A pre-New Year meeting of members of RAEC, RAEC/Club and everyone who is interested in the activities of the Association took place on December 21 at the site of the ANO Digital Economy. During the meeting, leading players and industry experts summed up the year, analyzed key trends and made forecasts for the development of the Internet industry in 2024.
The meeting was moderated by RAEC Director Sergey Grebennikov, who highlighted today’s popular industry trends: more import-substituted services, greater emphasis on small and medium-sized businesses, a greater need for offline activities, the consolidation of “digital loop” companies and the growing need for PR and GR.
Director of ANO Digital Economy Sergey Plugotarenko addressed the participants with a welcoming speech. He spoke about joint events, analytical studies, educational and social projects of RAEC and the Digital Economy in 2023.
Director of RAEC Sergey Grebennikov and Chief Analyst of the Association Maria Saikina presented updated forecasts for the dynamics of segments of the Runet economy and trends for 2024 in 4 areas: technology, economy, state and society.
Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev spoke about the record growth of the domain industry in 2023: following the results of 11 months, the number of domains registered in the .RU zone grew by 8.9% and reached 5.3 million, and the Cyrillic zone .РФ grew by a record 12.5% and exceeded 765,000 names.
“This was facilitated both by the return of a significant part of the Internet business to Russia, where there is a clear and predictable legal and business environment, and by the growing interest of the Russian-speaking audience in domestic content and services. Active import substitution is currently taking place in the domain industry; this also has a positive effect on the development of the industry. Many companies this year began to develop new projects, preferring to immediately register domains in the Russian national domain zones .RU and .РФ. According to our forecasts, the upward trend in the use of national domain zones will continue in 2024, and our task is to make the .RU and .РФ domains as easy to use for business and as safe as possible for users. The main negative trend, which is unlikely to end with the chimes, is the increase in the number of phishing attacks. The procedure for separating malicious domains in Russia is the fastest in the world (in November it took only 11.4 hours), but scammers are constantly coming up with something new, and we need to develop new countermeasures and try to be one step ahead of the attackers,” he added.
During the meeting, RAEC presented a calendar of events planned for 2024. RAEC Executive Director Ekaterina Demkina noted that in 2024 Runet celebrates its 30th anniversary, and in connection with this date a series of events and special projects are planned to coincide with the most important event in the Russian segment of the Internet. The first meeting of the organizing committee will be held in mid-January, which is open to anyone interested.
