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Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte
The creation of VKontakte was not a brilliant discovery. VKontakte has become a Russian-language analogue of social networks already existing in the world. A service that has filled a corresponding niche in the post-Soviet space.
However, if there was no genius in the idea itself, then the timeliness of the creation of VKontakte deserves respect. Today it is the largest social network of the Russian-speaking Internet. And the 42nd most popular site in the world.
Well, now herself history of creation of VKontakte and the main stages of the company's development.
The founders of VKontakte, according to the Vedomosti newspaper, are the son of the famous Russian businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili, Vyacheslav and his grandfather, as well as Pavel Durov and Lev Leviev.
Graduate of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University. From childhood he was fond of programming, and already at school he could boast of such pranks as placing on the screensaver of all school computers a photograph of a computer science teacher with the caption “Must die”. While studying at the university, he created several Internet projects popular among students:
- durov.com - a site for students of the humanities, with the possibility of exchanging materials useful for study, which became especially popular during the session.
- spbgu.ru - student forum of St. Petersburg University.
Both projects were non-commercial, but successful. On spbgu.ru, Pavel tried to make changes to the traditional form of the forum - in addition to nicknames and avatars, add fields for full names, photos, places of study. However, the very idea of the VKontakte website took shape after a conversation with a school friend Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, who, while studying in the United States, met and became an investor in VKontakte.
Later, Pavel was repeatedly accused of plagiarism and copying Facebook.
§ 1. Brief background
The first Internet resources with an elementary set of social functions, with which people could interact within the network, appeared in the late 80s of the last century. There was nothing unexpected in this fact - society itself represents groups of people connected by various relationships and therefore forced to contact each other. The Internet simply introduced new technical possibilities for this. The transfer of some types of communication to the global web made them much easier, so social resources were very popular and developed rapidly.
It all started with the first bulletin boards, chats. The first, closest to the modern form of social networks, was the site “Six Degrees” launched in 1997, where you could not only create a profile, but also make friends with other users. The next qualitative step was, which differs from previous static sites by the possibility of constantly updating user blogs.
The first full-fledged social network, in its current understanding, is Friendster, with which you could find your friends, then, among their lists, new friends, and so on. That is, the network has been constantly expanding in a pattern that suggests that people with common friends and acquaintances are more likely to form couples than those who do not have them.
2003 opened MySpace to the world. By 2006, it had already become the most popular network in the world. Its innovation was the ability to customize the appearance of the profile.
The next favorite, Facebook, allowed you to post photos and videos on your profiles. Initially, it was conceived as for Harvard students, but quickly included other universities, and then people who were not related to education. Founded in 2004, it quickly gained popularity and already in 2008 had the largest number of users among all services of this kind.
We will stop here, because we have already come close to the history of the creation of the most popular network in Runet today - the VKontakte Internet resource.
§ 2. First days
The alpha version of the social network VKontakte began to function in the summer of 2006, that is, its main developer Pavel Durov at that time was almost 22 years old. Since September, beta testing began - using the finished version to identify errors before the final release. On October 1, 2006, the vkontakte.ru domain was registered, and October 10 became the official launch date. The site durov.com posted a message about the opening of a new database of student and graduate profiles and an image of Pavel Durov's page. This message hangs on the site to this day.
The project appeared as closed. Only students with invitations could register under their real name and surname. At this point, the main services were already working - search, the possibility of profile settings, choosing a place of study, personal messages, photo albums. An innovation for Runet was the ability to tag people in photos.
After a month and a half, registration became open and an advertising campaign began to increase the number of users. The move taken to attract a new audience turned out to be very successful. A contest to invite friends to the network, with prizes from Apple (iPod nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod video), made the site even more famous. Although even without this, his popularity grew like an avalanche, because as soon as one of the group of students or friends register on the site, the rest were there in a couple of days. In just a few weeks, the load exceeded the capacity of the server and had to increase capacity.
Already in January, the resource in terms of growth rate entered the top fifty most promising sites on the Runet. In 2007, it is already one of the five most visited. On November 5, the three millionth user registered, and by the end of the year, VKontakte is second only to mail.ru.
At the end of 2010, the number of users approached the 100 million mark.
§ 3. Owners, cost, profitability
As the resource gained momentum, increasing the number of users and adding new features, it needed more and more money to purchase and maintain new servers, to expand the staff. The amounts needed were in the millions of dollars. VKontakte's owners received many offers to buy and eventually chose DST (Digital Sky Technologies), which received a 24.99% stake in VKontakte for $16.3 million.
