.S.-based IT conglomerates to poach foreign talents. As an example, Karachinsky cited Microsoft Corporation that used a similar strategy in 1998, when Bill Gates came to the country after the onset of that year’s crippling financial crisis to lure “disillusioned local IT talents” to his company.
The fact that Zuckerberg’s visit coincided with the October 1 Moscow phase of the Facebook World Hack, an international contest for software developers that tests coding skills, also added “fuel to the swirling fire” of rumors. The coveted prize, an all-paid-for trip to the Facebook headquarters in the Silicon Valley, provided the Russian rumormongers the unmistakable evidence they needed to further buttress their headhunting charges against Zuckerberg.
The fact that Zuckerberg at the Facebook World Hack Digital October urged the local software developers to create new applications and drive for other inventions and innovations at home, and that Facebook would help such novelties gain access to its almost one billion users across the globe, failed to convince the “doubting Thomases” among Russian politicians and IT entrepreneurs, who have called such tactics an attempt to mask the real mission’s objective. “We need a variety of social applications and products that are produced by Russian companies,” Zuckerberg said.
At the end of the day, it seems that at least Minister Nikiforov was convinced as he expressed surprise at discussion about someone’s enticing Russians abroad. “There are no restrictions on travel in Russia. The question is where the best conditions exist for professionals to realize their potential.”
Brain drain, according to the minister, is always caused by a mixture of factors such as instability, insecurity, lack of social justice and equality of citizens, regardless of their social statuses. “To achieve such goal, it is necessary to create such conditions in Russia that will encourage citizens to live and work in their own country, in Russian companies, such as successful IT-companies as Yandex and Mail.ru and several others.
Meeting with peers and lecture at MSU
At the Yandex headquarters, the Facebook founder held talks with the company’s management. The two Internet-based giants are on good terms, accentuated by years of mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation. For instance, Yandex carries out Facebook account searches, while the Silicon behemoth has long integrated some of the Russian Internet search engine company’s services into some of its social network’s applications.
“For different reasons, the issue of brain drain has always been acute in Russia partly because unlike most countries higher education is still mostly free here, while labor until very recently was poorly rewarded, thus forcing most of the professionals to look for greener pasture abroad.”
At the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian equivalent of Harvard, and one of the country’s most prestigious universities, the Facebook founder urged the students not to set up IT firms simply for fun, but to have a workable idea that will become the foundation for growing such companies into global conglomerates. “It is important to first think about an idea and build the firm around it. Also, it is necessary to have a formidable base, and this might take years,” he added. “Almost 200mln users joined Facebook in 2011, but it took almost five years for us to have the first 100mln users.”
As usually the case, not all Russians were happy with the Facebook owner’s meeting with top Russian politicians. One of these, Oleg Kozyrev, a local opposition blogger, even went the extra mile of creating a special Facebook group, labeled, "Zuckerberg, don't befriend dictators." The key message, according to the blogger, is to dissuade the social network king from meeting with officials responsible for jailing bloggers and legalization of Internet censorship. These laws target social networking sites, including Facebook, that have been key to the organization of massive street protests that have swept across Russia since a September 2011 castling between then-president and prime minister put the latter on a course to the Kremlin for a de-facto third presidential term.
Notably, Zuckerberg was not invited to the Kremlin to meet the nation’s most powerful citizen, President Vladimir Putin. This is probably because the president, unlike his prime minister, is not very tech savvy. He even claims that he does not use the Internet or socializes in Internet networks such as Vkontakte or Facebook or their other analogs.
A modesty lesson for Russian moneybags
Another signature trait, the air of simplicity despite the mammoth of wealth and global public fame, was again on display in Moscow, as he dashed into a local McDonald’s, like any other “guys his age” on the street. Such an act – eating in McDonald’s, is seen as an abomination for billionaire Russian business 
owners, CEOs and politicians and their spoilt kids, wives, husbands whose heads and worlds have been turned upside by wealth got through illicit, if not outrightly illegal means.
owners, CEOs and politicians and their spoilt kids, wives, husbands whose heads and worlds have been turned upside by wealth got through illicit, if not outrightly illegal means. But there he was, in McDonald’s, feeling at ease and at home, a billionaire who has created billions of dollars in wealth via brains and entrepreneurship, employs thousands of people and can afford the best dishes on the menus at the Moscow’s Ritz Carlton Hotel or other high-end hospitality facilities in the Russian capital. But instead, he popped into a local eatery to join the Moscow crowd, the very people that have made him who is today.
This is a lesson for our oligarchs and other moneybags who often treat their relatively “poorer” compatriots with open disdain, if they cannot drive Maybachs or other exclusively expensive “four-wheel toys” for those on the Forbes wealth list. Or, to paraphrase one notorious local oligarch, Russians don’t have a billion of U.S. dollars in banks or elsewhere can go and …
Such despicable behavior of some Russian oligarchs against the background of the Facebook founder’s illustrative example demonstrates an absolute lack of culture among the representatives of Russian capitalism. Indeed, culture is one of qualities, some of the socially important components of human behavior in a society, that even with lots of money cannot buy. Either there is culture or there is not, and this is true of a concrete individual, a whole nation or country.
Mark Zuckerberg, welcome to Moscow!
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