Mobile‑Review.com Anniversary, twenty years with you!

Hello!

Twenty years is a long period of time, even by the standards of human life. Can grow from

diapering, learning to walk, finishing school and maybe halfway through college or university. In the network, a year goes by at least three, or even five. So age Mobile—Review.com not venerable, but mature.

We rarely celebrate our birthday with an article on the site, a little news at most, and nothing more. The anniversary allows you to cancel this rule and talk a little about us and about you.

Perhaps we should start with how the site appeared.In the late 90s, like many of my contemporaries, I used technologies that were new to us - cell phones, pagers, laptops. We were engaged in bringing equipment from Germany to Russia, the business was successful, but not interesting for me. A continuous whirlwind of goods, when the brain instantly oxidizes and stops working at high speeds. One of the goods that were brought to Russia were Siemens C25 Power phones, this carrier version differed from the usual C25 by a slightly larger battery. The difference, it seems, was 30-35 mAh, at that time a significant difference of five percent of the total capacity. A slightly higher price and categorical distrust on some of the forums - such a model does not exist, experts argued. And offered to meet to see the box! Epic times, when it was impossible to take a picture of something on the phone and immediately show it on the network, devices then did not have such capabilities.

A little earlier, I had my own mailnewsletter! This is how the prototype of the idea was born, when it was possible to talk about new technologies, get feedback from people. Suddenly, the mailing list became popular, every day I had to collect news, regardless of the state of mind, health, and so on. By the end of its existence, the mailing was to one hundred thousand addresses, which at that time was a gigantic audience. But then for the first time I learned not to hold on to something and calmly refuse projects that have exhausted themselves. The mailings were a digest without comprehending the news, debriefing and the like, rehashing other people's texts. But I was interested in feedback, communication has always been central to everything I do.

A stage of several years on iXBT, where in words wewere co-owners of the resource, but in fact they just worked hard, I’ll skip it for brevity. There is nothing to be ashamed of, I made the “Mobile communications” section the most visited, and then did not receive any compensation, none of the promises came true. Friendship turned out to be a fiction, which resulted in a showdown and a painful break. Exactly at this moment in July 2002 appears Mobile—Review.com.

In those years there was a fashion for short site names,the fewer letters the better. The long title, which to some extent explained the direction of the site, looked unusual. And there were millions of such names, so without much thought they registered the name Mobile-Review, and in two domain zones - .ru and .com. It happened on July 25, 2002. But the first section of the site was not the main page, but the forum, it started working on August 18th.

The main question I was askedfellow journalists, this is the frequency of publication of materials. At iXBT, I was a production leader, about 5-8 articles were published per month, which, with a plan of four articles, was considered something strange. Why write so much? I set a plan for myself in one material per day. There were four people on the site:

• The programmer responsible for the technical content and operation of the resource, he appeared a little later, and I paid for his services out of my own pocket;
• translator (we originally had an English version, which quickly became popular);
• forum moderator (originally worked on a voluntary basis);
• your obedient servant - wrote texts, news, processed pictures and took photographs, in a word, replaced several people at once.

At the time of opening Mobile—Review.com the site's budget did not exist, nor didadvertisers. The resource was opened for a hundred dollars, and its content was financed by me through outside work, but it was not much money. I decided for myself that this is the thing that I like, what I want to do all my life - technology, various techniques that arouse interest and curiosity. It remained for my hobby to bring some basis.

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Never complained about performance, butthe first year was very difficult. It turned out that friends were not friends at all, the circle of friends was sharply reduced - there was no time, and no desire. I had to work non-stop every day, look for interesting topics, write about it and communicate with people from the industry. Site traffic in the first month was scanty, about a hundred people a day.

In previous years, many people turned to me for advice, correspondence with them remained in the mail, and I wrote letters every day. Here is one of those letters:

“Hello, Anton.We recently discussed the choice of a cell phone, you thanked me for a good choice. I hope that the phone pleases you even now. I started a site dedicated to technology, lifestyle and everything that is interesting and woven into the fabric of life. I would be glad if you come to visit, there are a lot of plans, perhaps the site will help you in choosing various equipment. Website address mobile-review.com, and if you like it, then please tell your friends and acquaintances about it. Yours, Eldar Murtazin.