From the very beginning, the site was positioned as a purely user-oriented, for the maximum convenience of searching and maintaining communication between people, and refrained from advertising.
However, it soon became clear that it was impossible to postpone the receipt of income, with the ever-increasing costs of photo and video hosting. VKontakte still refrained from advertising, but used other tools to make a profit - they started with the ability to increase their personal rating through paid SMS messages. Then they introduced the paid service "Gifts" - pay and send a virtual postcard or thing to a friend. Virtual currency was sold for real money.
And yet, the revenue was not enough to pay off the site, so in the summer of 2008 it hosted games and other paid services (with the payment of a “tax” to the site). Posting on the site and online applications by independent developers gives them access to sale and virtual game attributes. Part of that money goes to the social network. This practice, which is quite popular among similar sites, brought VKontakte $10 million in 2009 from the Happy Farmer game alone.
There is information that in general, in 2009, the VKontakte website gained about a billion rubles, but it is hard to say whether it was profitable.
In the spring of 2011, DST (which is now called Mail.ru Group) held a minority stake of 32.5% and is the only third-party investor in the project. Mail.ru Group managers have repeatedly announced their intention to buy back shares and merge VKontakte with Mail.ru and Odnoklassniki.ru.
However, these statements are refuted by Durov. According to him, there are no plans to change the current state of affairs, in which the founders of VKontakte own a controlling stake. The minority stake owned by Mail.ru Group does not allow him to influence the site's strategy, and this situation will continue. In addition, Pavel again emphasizes that the main goal of VKontakte is not financial enrichment, and that the resource today is compared to other free networks.
In 2011, the company's valuation was about $2 billion.
§ 4. Criticism and problems
The main attacks on the owners of VKontakte are related to the distribution of pirated content and the presence of pornographic materials on the site. In early 2011, the site was included in the list of publications illegally distributing counterfeit goods and copyrighted content, which was compiled based on the results of research by the US administration. The copyright holders claim that half of Runet's video screenings are on VKontakte. Unsettled issues with pirated content prevent shares from entering Western exchanges. Perhaps this was the reason - now you can get an account only at the invitation of a friend who indicated the mobile number of the newly minted user. In addition, there are promises to launch a "system for preventing the spread of dangerous content" by the end of the year.
In addition to claims to the legality of posting information, the main problem is, of course, the security of the site. In the entire history of the existence of VKontakte, there have been many successful attempts to send spam and various types of fraud in relation to users.
§ 5. Perspectives
Now the audience of VKontakte continues to grow. In terms of the number of users and traffic, the site still overtakes Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir and the Russian-language segment of Facebook. However, the resources of the Russian-speaking audience have already been exhausted by three-quarters (more than 135 million accounts have been registered).
From the statements of managers, we can conclude that the company will soon try to enter the world markets. They plan to bypass Facebook by meeting the national needs of the inhabitants of a particular country.
At the same time, there are also pessimistic forecasts related to the decline in the popularity of social networks in general.
§ 6. Creative team
At the origins of the project, of course, was the legendary Pavel Durov, who has already been described above, as well as his brother Nikolai, a mathematician who once did a lot to optimize server loads and subsequently took the post of technical director.
Now the team of creators of VKontakte is a circle of like-minded programmers, among whom there are many university friends of Durov. As a rule, only the best, “the best”, excellent students, graduates of prestigious universities and winners of Olympiads can get into the company. In a word, masters of their craft.
The place for their work is suitable. In the very center of St. Petersburg, on the main thoroughfare of the city, opposite the Kazan Cathedral, there is an office of the VKontakte company, where it moved three years after the start of work. The appearance of the office is quite consistent with its status. The Singer House business center is a large representative building built at the beginning of the 20th century for the Singer company.
In a luxurious office, all the conditions for work and good rest, however, the requirements for the team are severe: employees at work are prohibited from smoking and drinking alcohol even at corporate events, quarrels among themselves and the use of obscene expressions are also unacceptable.
In 2011, VKontakte employees took first place in Europe at the World Programming Championship. Alexey Levin, Valentin Fondaratov and Arseniy Smirnov represented St. Petersburg State University and received a gold medal, as well as fourth place in the world. In 2001, Nikolai Durov won the first place in this championship.
Here, in fact, is far from complete, but an impressive story of the creation of VKontakte - the success story of one of the most successful Internet projects of Runet.
On October 10, 2006, the social network VKontakte was officially launched. What happened to the social network in 11 years? Let's remember now!
