OREANDA-NEWS. OJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel intends to expand its corporate media presence using modern means of communication. In order to address the objective the Company sets up an interactive blog resource Norilsk Metal (http://community.livejournal.com/norilsk_metal/) at the popular blog portal LiveJournal, reported the press-centre of MMC Norilsk Nickel.

The resource will host official and non-official news and photo galleries. Any registered LiveJournal user will be able to participate in informal discussions of specific events taking place at Norilsk Nickel and to express his or her opinion on any aspect of the Company’s performance.

Sergey Chernitsyn, Director of MMC Norilsk Nickel’s Public Relations Department, says that the development of this channel will help the company achieve various communication objectives based on informational and navigation resources offered by the ever more popular blogs.

Practically, this will be a virtual press relations service. We would like to deliver additional information about our Company to Internet users in a semi-official manner and, importantly, receive live feedback. I am sure that by participating in this project our employees and residents of the regions where Norilsk Nickel’s production operations are located will help us build a better and more efficient company, he said.

MMC Norilsk Nickel’s Press Relations Department staff will moderate the resource under special nicknames.

In order to once again demonstrate the free and informal spirit of communication with online audience I have assumed the nickname of Dyadya Garik, said Igor Petrov, Head of MMC Norilsk nickel’s Press Service.

The Russian-language version of LiveJournal reference and navigation resource was launched in June 2007. The resource comprises more than 60 thousand communities with more than one million users. The number of bloggers in Russia in general is counted in tens of millions of people.