Pavel Durov education. Who owns the social network VKontakte

Pavel Durov is a Russian entrepreneur, programmer, one of the founders of the most popular social network in the CIS countries. Former general director of VKontakte and one of

Pavel Durov. Biography of a billionaire

Pavel Valerievich was born on October 10, 1984 in Leningrad. His father is Valery Semenovich Durov, Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Classical Philology, Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University.

The Russian billionaire has a brother - Nikolai Valerievich. He's the same Technical Director"VKontakte", who is a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, as well as a two-time world champion among students in programming.

School years

For the first time, Pavel Durov sat at a school desk in Turin, where his father worked at that time. A few years later, the family returned back to Russia. After a short period of study at a regular school, Durov became a student at the academic gymnasium at St. Petersburg State University.

Pavel Valerievich studied in depth four foreign languages. Due to poor eyesight, he always sat at the first desk. Already at the age of 11, Pavel became interested in programming. Breaking computer network and selecting passwords for computers in the computer science classroom are well-known pranks that Pavel Durov was guilty of. The biography of the future Russian entrepreneur continues in

Higher education

After graduating from the Academic Gymnasium, Durov continued his studies at the Faculty of Philology at St. Petersburg State University, specializing in English Philology and Translation. During his student years he became a laureate of a scholarship from the President and the Government of the Russian Federation, and was a laureate three times

In parallel with his studies at the university, he underwent training at the military faculty in the specialty “Propaganda and Psychological Warfare”. At the university, he served as a platoon commander in his department. Upon completion of military training, Durov received the rank of junior lieutenant in the reserve. In 2006, he graduated with honors, but has not yet withdrawn from the university.

While a student, Pavel Durov began working on several projects designed to simplify the search for information students needed and improve the quality of scientific and social activities of his university.

First projects

These projects were digital library university abstracts (durov.com) and a forum for St. Petersburg State University students (spbgu.ru). They did not bring any financial benefit to their creator, but only helped students from different universities communicate.

After some time, he became disillusioned with the existing system for organizing user accounts on the Runet, where people could hide under any names and avatars. Finding another form of implementing the association of Internet users was the goal that Pavel Durov set for himself at that time.

"VKontakte": creation and development of the project

After some time, Pavel met his old friend, who had returned from the USA, where he was studying. He told Durov about the student Facebook project. There users posted real photos and information. Pavel liked this idea, and he decided to create a similar association in the Russian-language Internet space.

Durov began bringing his idea to life after graduating from university. The original name of the project was “Student.ru”, but after some time it was changed to “VKontakte”. Durov explained this change by saying that in any case, students will become graduates.

On October 1, 2006, Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai opened a society with limited liability, known to all of us as “VKontakte”, and register the first domain of the service. Until the end of the year, the project was in the testing and development stage. Registration was only possible by invitation. Already in December, Durov opened VKontakte for free registration. During the first days of open access, more than 2,000 users registered on the site.

At the initial stage, the promotion of the project was very successful through viral marketing and many competitions for users. By the end of 2006, the servers could no longer cope with the ever-increasing number of users, and therefore the servers were replaced and software support for the network was improved. In 2007, Durov received numerous offers to purchase the project, but he refused them and continued to promote the network, attracting investors. In the same year, VKontakte became one of the three most visited sites on the Runet.

In 2008, the number of users exceeded 20 million. At the same time, monetization of the project began: advertising, gaming applications, which began to bring program developers a certain percentage of the project’s income.

Any popular and profitable project attracts hackers, spammers and others. VKontakte was no exception. The site was repeatedly infected and became a carrier of viruses. In addition, the site made attempts to expand the porn industry, so the developers did not have to sit idle.

Durov and his brainchild were repeatedly sued for copyright infringement (for posting films and videos on the website open access). But they did not end successfully for the plaintiffs, since VKontakte is a public resource, and certain users should bear responsibility.

In 2011, VKontakte was seriously changed both externally and functionally. New items have appeared: pop-up message window, convenient viewing photos, the ability to add video files from popular video hosting sites and other useful functions.