The hat is very cute. "VKontakte" then still appeared as "a closed directory of students and graduates of elite universities in Russia." And one of the first blogs of Pavel Durov looked like this:
The site also announces the first contest by inviting friends for very good prizes:
For 4 months, VKontakte gained over 50,000 users, a good start. We also managed to find a screen of one of the first counters of registered users. A very nice figure on it, soon it will increase by 10,000 times.
2007
year 2009
In 2009, VKontakte bought the vk.com Internet address - a shorter one and more convenient for promotion on the world market. The exact amount of the transaction is unknown, but it is clear that it was very large.
An interesting fact: in April 2009, twice as many people visited the VKontakte website than the Odnoklassniki website, their eternal competitor.
- The service "Announcements" is launched.
2010 #DurovBring the Wall
In February 2010, the 60 millionth user was registered on VKontakte, and already in November - the 100 millionth. In October of the same year, an event occurred that made a lot of noise: all user pages were switched to microblogging mode, it was impossible to go back, and this caused indignation among many. People demanded the return of the familiar wall.
- The wall turns into a microblog.
- Added "Like" button.
- Numeric id can be replaced with a "pretty address".
This is what the wall looked like before microblogging
2011.
In early 2011, the VKontakte website closed free registration in order to make it difficult to create fictitious users who are used to cheat and send advertising. It was possible to register only by invitation, which could be sent by one of the users (if he was given such an opportunity). At about the same time, the privacy settings changed: it became impossible to open your posts on the wall only for a certain circle of people, they became publicly available.
Free registration was re-opened in July 2011.
- Mobile applications for iPhone and Android are launched.
- Added the ability to chat with multiple participants.
- Hashtags are being introduced.
- Celebrity pages are starting to get verified.
The first version of mobile applications looked like this:
iPhone version
Android version
year 2012. moving
In 2012, the VKontakte website finally moved to the VK domain name.
year 2013
In April 2013, it became known that the investment fund United Capital Partners, managed by Ilya Shcherbovich (who is believed by many to be close to the Kremlin) bought out a 48% stake in VKontakte from Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. They did not have the right to sell shares without first offering them to other shareholders of VKontakte, including Pavel Durov, but this restriction was circumvented by selling not the shares, but the Cypriot companies that owned them. Pavel Durov said that this scheme "smells like fraud." Relations between him and the new shareholder escalated from time to time and went public. There were rumors that the UCP fund wants to remove Durov from the post of CEO.
At the same time, Durov devoted time to his new project - the mobile messenger Telegram (application for communication). The UCP Foundation was unhappy with this.
In the summer, before the entry into force of the "anti-piracy" law, VKontakte was removed a lot of music that was illegally uploaded there.
In 2013, according to Pavel Durov, the number of daily users of VKontakte grew by 14 million, reaching 56 million, while the growth of the audience of Odnoklassniki, the closest competitor, was twice as slow.
year 2014
2016
- The news feed becomes "smart", adjusting to the interests of a particular user.
- Launch of non-cash money transfers.
- There is an opportunity to conduct game broadcasts (streams).
- Introduced the ability to send voice messages.
- VK completely changes the design of the full version of the site.
VK design after update in 2016
2017
- VK, it becomes possible to record "Stories".
- There is a global update of VK mobile applications.
- Limit music listening in the background. Implementation of a paid monthly subscription.
Creation idea
A graduate of the philological faculty of St. Petersburg State University, Pavel Durov, together with his older brother Nikolai and a group of developers, founded the social network VKontakte in 2006. Prior to that, Pavel had already worked on the sites durov.com (various materials for university students were stored there) and spbgu.ru (a forum for students to communicate). Probably, Pavel was inspired to create VKontakte by the fact that it was often impossible to compare users and real people on the forum, because it was not customary to use real names and your own photos.
Everyone used pseudonyms - he didn’t like it, since communication turned from real to virtual: sometimes people could correspond without knowing that they were studying in the same group. And the VKontakte project was originally conceived as a network for students, where they would perform under real names.
Another impetus was Durov's meeting with his classmate, whom he had not seen for seven years - Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. He studied in the USA and saw how social networks develop. Soon after the meeting, friends were already discussing the possible prospects of a social network for students, where one could find their classmates and classmates. As Durov recalls, for him and Vyacheslav it was a particularly relevant idea - after all, the meeting could never have taken place.
