Russia’s VKontakte to launch rival to Instagram

Russian social network VKontakte is on the verge of releasing a mobile application along the lines of popular photo-sharing service Instagram, news agency RBC reported earlier this month, citing two unidentified people familiar with the company’s plans.

VKontakte applied to Apple a few days ago to have the application distributed through the U.S. tech giant’s online App Store, the report said. VKontakte is also developing a version of the application for the Android mobile operating system, the sources told RBC.