NN.RU (nn.ru) — a Nizhny Novgorod city internet portal founded in 1999 by Ilya Osipov and Mikhail Iosilevich.[1][2] From a directory of Nizhny Novgorod web pages it grew into the most widely read urban online publication: in the Nizhny Novgorod media ratings for August 2026, NN.RU ranked fifth by news coverage. Today the portal operates as the online publication "NN.ru"; its founder is OOO "Internet Tekhnologii" (Internet Technologies LLC), the editor-in-chief is Pavel Tiunov, and the editorial office is located at 226B Maxim Gorky Street.[3]

Origins

The limited liability company "NN.RU" was registered on June 17, 1999; the website itself launched in September of the same year, initially running on third-party equipment with around two thousand visitors per month.[2] The first clients to purchase banner advertising were TSS and "Moskva-Tour — Nizhny Novgorod".[2]

The company moved through several addresses: a shared office on Genkina Street, a room on Studencheskaya Street opposite the telephone exchange, an apartment on Alekseevskaya with a banner spanning the full width of the balcony, and finally, from early 2002, 30 Piskunova Street, the address users came to associate with the portal.[2] It was during these years that the portal experienced its sharpest growth: from thirty thousand visitors in January 2002 to half a million in May 2007.[2]

A detailed account by the founders of the early years appears below, in a 2008 interview. For the online environment of that era, see Nizhny Novgorod Internet, Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, and an archival study based on counter.nn.ru rating data.

Online publication

On 28 August 2000, NN.RU became the first Nizhny Novgorod website to be registered as a mass media outlet.[2] The current registration certificate of the online publication «NN.ru» is ЭЛ № ФС 77 — 84717, dated 6 February 2023, issued by Roskomnadzor; the publication carries an «18+» label.[3]

Editorial staff and publication

By the end of 2000, the portal described itself as follows: «Nizhny Novgorod Online» is published daily except Sundays, distributed free of charge, with a circulation of approximately 120,000 page loads per month.[4] The «Communication» section, the forum, the «Flea Market», «Job Exchange», and «Commercial Listings» sections ran «live» and without censorship.[4] Ilya Osipov was listed as editor-in-chief, with the concept and design credited to Mikhail Iosilevich; programming was carried out by Aleksey Pavlov, Artyom Abramyan, Andrey Shaposhnikov, Ilya Osipov, and Dmitry Rozhdestvenskiy.[4]

In spring 2001, the directory on the main page listed 1,995 Nizhny Novgorod resources, compared with 503 in autumn 1999.[5]

Customizable design

The portal's emblem — sails made of broken lines above the inscription "nn.ru" — appeared in the summer of 1999 and was tested in twelve color schemes.[5]

In the autumn of 2000, the portal announced that "it is now possible to customize not only the style but also the structure of www.nn.ru to your liking."[5] In the spring of 2001, the "Choose style" menu on the home page offered nine design options — from the default to a "carrot" and a New Year's theme.[5]

Advertising history

The portal kept its own advertising chronicle: the "Advertising History" page compiled "all (or nearly all) commercial advertising banners that ran on www.nn.ru."[6] Among them were banners for the company BAM, the travel agency Moskva-Tour — Nizhny Novgorod with special offers to Greece and Egypt, the company MAK, the real-estate agency Adres, the Finansovye Novosti program, the project "Banks in Nizhny Novgorod," the paging company Vessolink NN — the portal's "exclusive partner" — the magazines Infobiznes and Kompyuterra NN, the firm TSS, "Rosinform," Ellips Bank and its internet-banking service TelebankNN, and Renaissance Insurance — the first Moscow-based advertiser.[6] The page also marks the first Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: December 16, 1999, at the Rokko club.[6]

In 2001, a 100×100 banner in the advertising strip on the main page cost $50 per month, while a fixed placement cost $150.[7]