Income of the creator of VKontakte

By the end of 2010, the company's value was estimated at $1.5 billion. According to official data, the authorized capital of VKontakte at that time was divided as follows:

• Mikhail Mirilashvili - 10%;
• Lev Leviev - 10%;
• Pavel Durov - 20%;
• Vyacheslav Mirilashvili - 60%.

According to these data, in 2011 it was estimated at 7.9 billion rubles. But this figure may not correspond to reality. One “Happy Farmer” brings in about $10 million a year, but there are other, no less popular applications.

But still, based on official data, in 2011 Durov took 350th place among the richest people in Russia, with 7.9 billion rubles ($260 million) in his accounts.

Since December 2011, he has begun financing various startups selected on a competitive basis, and already in December, six of them received $25 thousand from the entrepreneur. In January 2012, Durov donated a million dollars for the development of Wikipedia.

In November of the same year, he presented a documentary book, “The Durov Code,” dedicated to the development of VKontakte. AR Films immediately acquired the rights to film it. As for Pavel, he reacted extremely negatively to the film adaptation. Despite his position, the film will be released in 2014.

What is he, the founder of VKontakte, like on a personal level?

Pavel Durov, whose personal life is of considerable interest primarily for the fair half of humanity, does not attend social events and occasionally appears in public.
He is a workaholic, uncommunicative, and polite. Pavel devoted himself almost entirely to running the business. Pavel Durov, whose personal life haunts the press, does not tell anything about it. Therefore, various rumors are being spread that are not confirmed by facts.

Views on business

Despite his billionaire status, Durov rents an apartment next to the office where he works. His idols are Steve Jobs, Che Guevara. Towards social Facebook networks he has a negative attitude and calls her a “sinking ship.” Durov is very aggressive in doing business.

His “war” with the Mail.ru Group, which is one of the largest shareholders of VKontakte, is well known. In 2011, she wanted to absorb and merge the social network with Odnoklassniki. There is a well-known conflict between Durov and the editors of the Vedomosti newspaper, related to the innovation of the site, which allows you to watch news from various resources without the need to follow active links.

Criticism of Durov

Both eccentric actions and harsh statements that Pavel Durov often makes are criticized. A photo of the founder of VKontakte at the window of his office during a “money rain” immediately caused a flurry of criticism. Bloggers and journalists dubbed this trick “a merchant’s whim,” and the words of the Minister of Culture were even harsher: “A person who treats the people like cattle should get the profession of a seamstress-machine operator in the zone.”

On May 26, 2012, airplanes with banknotes attached were scattered near Durov’s office. Eyewitnesses believe that this was organized by Pavel Durov, whose photo on the balcony during the commotion outside the building is confirmation of this, and he does not deny this.

On the eve of Victory Day on May 9 of the same year, Durov brought down the wrath of many people with his statement on Twitter: “67 years ago, Stalin managed to defend the right to repress the people of the USSR from Hitler.” Many bloggers and various public figures immediately condemned this post and deleted their accounts from VKontakte as a sign of protest. Some time later, the VKontakte press secretary said that Durov’s harsh statement was due to the fact that his grandfather, who went through the war from beginning to end, was later repressed, and Pavel himself respects Victory Day.

Farewell to your creation

Many people are interested in the question: “Did Pavel Durov sell VKontakte?” This is partly true. It is known that on January 4, 2014, Durov sold his shares to the CEO of Megafon, Ivan Tavrin. The founder of the most popular social network in the CIS countries submitted his resignation on March 21, and a month later his application was accepted. After this, Pavel Durov left VKontakte completely and has no plans to return. Before his departure, the vice president, as well as the financial director of the social network, resigned.

Being general director USM Advisors and owner of 52% of VKontakte shares, said: “We were surprised when Durov did not withdraw his resignation, and the owners of VKontakte satisfied his decision a month later. We have always believed that the role of Pavel Durov is very important for the company. We regret that he has decided to step down as CEO."

Perhaps Durov will change his decision and return to the position of architect at VKontakte.

Despite all this, the fact remains that Pavel Durov sold VKontakte and left his brainchild. He linked his dismissal to the fact that he did not provide the FSB personal information about people supporting Euromaidan.

