Zuckerberg in Russia, meets Medvedev

MOSCOW, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, told Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Monday he had some ideas to help Russian technology companies.

"I will discuss with the representatives of these companies and will try to inspire them to create new products, new applications, which I am quite sure will appeal to Russian users," Zuckerberg said in a meeting with Medvedev, who, in turn, informed Zuckerberg he was a fan of Facebook.

RIA Novosti reported Monday Zuckerberg presented Medvedev a T-shirt with the the prime minister's Facebook Web address printed on it.

Zuckerberg was in Russia to meet with managers and owners of start up companies that could contribute to Facebook's popularity in Russia and to recruit talented programmers to work for the company.

Facebook is the most popular social network site in many parts of the world, but not in Russia, where it is the second most popular after Vkontake, which has 33 million users and is similar to Facebook.

Zuckerberg and Medvedev also discussed intellectual property protection.

"In my view, it is important that we find a balance between, on the one hand, traditional copyright protection, and, on the other hand, new forms, unique to the Internet, which allow for the fairly free use of the objects under copyright," Medvedev said.

He also said there was "not yet a solution" to problems with copyright protection.