The letters were different, there was no money for promotionnone. In the first three months I wrote more than ten thousand letters, in the next three months about the same number. Every day I started with the fact that I sat down and wrote letters, thought about each letter, looking for an individual approach. This did not give a tangible conversion, but I thought it was right. No templates, just private messages. In December, attendance for the first time reached the level of three to four thousand people a day, a very small figure in every sense. There was no advertising, it was impossible to hire additional journalists.

The breakthrough happened in the spring of 2003, I got a call fromMisha Golubev, who worked at Zoom (the sale of phones, they were then sitting at the Red Gate). The site traffic was already higher by that time, but we did not pass the mark of ten thousand people a day. But on the other hand, another remarkable event happened - people got tired of predicting the collapse of my undertaking. Checking for lice in the first months was an annoying noise, I met reviews from acquaintances and strangers who wished my endeavor to fail. Some "friends" had long conversations and convinced that nothing sensible would come of it and it was better to look for work now. Just ignored them.

In the first six months of all friends and acquaintancesthere was only one person from the party who simply extended a helping hand - Sergey Malenkovich. Seryozha proofread the texts, suggested how best to handle words, for which I am still grateful to him. But the main thing is that Seryozha taught me the most important thing - to help people when they need support.

Thanks to Zoom, the site received its first advertisement, and what a success! Then it was five thousand dollars, the company's banners were spinning for a whole month, and I was able to hire the first employee - Sergey Potresov became him.

Serezha passed away last year, for all of us thiswas a very heavy blow. Professional, you won't find such people today. Absolute trust in the search for topics, what Serezha considered necessary to say and write about operators. Often the topics were raised so sharp that I had to hide from overly hot scammers who recalled the 90s and sent photos of my children on a walk to the mailbox, promising that the brick could find them at any moment. Such passions boiled over this, because literally billions of rubles were at stake, which were "collected from suckers." And people sincerely did not understand why suddenly we do not want to take a couple of million, shut up and live in peace. They lucidly tried to explain to me that the world is arranged differently and we will not change it in any way, at most we will break ourselves. Sometimes it was possible to win, sometimes not. But I did not consider it possible to abandon my principles. The only request to the same Sergey was simple - to warn when material is planned in which the next scammers are branded, so that there is an opportunity to prepare, to work out all the necessary points in advance.

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For twenty years, a huge amount has accumulatedstories, from the funny to the most serious. When operators converted their tariffs from dollars to rubles (and there was such a thing!), MTS decided to slightly round the numbers in their favor. There was an increase in tariffs, which was not due to anything other than the desire to earn some extra money. It was possible to remain silent, as all the business publications of the country did, and online media as well. We did not remain silent, the tariffs were recalculated for all residents of the country. A small victory turned out to be the fact that only a few people said thank you for it. And we flew out of all MTS advertising placements for many years. There are no regrets about it, the right thing was to protect people from unreasonable price increases. For several years, I was cited as an example to other publications: if you behave like Murtazin, you will lose budgets, you don’t want that, do you?

It is important to understand that for me personally Mobile—Review.com as the firstborn, my brainchild, and attitude to the siteappropriate. In many ways, this is a lifestyle, to some extent, the translation of my worldview. For example, I hate it when ads are hidden behind native placements, integrated into editorial texts without being marked. Therefore, any text for which we received money is marked “As an advertisement”, by the way, this is a requirement of the law! On the main page, such texts are marked with a “P” icon so that you can clearly see that this is an advertisement and ignore the material. The choice is always yours.

The problem with any media is that, regardlessno matter what you do, you will always and by default be corrupt journalists. The reason is in the perception of media as such. If I was given a ruble every time I was accused of this, I think I would become a billionaire. But this does not mean that you really need to become like that, especially when there is an opportunity to live with dignity and refuse companies and people who want to buy your opinion. Somehow it's not pretty.

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I have one trick that I talked aboutmany times, but it will be useful to repeat. I am sure that each person has a certain limit of possibilities, and you need to understand that you can buy me too, the only question is the price. To prevent this from happening, I always set a very high bar for myself, and every year it grew. This “purchase” price includes a one-time deal with conscience, when you take the money and then leave the profession forever. Over these twenty years, the cost of buying Murtazin has skyrocketed, and I hope that no one in their right mind will even think about it.