Name variations
It is known that one of the options for the name of the social network was Studlist.ru. Later, however, the founders decided not to limit themselves to students - everyone becomes graduates sooner or later - and this option was abandoned. The name of the network should not have been associated with any particular group of people, which would not reflect its essence - a social network for everyone. As a result, the name "VKontakte" was chosen. It was proposed by Pavel himself, and the radio station "Echo of Moscow" gave a hint, where the advertising insert "In full contact with information" was often repeated. The whole project team immediately liked the name. However, as Durov admits, he himself doubted him for a long time.
The Internet address vkontakte.ru is registered to VKontakte LLC. The company's office is located in St. Petersburg, on Nevsky Prospekt, on the top two floors of the Singer building (opposite the Kazan Cathedral).
Money
The father of Durov's classmate, businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili, allocated money to launch the project. Until 2013 (see below), the majority of the company's shares were owned by the Mirilashvili family. By the end of 2013, Durov himself owned only 12% (at the beginning, his share was 20%). Also, the owner of a significant share was Mail.Ru Group (in 2014 it became the sole owner).
Work principles
It is no secret that the American social network Facebook, which at that time had not been translated into Russian and was still little known in Russia, became a role model. It was on the example of Facebook that Pavel Durov first got acquainted with the main functions of the social network, which he mentioned in his blog. Many ideas and design elements were borrowed from her. In fairness, it must be said that in their further development, these social networks have become quite different from each other.
How did VKontakte develop?
The VKontakte project has been operating in test mode since the summer of 2006. In October, registration there became available for students who received an invitation. The obligatory rule was the indication of the real name and surname. And at the end of November, registration became free for everyone. A year later, by the end of 2007, more than 3 million people had already registered on the site. In the same year, Pavel Durov announced that VKontakte had overtaken Odnoklassniki in popularity (Odnoklassniki began work in the spring of 2006). At first, VKontakte had only a few basic functions: search, personal pages, places of study and work, personal messages, photo albums with the ability to tag friends in photos. A little later, groups, meetings and notes were added. Audio and video recordings appeared in 2007.Durov writes that the system was thoroughly tested, since the personal information of users had to be well protected from intruders.
In 2008, VKontakte gained wide popularity and became the most popular site in Russia, and in Ukraine it took third place. In November 2008, it was announced that the number of users of the social network has exceeded 20 million. In the summer of 2008, advertising first appeared on the VKontakte website - until that moment it had not been there. Durov is known for his cautious approach to advertising; according to him, making a profit cannot be the main purpose of the existence of such a site. In 2009, VKontakte bought the vk.com Internet address, which was shorter and more convenient for promotion on the global market. The exact amount of the transaction is unknown, but it is clear that it was very large.An interesting fact: in April 2009, twice as many people visited the VKontakte website than the Odnoklassniki website, their eternal competitor.
In February 2010, VKontakte registered its 60 millionth user, and in November, the 100 millionth. In October of the same year, an event occurred that made a lot of noise: all user pages were switched to microblogging mode, it was impossible to go back, and this caused indignation among many. People demanded the return of the familiar wall. In early 2011, the VKontakte website closed free registration in order to make it difficult to create fictitious users who are used to cheat and send advertising. It was possible to register only by invitation, which could be sent by one of the users (if he was given such an opportunity). At about the same time, the privacy settings changed: it became impossible to open your posts on the wall only for a certain circle of people, they became publicly available.
Free registration was re-opened in July 2011.
In 2012, the VKontakte website finally moved to the vk.com Internet address.
In an interview with Gazeta.Ru in January 2012, Durov mentioned that he considered it possible for the company to go public in 2012 or 2013, but preferred not to go into details. In May, following Facebook's unsuccessful IPO, those plans were shelved indefinitely.
In April 2013, it became known that the investment fund United Capital Partners, managed by Ilya Shcherbovich (who is believed by many to be close to the Kremlin) bought out a 48% stake in VKontakte from Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. They did not have the right to sell shares without first offering them to other shareholders of VKontakte, including Pavel Durov, but this restriction was circumvented by selling not the shares, but the Cypriot companies that owned them. Pavel Durov said that this scheme "smells like fraud." Relations between him and the new shareholder escalated from time to time and went public. There were rumors that the UCP fund wants to remove Durov from the post of CEO.
At the same time, Durov devoted time to his new project - the mobile messenger Telegram (application for communication). The UCP Foundation was unhappy with this.
In the summer, before the entry into force of the "anti-piracy" law, VKontakte was removed a lot of music that was illegally uploaded there.