Today, the founder of VKontakte is outside Russia and plans to launch a mobile social network, but abroad. Telegram of Pavel Durov will appear this year.

Conclusion

Many admire the talent and hard work of Pavel’s bright and eccentric personality, while others despise him, hinting at plagiarism and huge profits. He was credited with serving in the FSB, state funding of his brainchild, and the fact that he was simply a beautiful sign for the VKonakte project.

Durov always denied all these rumors on his personal page. Despite all this, he social network is an incredible success, which says a lot.

On Durov’s page there is the following statement: “There are very few of those who do and do not talk. In any case, there are much fewer of them than it might seem. Don't waste your time. A person is led to success by his actions, not his words.”

Today a malfunction was recorded in the VKontakte social network. The photo application Snapster, released by VKontakte developers two weeks ago, also did not work. It was previously reported that VKontakte is trying to limit users from switching to the Instagram photo service. Now, for some users, links to Instagram photos in posts and personal messages are published as inactive.

Meanwhile, in general, Russian social networks are beating social networksZuckerberg And Brina. Last year, the VKontakte audience grew by 19% and exceeded 66 million, while the number of Odnoklassniki users amounted to 45.6 million people, which is 9% more than in 2013. VKontakte also increased its share mobile users- from 57% in 2013 to 71% last year.

The network affiliation is interesting. Previously we noted that .

WHO OWNS VKONTAKTE?

VKontakte LLC was created on January 19, 2007. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the founders were a son and a father Vyacheslav And Mikhail Mirilashvili(60% and 10% of the authorized capital respectively), Lev Leviev(10%) and Pavel Durov (20%).

Reference. Durov’s profile was registered first in the Vkontakte.ru system, his third former classmate Vyacheslav (Yitzhak) Mirilashvili, then moved to Israel due to threats, graduated in 2006 Tufts University, USA.

Lev Leviev - born in Volgograd in 1984, studied at the same school with Mirilashvili in Tel Aviv.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Mirilashvili (Misha Kutaissky) - born in 1960 in Georgia. He has lived in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) since 1978. A pediatrician by training. Married, two children. Religion: Judaism. This “authoritative entrepreneur” ran a gambling business in Moscow and St. Petersburg and was the president of the company Russian video sponsored the elections Starovoitova, Deputy President of the Russian Jewish Society Vladimir Gusinsky(Mirilashvili has dual citizenship of Russia and Israel). Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Petromir holding (pharmaceuticals, chemistry, medicine, furniture production, construction, real estate, new technologies, restaurant and hotel business); President of CONTI Corporation (entertainment, gambling and club business); co-owner of the St. Petersburg Open tennis tournament (ATP-Tour series, the largest in the world). He was a member of the management of LUKoil-North-West Oil Products.

In 2001, Mirilashvili was accused of kidnapping two people who kidnapped his father. The murder charge was later dropped, and the prison term was reduced from 12 to 8 years. In his first interview given after his release, he stated that he had become “even more Jewish than before.”

Together in 2013 M. Freeman, G. Khan and other Jewish oligarchs. Included in .

FINANCIAL INDICATORS

According to Alberta Popkova, co-owner of the website Odnoklassniki.ru, expenses for such projects amount to millions of dollars a year, investments will be recouped through advertising. And Vkontakte.ru makes money with the help of a subsidiary recruitment agency.

Mikhail Ravdonikas, public relations coordinator for Vkontakte.ru then said that the agency’s income doubled monthly and reached $50,000 per month. Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki became a phenomenon in 2007. According to the TNS Web Index report, in January 2007 the Moscow daily audience of Yandex was 2.097 million visitors, Mail.ru 2.06 million, Odnoklassniki 1.653 million and Rambler 1.032 million. Gallup does not estimate the audience of Vkontakte.ru .

Leviev and Mirilashvili separately enriched themselves by creating the Selectel company in 2007 and opening a data center to meet VKontakte’s needs for data processing and storage. The social network completely switched to it by 2009 and, until the launch of its own data center in 2012, depended on a single service provider. This allowed Selectel to become a large company with 11% of the data center market by number of server racks by the end of 2011.