Web Studio

In its early years, NN.RU built websites for Nizhny Novgorod companies; the footers of such sites carried the tag "Design by NN.RU" and a link to the studio at design.nn.ru.[8] Among the works from 1999–2000 were websites for MAK company, travel agency Moskva-Tour — Nizhny Novgorod, Samotlor-NN, Nashe Pivo company, trading house Nizhegorodskiye Avtomobili, "Medservis", the Nizhny Novgorod Long-Distance Telephone Exchange, and the magazine AvtoImizh.[8] The studio also ran its own projects: the ratings service Counter.nn.ru, the banner network NNBN, the network Avtobanner.ru, and the Nizhny Novgorod Business Site.[5]

Forums

The portal's fame was built on its forums: City Forum of NN.RU, Techforum, Autoforum, and the "Complaints Book." City Forum posts are monitored by local journalists, law enforcement, and city authorities, and messages there have repeatedly prompted journalistic investigations and official responses.

Forum members also met offline: photographs of such gatherings from the early 2000s are preserved in the portal's archive.

Portal advertising

In the early years the company sold not only banner ads but also website development — at that stage this service brought in more revenue than advertising, though it was later discontinued. The portal advertised itself: it printed flyers and sales proposals, plastered them around the city by hand, hung a banner on the office balcony, and in 2007 put a tram painted in NN.RU livery on the city's tracks.

Change of ownership

In 2012 the founders sold the portal to the publishing house Hearst Shkulev Media. Along with NN.RU, the holding company also acquired the Perm-based Prm.ru and the Samara-based Samara24.ru, consolidating the regional platforms into the Hearst Shkulev Digital Regional Network with a combined monthly audience of 12.2 million visitors.[9] Ilya Osipov later recounted the story of the deal in The Village.[1]

On 30 July 2020, Viktor Shkulev's SGP Holding bought out the American partner's stakes in the network of city portals — 99% of OOO "Set' Gorodskikh Saytov" and 1% of OOO "Internet-Tekhnologii"; at the time the network united 43 portals with editorial offices in 17 cities and a daily audience of around one and a half million people.[10] The registered founder of the online publication "NN.ru" is currently listed as OOO "Internet Tekhnologii".[3]

The founders' second city portal is NNOV; for information about the company itself, see Internet Company NN.RU (company.nn.ru).

On Business and Technology

Specialists and ordinary users alike have repeatedly noted that NN.RU is one of the most outstanding city websites, both in terms of technical execution and its influence on users.

"It's like a drug — you have to be careful, you get hooked from the very first time," says Hillerien (Anton Evdokimov), a well-known TV presenter and one of the active members of the NN.RU forum.

In the opinion of Artem Abramyan, lead developer at Aarki Inc. (USA) and a former resident of Nizhny Novgorod: "NN.RU was a very innovative site for its time. For example, as early as 2000 it introduced 'private messages,' which later became the de facto standard in social networks. The NN.RU developers came up with this technology — which now seems obvious — entirely independently. In addition, at the beginning of 2000 NN.RU applied what is today called 'Gamification.' This is a fashionable approach to user engagement in which everything is done to make users find a non-gaming service as engaging as a game. For example, 'user levels,' virtual goods, achievements, the ability to send gifts, and similar features were all used. Naturally, 'treatises' on this subject have since been written, but in 2000 it was absolutely innovative."

Andrey Borisevich, head of the internet department at the Hurst Shkulev Media holding, also notes that NN.RU and NNOV have successfully established internet advertising sales in Nizhny Novgorod: "…they sell several platforms at once — NNov, NN, KP — meaning they have complete coverage of Nizhny Novgorod, and that is very attractive to us." Roem.ru: The publisher of Maxim and Elle has moved into online video and e-commerce.

The History of NN.RU's Founding

June 17, 2008. NN.RU as a legal entity turns 9 years old.

The Chronicle of NN.RU.

