CNN.
Anton Nosik's Russian news site, Lenta.ru. is so popular that he expects his audience to double by next year

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Anton Nosik first laid eyes on a computer in Moscow back in 1988. It was love at first sight.

"I first saw this thing and touched it and switched it on, and acquainted myself with the way it worked and I started reading books about it," said Nosik.

After he moved to Israel, Nosik bought his first computer, then a modem. Two years later, he set up his first Internet company, producing Web sites for Israeli banks and corporations.

In 1997, Nosik's friends back in Moscow urged him to return home to start working on the Russian Internet.

He has not stopped working since.

An Internet column led to an Internet magazine, then to Web sites, then to Russia's first Internet daily newspaper. That spawned an entire industry of online publications.

"I have a decision in mind and it is implemented over the next 20 minutes," Nosik said. "There's no way to move it slower, because there are competitors all around."

Nosik's latest venture -- initially funded by an oil company -- is the Web site Lenta.ru. In Russian, Lenta means "newswire."

You won't find any commentary or analysis on the site, just news, 24 hours a day, in Russian and with hyperlinks to other sources of information.

"It was revolutionary for the Russian market," Nosik said, "because I think that is what CNN.com does."

Breaking news

Nosik agrees that his job, initially, boiled down to compiling the information on his site from different sources, repackaging it, and putting it on the Internet.

"Yes, that is what we originally were doing. That was our mission. But things change. Since people read us, since people get the impression that this news source is really influential in this country, people start coming with their news."

Lenta.ru's staff of 24 processes 2,000 news flashes a day from radio, TV, news wires, newspapers and other publications, editing them down to 100 news stories.

The site has 600,000 users. But Internet penetration in Russia is miniscule -- just three percent of the population has access.

But Russia's potential has international investors interested. A group of them bought controlling shares in Lenta.ru.

"If you look at Russian-language speakers around the world, you're talking about a critical mass of about 240 million people as a potential target," said Victor Huaco of Orion Capital Advisers.

"We think with those dynamics and the way the economics of the business are workingÖ it's a very attractive investment."

As Nosik found, however, building an Internet business in Russia presents far different challenges than in some other countries

"I am receiving some pressure from people who would like to manipulate our articles, who are offering money to me or to my journalists to publish something."

Yekaterina Parkhomenko, a journalist at Lenta.ru, says every time there is a crisis in Russia, the site gains new readers.

"It grows twice or three times because they don't believe the official, or maybe they believe but they want to know the second opinion about it, a different opinion."

Nosik claims it is possible someone, including the Russian government, might want to shut him down.

In the meantime, he says he is expecting to double his users by next year.

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