In 2010, Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili created the Vaizra Capital venture fund with representative offices in New York, Israel and St. Petersburg to invest in technology companies at any stage of development, investing in a number of other people’s projects: video hosting Coub, hotel booking service Ostrovok.ru, publishing house "Committee" (includes a publication about the IT industry "Zuckerberg will call", social media TJournal and startup community Spark), online consultant for Livetex sites, community for extreme sports enthusiasts Riders. At the end of 2014, the general fund portfolio included about 30 projects. In August 2014, Leviev announced personal investments in the amount of € 500 thousand in joint with Boaz Behar startup - API platform for Bitcoin developers BlockTrail.

Leviev and Mirilashvili are investors in the funds Yuri Milner DST Global II and DST Global IV

As for the social network itself, today VKontakte is the largest Russian social network, whose monthly audience, according to TNS estimates, is 31.5 million people. The company's revenue in 2012 amounted to 4.8 billion rubles.

TRANSFERS OF OWNERSHIP

As of February 1, 2008, 100% of Vkontakte was transferred to the offshore Doraview Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The first external investor was the fund Digital Sky Technologies Yu.Milner(son) who bought a quarter of the social network in 2007 and later transferred it to the balance of Mail.Ru Group.Gradually, Mail.ru Group began to buy back shares of the VKontakte network. By purchasing another 7.5% of shares. So both Mirilashvili sold Mail.ru - 30%, Leviev - 4%, and Durov - 8% of the company's shares.

In 2011, Mail.ru Group increased its share in the VKontakte social network from 32.49% to 39.99%. The company exercised an option to buy out 7.44% from the founders of the network at a price of $111.7 million. By the end of the year, Mail.ru Group already owned 39.99% of the social network, and the remaining 60% was divided between Durov (12%), Leviev (8 %) and the Mirilashvili family (40%). The transaction was carried out through JPMorgan, which describes the shareholder structure.

In April 2013, Mirilashvili’s share was purchased by United Capital Partners, which heads Ilya Sherbovich, a member of the boards of directors of such large companies as Rosneft, Transneft, Federal network company" Forbes devoted a special article to how he circumvented legal restrictions and sold Gazprom shares foreign companies. At the same time, it is shown that Shcherbovich is a long-time partner of the Russian government, while engaging in raiding and money laundering through offshore companies.

On January 25, 2014, Durov announced that he sold all his remaining shares (12%) to his friend Ivan Tavrin, director of Megafon.

In September 2014, the VKontakte company sold the remaining 48.01% stake in the social network Mail.ru Group for $1.47 billion.

Thus, Mail.ru Group became the owner of 100% of the shares of the VKontakte social network, since both Megafon and Mail.ru, in turn, belong to the oligarch. Usmanov’s wife was born into a family of Samarkand Jews Irina Viner-Usmanova, which is in charge of the Russian gymnastics team, brought together V. Putin With A. Kabaeva. After which Usmanov actively began buying up all media resources of any importance. It got to the point that even Habrahabr was under his control for some time.

Today, VKontakte is the largest Russian social network, whose monthly audience, according to TNS estimates, is 31.5 million people. The company's revenue in 2012 amounted to 4.8 billion rubles.

It should be noted that, oddly enough, VKontakte - especially in comparison with Facebook - still gives relative freedom to its users - and does not block users for harsh criticism of the regime, the Jewish coup in the former Ukraine, the Kremlin’s betrayal of Donbass, etc. .

Apparently we haven't gotten there yet.

Every day more than 60 million people from different countries around the world visit one of the most popular social networks - VKontakte. Who created this project and how did it happen? Considering that the history of the creation of the service itself deserves attention, we invite you to travel back a few years and see where it all began and what path preceded such enchanting success. And the emergence of VKontakte is closely connected with the name of one of the most prominent figures among representatives of the new generation of entrepreneurs - Pavel Durov.

Despite the fact that the fame of Durov’s main project brought him enormous fame, there is not much information about the creator of the best social network on the Runet.

