The Iron Curtain is long gone, but as far as social networking sites like Facebook are concerned, penetrating Russia’s borders takes more than just a good broadband connection.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg – he of the bright ideas, many billions of dollars and more than a few page views – has declared that Russia is one of Facebook’s next big blings: it’s an enormous market, a key player in the much talked-about BRIC economies, and – crucially – ripe for development.

Facebook lags in Brazil and China too, but the Russian market is seen as an important stepping stone to boosting the site’s 500 million (and counting) users worldwide.

Currently Facebook has over two million regular users in Russia, out of a population of more than 142 million people.

Competition is stiff due to language issues, a certain amount of national pride, and existing penetration of home-grown social networking sites. In terms of regular users, VKontakte is the most popular, with 13 million people visiting the site at least once a week. One of the country’s most popular dating networks, Odnoklassniki.ru, has persuaded some nine million Russians to use the site regularly. Then there’s Moi Mir, which is similar to MySpace and is understood to muster some five million regular users.

In Russia, in an era of comparative political freedom, greater economic opportunities, and when there is a strong chance of people being able to improve their living standards, the internet is seen as a valuable tool. And social networking sites are regarded as an important platform for leveraging vital information.

“Around 78% оf internet users in Russia use social media or blogs,” says Liudmila Novichenkova, Marketing Communications Director for Synovate in Russia.

“Most of them are concentrated in the two biggest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg, where internet connections are well developed and prices for web access are lower. But year by year, regional cities move closer to Moscow in terms of both connectivity and price, with the number of web and social media users growing day by day.”

Novichenkova says that, in general, the portrait of the social media user is very close to the portrait of the web user.

“By analysing the available research data, it is possible to say that there is a greater concentration of extroverts among social media users than the general Russian public,” she says.

“They seek communications and good company rather than informational isolation. They are very active and want to be connected all the time. Trying to get all the advantages life can give and they value their time, are using both the internet and social media to be well informed.”

Novichenkova added that Russian internet users tend to be more frequent visitors to cinemas, theatres, galleries and other entertainment outside the home.

“They view the internet as the most valuable source of information, including word-of-mouth through social media where their friends or others with similiar interests can share information with each other.”

Facebook has already made some progress in Russia. It can count a certain international cachet among its assets, something local sites lack. Early on in its drive into Russia, Facebook cut deals with wireless carriers Beeline and Mobile TeleSystems, so users could hook up with the mobile version of Facebook. More importantly, Facebook encouraged user-participation when it came to translating trickier terms like “poke”, used to gain another user’s attention, by voting for suggested translations. And when Facebook held a developers’ conference in a hip art complex in Moscow late last year, it was besieged by both cashed-up internet investors and software gurus hoping to transform their apps into untold riches.

While Facebook may be seen as the social network of choice among urban (and urbane) Russians, it faces some potential competition when it comes to pirated material. As internet users in much of the rest of the world have experienced, free access to media and entertainment will draw legions of users. And many Russian social networking sites are awash with such material so they are likely to attract more users than Facebook, which has to play by international rules.

However, Russian networks planning to list on public stock exchanges are aware of both the scrutiny and pressure for copyright holders, and are scaling back on the availability of media that is privately owned. More than one commentator has said that rampant copyright violations on Russian social networks are likely to become a thing of the past by the end of 2011.

At the end of the day, there is no question that Facebook’s foothold in Russia is expanding, but to achieve nationwide domination – and this is really a story about The Numbers – it needs to expand outside the country’s elite.

Russian social media usage figures were taken from Synovate’s TrendTracker 2011 study. Contact Liudmila Novichenkova, Marketing Communications Director at Synovate, at liudmila.novichenkova@synovate.com in Russia for more information.