Here's an interesting one. Nokia and SPB are working together to bring a client for the popular Russian social network, VKontakte, to Symbian handsets. The network, spookily reminiscent of Facebook, has all the features you would expect, including personal pages, privacy controls, photo and video hosting, groups, comments... and now SPB are bringing that to the handset.

What's interesting to me is that Nokia turned to SPB to build this client. There's a case study on SPB's website that talks briefly about the process and the look of the client (which is where the following screenshots come from - VKontakte is invite only and I don't have an invite... or speak Russian), but this is providing an application that is needed by the ecosystem in the CIS countries. It's not just about the hardware, it's about giving people a reason to trust Nokia that will help them online - and for users of the Russian Facebook that's exactly what Nokia and SPB are delivering.

That this project looks like a clone of Facebook shouldn't be the talking point (not when you consider the membership stats are in nine figures for the site) but the reaching out by Nokia to work with developers to create great experiences. Yes, that reads like marketing speak, but the Nokia of 2011 and 2012 is going to need to do a lot more marketing and evangelising than it currently does. It's nice to see that it's worthwhile when they do.

[Thanks to @DeathBrin on Twitter for pointing out that there's an English language version of the site, too, vk.com]