Childhood

The one who created the VKontakte network was born in Leningrad (modern St. Petersburg) on ​​October 10, 1984, in the family of the famous Soviet philologist Valery Semenovich Durov, author large quantity scientific works.

For several years, Durov Sr. and his family lived in where the head of the family worked. It was there that Pavel began going to school. Upon returning to his native Petersburg, he continued his studies at a regular school, but not for too long - too often he had to point out to the teachers their incompetence, which the boy could not accept. However, an alternative was found quite quickly - a whole group was recruited into the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium, such as Durov Jr.

During his school years, Pavel sat at the first desk, often alone, received high scores and was considered a very erudite child, but the “stars” of the class - winners of various Olympiads - overshadowed him. Nikolai, Durov's older brother, a talented scientist, also won competitions in computer science and mathematics.

Admission to university

Immediately after graduating from high school, Pavel Durov, following in his father’s footsteps, entered St. Petersburg State University, the Faculty of Philology, and graduated in 2006. During his student years, the one who created the social network VKontakte did not go with the flow like most students, but actively used the time for self-improvement and development.

First steps towards success

Approaching key moment in the biography of the entrepreneur - the appearance of VKontakte. You already know who created this one. However, few people know that even before its appearance, while studying at the university, Pavel worked on several predecessor projects. One of them is the site durov.com, which did not have any commercial benefit, but helped students who studied and lived in different areas of the northern capital to exchange opinions and ideas online.

However, soon Pavel let the work of durov.com take its course and turned his attention to new project- university forum spbgu.ru, starting to promote it. First of all, Durov broke a portal to the faculties' sites, then began to initiate verbal battles, registered under different nicknames and argued with himself, and real life organized beauty and design competitions. Meanwhile, the forum’s attendance reached 3,000 people per day, and the resource began to be enriched with new social functions. Users were able to blog, raise or lower each other's ratings. Pavel was especially careful about monetization, not allowing banners not related to education to appear on the site.

By the end of his training, Durov was firmly convinced that he needed to study own projects, and not translations from English, as indicated in the diploma. By the way, he never took the diploma himself, so as not to have to deal with the bureaucracy once again.

At the dawn of a new era

We continue to study the biography of the one who created the social network. VKontakte network. Against the backdrop of his other ideas, Durov had long been thinking about implementing such a project, where all people could act under real names. Just at this turning point in his mailbox It turned out to be a letter from a person with whom Pavel lost contact 7 years ago - Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. A student at the prestigious American Tufts University saw how social networks were rapidly gaining popularity and pitched the idea to an old friend.

If they had started a little later, the chances of success would have been significantly lower. In the spring of 2006, the number of users on domestic social networks continued to grow, but even the audience of the leader, the Odnoklassniki website, barely reached 500,000 people.

Beginning of work

Vyacheslav did not have his own funds to launch the project. He had to borrow them from one of his father’s companies, Mikhail Mirilashvili, the owner of the St. Petersburg casinos “Conti” and the shopping and entertainment complexes “PetroMir”. Mirilashvili Sr. is one of the most famous businessmen of the northern capital of the 90s and is believed to be a good friend of President Vladimir Putin.

Friends founded a company in which Vyacheslav remained, and his friends Pavel Durov and Lev Leviev became members. Durov was not at all embarrassed by the fact that the project could be associated with someone else’s name. But he retained for himself a block of voting shares sufficient to veto objectionable decisions.

On October 1, 2006, a key event occurred - the company registered the domain vkontakte.ru. This day is considered the birthday of VKontakte. Now you know who created this site. It's time to talk about the development of the project itself.

At first, the site was closed, and registration was possible only by invitation. Registration was allowed only for those who indicated real name and last name. Students from the capital's universities vied with each other to persuade each other to register, and in just a few days in November, the newly launched social network attracted more than 2,000 users. And the main motive was participation in the competition, which, again, was invented by Pavel Durov - the one who created the VKontakte website. To those who were able to invite greatest number friends, an original and expensive gift for that time was promised - a real iPod.