It was the winter of 1999. The Nizhny Novgorod Internet, as a purely technical phenomenon, had already taken shape by that time: back in the early 1990s, the first internet providers had entered the Nizhny Novgorod market, offering internet access services alongside other telecommunications services. Among the first were ZAO "Nizhegorodskiye Informatsionnyye Seti," the company KIS (today's "Agentstvo Delovoy Svyazi"), and Sendy.

Figuratively speaking, these companies laid a kind of internet highway through Nizhny Novgorod, along which megabytes of information could travel as if along a busy road. But at that time, the highway of Nizhny Novgorod's vast internet metropolis was practically empty. More precisely, there was no such thing as the Nizhny Novgorod Internet at all.

So what did exist? Initially, the virtual communication of Nizhny Novgorod residents was limited to email correspondence and participation in newsgroups (for those who didn't experience those times: a newsgroup was an internet service resembling modern forums, in which messages were sent to a group of users via email). Later, with the spread of the World Wide Web, the first Nizhny Novgorod websites and personal internet pages began to appear, hosted on web resources based in the capital.

The history of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet began on just one such free Russian hosting service, Khalyava.ru.

So it was the winter of 1999. The founders of the first Nizhny Novgorod internet portal and the city's leading website, NN.RU — Mikhail Iosilevich and Ilya Osipov — not yet acquainted with each other, were both hosting their personal pages on Khalyava.ru. Iosilevich ran a "bear radio" on his page, where he published alternative Nizhny Novgorod News; Ilya Osipov, driven by pure enthusiasm, hosted jokes and software on his own site. And it was his page that, according to Khalyava.RU's internal rankings, ranked first in the number of user visits. Since the front page stated that Ilya was from Nizhny Novgorod, Misha Iosilevich hastened to congratulate his fellow townsman on the success. That is how they began corresponding, until they finally met in person.

I. Osipov: "When it turned out that Misha lived three blocks away from me, he simply got up and came over. That evening we talked for a long time on the sofa in the living room. That was when the idea of creating NN.RU was born — as a central website for all Nizhny Novgorod residents on the internet."

I. Osipov: "Misha suggested building a directory of websites belonging to Nizhny Novgorod residents on NN.RU — something like a start page for Nizhny Novgorod internet users. By that point I already had some business experience, so I wanted to turn NN.ru into a proper business venture and register it as a legal entity, which we eventually did. Today the idea that you can make money from an internet resource might seem obvious, but at the time, when there was virtually no internet advertising and no advertisers to speak of, the plan seemed crazy. And yet it worked."

On June 17, 1999, a certificate of registration was obtained for the legal entity OOO "NN.RU." NN.RU immediately gained its first clients — TSS and Moskva-Tur-Nizhny Novgorod — who placed banner advertising on the site (notably, both companies remain NN.RU clients to this day). At the time the company consisted of just two people and operated out of a borrowed office on Genkina Street. I. Osipov: "It was my dad's office — we were uncomfortable and cramped there. So in the summer of 1999 we finally rented our own office on Studencheskaya Street, opposite the Nizhny Novgorod telephone exchange — a small room on the third floor." At the Studencheskaya location, NN.RU grew to several employees: the first sysadmin, Sasha Obzhorin, arrived, along with developers Andrey Shaposhnikov, Artem Abramyan, Dmitry Rozhdestvenskiy, and Aleksey Pavlov.

I. Osipov: "Lyosha Pavlov was a brilliant programmer who slept during the day, worked through the night, and could complete any task in a single night. We used to leave him notes on the monitor explaining what needed to be done and how." Initially, both Ilya and Iosilevich also handled layout, programming, client acquisition, and even drew mockups themselves. Meanwhile, their salaries did not exceed a thousand rubles — which at the time was not enough to live on, barely enough for food — as everything was reinvested into the company's development.

The NN.RU website itself only launched in September 1999, and initially ran covertly on equipment belonging to Svyazinform (today's Rostelecom); traffic to NN.RU amounted to just 2,000 users per month.