In 2013, according to Pavel Durov, the number of daily users of VKontakte grew by 14 million, reaching 56 million, while the growth of the audience of Odnoklassniki, the closest competitor, was twice as slow.
It became known that at the end of 2013, Durov sold his 12% stake to Ivan Tavrin, CEO of MegaFon. Soon these shares were purchased from Tavrin by Mail.Ru Group.
In April, Durov left the post of CEO of VKontakte. First, he wrote a letter of resignation, then withdrew it, but the owners of the company still satisfied the application, saying that it was incorrectly retracted.
In September, Mail.Ru Group bought out its share (48% of shares) from the UCP fund and, thus, became the sole owner of VKontakte. Mail.Ru Group also owns the Mail.ru postal service (including My World) and the Odnoklassniki social network. Boris Dobrodeev, the son of Oleg Dobrodeev, the general director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (TV channels Rossiya-1, Rossiya-2, Sport and others), became the new CEO of the social network.
In Belarus, this is the second most visited site, in Ukraine and Kazakhstan - the third.
The founders of the site are Russian programmer Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov.
Pavel is also the creator and co-owner of such well-known student projects as Durov.com (the site is aimed at humanities students) and SPBGU.RU (a forum for students of St. Petersburg State University).
The beginning of a large-scale project
On the Durov.com website in the summer of 2006, many users saw the following news message:
“After a long period of development, my new project for students has been opened, which many have asked about - “V Kontakte.ru”. The project will allow students and graduates from various universities and faculties to always stay in touch.
This is a technologically sophisticated database of student and alumni profiles, where we will be grouped based on places of study, friendships, interests, etc.
The picture is my page.
Yours sincerely,
Pavel Durov".
This was the "first sign" of "VKontakte", and shortly after that the site was assigned the domain name vkontakte.ru (October 1, 2006), and this date is considered to be the date of foundation.
But the real "Birthday" was October 10 of the same year - it was on this day that the first functions of the site began to work.
Why VKontakte?
The site was conceived as a way to support communication between students, former graduates of different universities in the country.
It could be called "Student.ru", but sooner or later students finish their studies and lose contact with those with whom they studied for many years.
And it was decided that everyone should be "in contact", that is, in touch. Everyone liked the name (except Durov himself, oddly enough), and now it has almost become a brand.
Website history in facts and figures
In November 2006, free registration of users was opened. Before that, it was possible to get here only by invitation of already registered participants.
January 2007 - "VKontakte" is one of the 50 fastest growing sites on the Internet.
September 27 of the same year - "VKontakte" took third place among the most visited sites in Russia (it was not possible to overtake only Mail.ru and Yandex).
In the same 2007, the site took second place in the popular vote for the Runet award (losing the championship to the entertainment site bash.org.ru).
February 2008 - "VKontakte" became available in Ukrainian, and at the end of March of the same year, the site's audience exceeded 10 million people.
July 2008 - 15 millionth member registered.
In 2009, the number of users is growing rapidly, and VKontakte is overtaking its main competitor, the Odnoklassniki website.
2010 is full of innovations. In April: a new design style "Pre-revolutionary" was introduced (with the ability to turn it off); it becomes possible to change the status "In Contact" by SMS; On April 17, the site launched its own payment system; two days later, VKontakte launches testing of the OpenID service.
May brings such innovations as the ability to attach audio and video files to private messages, the "Fans" feature becomes available again.
In my opinion, the most memorable events of the past year were the celebration of the fourth birthday of Pavel Durov's creation (October 10), and the resonance due to the transfer of all user pages to the microblog mode without the possibility of turning it off.
As I recall, this happened on October 20 in the evening, and literally by the morning of October 21, a riot was ripe, many users in the blink of an eye created protest groups and threatened to boycott the site. After a few days, microblogging could be turned off at will or left as is.
February 2011 - the daily audience of "VKontakte" "passed" over 23 million visitors. Further - more, today it is already 25 million.
Site Owners
For a long time there was no word about it. The Vesti newspaper conveyed the following information to readers: the founders of VKontakte LLC are Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (60%), Mikhail Mirilashvili (10%), Pavel Durov (20%) and Lev Leviev (10%).
Pavel Durov denied this information, and the press service of the site stated that the investors of VKontakte are the Digital Sky Technologies fund.
Not without criticism 
He is accused of allegedly creating a clone of the equally famous social network Facebook.
To such statements, Pavel Durov only replies that he got acquainted with the principles of the work of social networks on the example of Facebook, but adapted his own website to the domestic education system.
