[ by Melanie Gretchen ]

Mark Zuckerberg entered cold, but welcoming, waters to meet Russia’s prime minister and former president, Dmitri Medvedev, earlier this week in Moscow.  During Mr. Zuckerberg's visit, the social network founder:

• talked about Facebook’s role in politics (though only jokingly in reference to its importance in the American presidential campaign, according to Mr. Medvedev’s press office)
• discussed copyright rules and high-tech business
• got a lay of the land as far as Facebook's future

Russia: Facebook's Next Conquest?

• One of Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, is Russian by birth – raising Facebook's profile if the network breaks into this market
• Russia has traditionally heavily regulated their old media, if not censored it: medium for silly pictures vs. political tool – as in last winter's street protests
• 2 of Facebook’s largest investors are Russian: Alisher Usmanov, a steel tycoon, and Yuri Milner, an expert on monetizing social network traffic in emerging markets: They cashed out in the initial public offering of Facebook stock earlier this year but still own billions of dollars’ worth of shares.
• Russian is the largest Internet market in Europe and Russians have spent more freely relative to their income than Americans on virtual products, like special powers for online games, making their country a useful market for testing revenue streams other than advertising.
• Facebook made a deal with one of Russia’s mobile phone operators, Beeline, to provide a free application to subscribers, which could open more doors to Mr. Zuckerberg

For now, Mr. Zuckerberg has an ally in Mr. Medvedev, a technology lover – who has a Facebook T-shirt of his own.

For further details, go to [NY Times, 10/2/12].