Since NN.RU was conceived as a city-wide online resource, one of its earliest goals was to create some kind of local internet community. A city forum opened on NN.RU almost immediately, though it only became successful a year later. The city forum was soon followed by a Complaints Book and an Auto Forum.

I. Osipov: "When NN.RU launched, we immediately declared ourselves the main website of Nizhny Novgorod. For a while our front page even bore the stamp 'With the support of the Nizhny Novgorod administration.' However, our good relations with the authorities were absurdly undermined by one Nizhny Novgorod official, after which we simply removed all references to the administration from the site."

Relations with internet providers also got off to a rocky start. "When NN.RU launched, the providers — who by that time had already formed a close-knit internet circle — somehow got the impression that we were eating their bread. We were repeatedly dragged through the mud, even though we were in fact helping them sell internet access." Be that as it may, NN.RU found understanding from Kommercheskiye Informatsionnyye Seti (KIS), represented by Dmitry Mezin and Andrey Menkov. It was with them that NN.RU's first servers were hosted.

Two weeks after WWW.NN.RU appeared, dom.nnov.ru was launched; a month later, madein.nnov.ru; and then nizhny.ru — all of them vying for the title of the Nizhny Novgorod portal. However, each of them, after existing for a year or a year and a half, was eventually abandoned and shut down. NN.RU survived. Probably because it kept developing, expanding, reinventing itself, going down and coming back up. And perhaps also because NN.RU never had strategic investors — there was no opportunity to sit back and relax.

At the end of 1999, Osipov and Iosilevich rented an apartment on Alekseevskaya from distant relatives, and NN.RU moved to a new office. This was the well-known apartment on the second floor with a banner reading www.nn.ru stretched across the entire balcony. I. Osipov: "It was the first advertisement in Nizhny Novgorod that anyone had managed to hang on a balcony. The Nizhny Novgorod municipal advertising service even sent us an angry unofficial email threatening to come and cut down our banner. Later, when the era of 'shake-downs' was over, we even obtained official permission for the advertisement." At the Alekseevskaya office, NN.RU finally got a proper internet connection — a dedicated line instead of a modem — and the first employees who have remained at NN.RU to this day also joined: Olga Bykova, manager (now deputy director), who at that point didn't even have a work computer — only a bedside table with a phone — and Andrey Mindubayev, programmer (now lead programmer).

On August 28, 2000, the NN.RU website became the first Nizhny Novgorod internet site to be registered as a mass media outlet.

In early 2002, the internet company finally moved to its well-known office at Piskunova-30, to which both clients and users of NN.RU grew accustomed. Although NN.RU never flourished "overnight" but instead steadily established its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet landscape step by step, it was in the Piskunova office that NN.RU experienced its greatest surge in popularity — from 30,000 users in January 2002 to 500,000 in May 2007.

And today, nine years on, NN.RU is the city's leading internet company. Two offices: a sales office and a technical office. Several subsidiary projects in Nizhny Novgorod and one in Moscow. And around 70 employees across the entire group of companies.

Interview conducted by Evgeniya Orlova.

Sources

  1. the-village.ru (archive)
  2. Interview with the founders of NN.RU, June 17, 2008 — conducted by Evgeniya Orlova (reproduced below in the article)
  3. NN.RU — News of Nizhny Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod Region on the NN.ru website (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Official information about the "Nizhny Novgorod Online" server, December 3, 2000 (archive)
  5. Archive of NN.RU LLC — files from the www.nn.ru server for 1999–2001 (snapshot dated April 14, 2001)
  6. web.archive.org — History of advertising on NN.RU, December 3, 2000 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Advertising on NN.RU, May 16, 2001 (archive)
  8. Archive of NN.RU LLC — files of websites created by the design.nn.ru studio, 1999–2001
  9. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Hearst Shkulev Media buys up regional internet resources (archive)
  10. sostav.ru — Viktor Shkulev bought out Hearst Corporation's stake in the network of city portals (archive)