I remembered a joke that happened to me years agoten ago. Sat in the company, I introduced myself by name, friendly gatherings with people from the industry and around it. One of those present, who was completely unfamiliar to me, said that I had a name like that of Murtazin. I joked in response that I know such an unpleasant friend and even work for him. In response, I heard that he also worked with Murtazin and he also had extremely unpleasant memories. The story was bright and colorful, how this comrade collected tribute from companies at my behest, how he blackmailed someone, and further down the list. At the end of the story, I introduced myself again, only now I gave my last name. The man became crimson and retreated. It is a rare case when these stories were told to my face. It was funny.

And how many different stories with manufacturers,when the quality of their product did not change for the better, and we talked about it. It does not make sense to list all the companies, perhaps the most striking examples are Nokia and then Microsoft. The first tried to resolve the issue in the power plane and start a criminal case, but did not succeed in this - we have never violated the law. When it was not possible to scare in this way, several SMM agencies were hired, which for several years posted dozens of messages daily about me, the site and about why my opinion cannot be trusted. The range of such messages was wide, and chernukha predominated. From an international company and former market leader, such actions were unexpected, but they stopped with the death of Nokia. It turned out that I was right, and most of those who traded their opinion, to put it mildly, were wrong. But here, after all, the issue is not a mistake, but the fact that people praised products that were not good, and they knew about it. But they turned a blind eye to this, because they played a completely different game, they didn’t care how people spend their money, they were worried about the fullness of their own pocket.

Having the opportunity to earn money off the site, Iensured independence of judgment for himself and the team. We can afford a very expensive pleasure - to say what we think. Our thoughts do not always coincide with the generally accepted point of view, for me this is not an end in itself, but a vivid characteristic of what we do. Not a front to be in opposition to some point of view, to cause seething, but a description of how we see the world of telecom, and life in general.

It is impossible to draw any conclusions, I hope thattwenty years is just the beginning. Personally, everything is as interesting to me as on the first day, nothing has changed, but it has only become more interesting. Over these two decades, life has brought together with different people, we gave many a start in life, after school Mobile—Review.com they have a career. A huge number of people came into contact with the site as readers, viewers or listeners. The site is a living organism, it is constantly in motion, just like our life.

Separately, I want to thank the team, without which all this would not have been possible. Guys, you are great fellows, thank you for this.

Thank you to the people in the industry who dailyread the website, Telegram channel, watch videos and more. Your attention is not only flattering, but also useful feedback. It is a great honor that the first persons of many companies, including the largest operators, start their day by viewing articles from us. As well as the fact that people from telecom do not always agree with the stated position, they discuss, swear and show emotions in every possible way. Thanks to you, “Couch Analytics” appeared, there were more topics dedicated to the market, events on it and how everything works behind the scenes. We can be wrong about something, this is normal, the main thing here is that we are sincerely trying to make our life better.

But the most important people on this holiday are allour readers, those who form the agenda on the site, talk about their experiences, both positive and negative. We have always tried to be in the middle, between industry and people, to help both the former and the latter. Protect ordinary buyers of goods and services from injustice, fraud and other unpleasant moments. But in exactly the same way, protect companies from consumer extremism. How many curses were poured into our address from the participants in the pyramids, who “through our fault” lost their money. It seemed to them that a little more, and they would get rich, for three kopecks they would receive a flagship. But free cheese is only in a mousetrap (remember the story of Big Buzzy and dozens of similar pyramids?).

Business trips to dozens of different countries, hundredsexhibitions behind him and work on them non-stop. I hope that you will be no less interested in the coming years than I am with you. From the bottom of my heart I thank everyone who is not indifferent - both leaves positive feedback and criticizes, participates in the life of the site. Thank you.

We have always been free to our readers,I hope that we can continue to be so, despite everything that happens around us. But as one of our devoted readers said, “feel free to offer to send you a penny, so we will thank the editors for their work and show our love.” So if you want to congratulate us, then subscribe to our Telegram channel, and here you can send us a gift for the anniversary.

Thank you for everything.
Eldar Murtazin and the Mobile-Review.com team.
And we are always waiting for you on our website, we are glad to see you.