Medvedev’s very first tweet, available in either Russian or English thanks to the creation of twin accounts, read, "Hello everyone!  I’m on Twitter, and this is my first tweet."  He then sent four more tweets in quick succession, which seems like a good sign he’ll stick with Twitter.

Another indication: Medvedev, who’s gaining followers at a rapid pace, at one point wrote, "Thanks everyone for visiting my Twitter page.  I hope to keep your interest."

Meanwhile, as you might imagine, Twitter’s representatives were all smiles.  On the Twitter Blog following Medvedev’s visit, Biz Stone wrote about being "honored" by the president’s "generous" decision to stop by.

Stone then worked in a mini-commercial for his site, adding, "Recognizing the power of new technology and learning to leverage it to advance humanity in positive and meaningful ways is a powerful display of leadership.  It was a great chance for us to share our passionate belief that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact."

Anyway, in addition to Twitter, President Medvedev will visit Apple, Cisco, and Yandex while he’s in California.

The move could be viewed as a continuation of other efforts; Medvedev’s been a vocal fan of the Internet for some time now, and he’s done a good job of tying it to national issues.  In June of last year, he even promoted the idea of having a dedicated domain name for Russia in the Cyrillic script.

Now, with his YouTube channel that’s almost entirely in Cyrillic, President Medvedev has found another way to increase Russia’s presence online and get messages to Russian-speaking people.

It’s worth noting that the move isn’t a complete shift away from the Russian government’s tradition of secrecy; by way of disabled comments sections, discussion of Medvedev’s clips seems to have been discouraged (and this detail is particularly odd since Medvedev opened his video blog to comments in January).

Still, the development counts as progress.  Now it’ll just be interesting to see if Medvedev continues to move forward by embracing Twitter or anything else.

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla’s vice president and general counsel, gave several reasons for the change on his blog.  "Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience," he wrote.  "All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds."

 Change search/start defaults to Yandex in ru builds

And since Yandex is Russia’s leading Internet property, never mind search site, it’s not hard to buy this explanation.  The recent rough patch between Google and Mozilla may really have had nothing to do with the development.

In other Russia-related news, then, President Medvedev has taken the interesting step of opening his video blog up to comments.  According to RIA Novosti, Medvedev said he’d "read all of them with great interest," and while would-be commenters will have to register and avoid hateful stuff, no overt censorship is taking place.

It’ll be interesting to see how both of these things work out over the next few months.

The Kremlin is worried that Russian, once the main language in the Soviet Union is being used less because of local languages and the influence of English.

Medvedev said that 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would play an important role in raising the importance of Russian as a language.

"We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name — it is a pretty serious thing," Medvedev told the International Congress of Russian Press in Moscow.

"It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language and Cyrillic and it is not a bad sphere of cooperation. And I think we have a rather high chance of achieving such a decision in the Internet world."

Medvedev is a fan of the Internet and says he surfs online every morning for news. He also uses his mobile phone to connect to the Internet.

Russian Internet sites use domain names in the Latin script, which is standard for most parts of the Internet. Addresses end in .ru or in .su, a domain name that comes from the Soviet Union.

Industry experts say Russia wants its domain name to be .rf which stands for Russian Federation, but written in Cyrillic script.

Critics are concerned that it could lead to tighter control of the media.

Russian is the sixth most spoken language in the world after Madarin, English, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic and Spanish.

Critics charge that Russian authorities are trying to impose stricter regulations of the Internet, a popular place for political debate within the country, where the mainstream media kowtows to the Kremlin.

Speaking at a forum about the Internet Medvedev acknowledged what he called "the delicate question of the relationship between freedom of speech and responsibility," on the Web.

"The answer to this question is fairly simple: laws must be respected everywhere … at the same time, the state should take a calm, fair position," with Internet users, he said.

Russian authorities have shut down a number of regional Web sites critical of officials, claiming they did not have proper registration. One Kremlin lawmaker has floated the idea of having Russian Internet sites with more than 1,000 daily visitors register as media outlets, a move that would make them have to follow the same rules as newspapers.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Russia at 144 when it comes to press freedom out of a possible 169 countries.

Medvedev has said he is a fan of Internet news, including opinions from opposition sites. In his last job as deputy prime minister he ran a program to put every Russian school online.

Russia has 40 million Internet users out of a population of 142 million
 

According to a Reuters article, Dmitry Medvedev said, "There is news from the main channels, regional channels, there is news from foreign channels and finally there is news produced, so to say, on media sites which hold opposition views against the authorities.  They can post all their clips and all their speeches there, generally they say unpleasant things about the authorities."

Medvedev then continued, "This guarantees the independence of the mass media, in my opinion."

Medvedev’s statement came less than a month after his official website launched, and even closer to reports highlighting the size of Russia’s online population and advertising market.  The timing of these things could be coincidental, but if they’re not, we’re looking at an encouraging growth trend in a rather huge country.

On the other hand, some less than encouraging events have also taken place; towards the end of January, there were reports of Russian journalists being beaten and an opposition website being shut down.

Because the English version of the site is extremely limited, that’s about as far as our review can go.  Thanks to English URLs, it’s apparent that sections like "bio," "performance," "photo gallery," and "live press" are in place, however.

All in all, it definitely seems like your typical politician’s display of fluff.  A Reuters piece translated a few lines, which read, "I’m glad to welcome you to my site.  Here you will find materials I consider important.  I hope they help you get a sense of my views."

Also, although no baby-kissing was visible, there are pictures of Medvedev standing near a crib and a new mother. 

It’s interesting to see this major Russian politician get in on the Web trend.  With the presidential election scheduled to take place on March 2nd, it would seem that Medvedev isn’t trying to build too much momentum online, but at least he’s created a presence.

Now if we could only find an explanation for why a man with $111,000 in the bank doesn’t own a car.  (And no, the ability to get driven by limo isn’t reason enough.)