Just 3 months later, free registration was introduced, and the rapidly growing number of participants in the social network prompted the organizers to switch to more powerful servers and actively improve the system.

Further development of VKontakte

Now you know how the social network VKontakte appeared, who created it and continued to develop it. These days, the site is constantly changing and improving. It is no exaggeration to say that VKontakte has become a whole world for those who love to communicate, find new friends, listen to music, watch videos, play games, read news and interesting notes.

On October 10, 2006, the official launch of the VKontakte social network took place. What happened to the social network over 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 Pavel Durov’s first blogs looked like this:

The site also announces the first competition to invite friends for very good prizes:

In 4 months, VKontakte gained over 50,000 users, a good start. We also managed to find a screenshot of one of the first counters of registered users. A very nice number on it, soon it will increase 10,000 times.

2007

year 2009

In 2009, VKontakte bought the Internet address vk.com - 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.

Interesting fact: in April 2009, the VKontakte website was visited twice more people than on the Odnoklassniki website, their eternal competitor.

• The “Ads” service is launched.

2010 #DurovTake Back the Wall

In February 2010, VKontakte registered its 60 millionth user, and in November the 100 millionth user. In October of the same year, an event occurred that caused a lot of noise: all user pages were switched to microblog mode, it was impossible to go back, and this caused outrage among many. People demanded the return of the familiar wall.

• The wall turns into a microblog.
• Added "Like" button.
• The numeric id can be replaced with " beautiful address» .

This is what the wall looked like before the microblog

2011.

At the beginning of 2011, the VKontakte website closed free registration in order to make it difficult to create fictitious users used for cheating and sending advertisements. It was possible to register only by invitation, which could be sent by one of the users (if he was given such an opportunity). Around the same time, the privacy settings changed: it became impossible to open your posts on the wall only to a certain circle of people, they became publicly available.

Free registration was reopened in July 2011.

• Mobile applications for iPhone and Android are being launched.
• Added the ability to chat with multiple participants.
• Hashtags are being introduced.
• Celebrity pages are starting to be verified.

First version mobile applications looked like this:

iPhone version

Android version

year 2012. Moving

In 2012, the VKontakte website finally moved to Domain name VK.

year 2013

In April 2013, it became known that the United Capital Partners investment fund managed by Ilya Shcherbovich (many believe to be close to the Kremlin) bought 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 VKontakte shareholders, including Pavel Durov, but they circumvented this restriction by selling not the shares, but the Cypriot companies that owned them. Pavel Durov said that this scheme “smacks of fraud.” The relationship between him and the new shareholder became aggravated from time to time and became public. There were rumors that the UCP Foundation wanted to remove Durov from the post of CEO.

At the same time, Durov devoted time to his new project - a mobile Telegram messenger(communication application). The UCP Foundation was dissatisfied with this.

In the summer, before the “anti-piracy” law came into force, VKontakte removed a lot of music uploaded there illegally.

In 2013, according to Pavel Durov, the number of daily users of VKontakte grew by 14 million, reaching 56 million, and the growth of the audience of Odnoklassniki, its closest competitor, was twice as slow.

year 2014

2016

• The news feed becomes “smart”, adapting to the interests of a specific user.
• Launch of non-cash money transfers.
• It becomes possible to conduct game broadcasts (streams).
• The ability to send voice messages is being introduced.
• VK completely changes its design full version site.

VK design after update in 2016

2017

• VK now has the ability to record “Stories”.
• A global update of VK mobile applications is taking place.
• Limiting music listening in background. Introduction of a paid monthly subscription.

Media reports seem plausible only as long as
until they highlight something you're familiar with from personal experience.
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 filled the 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 on the Russian-language Internet. And the 42nd most popular site in the world.

Well, now on my own 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 entrepreneur 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. Since childhood, he was fond of programming, and already at school he could boast of such pranks as placing a photo of a computer science teacher with the caption “Must Die” on the screensaver of all school computers. While studying at the university, I created several popular Internet projects among students:

• durov.com is a website for students of the humanities, with opportunities to exchange materials useful for studying, which became especially popular during the session.


• spbgu.ru - student forum of St. Petersburg University.

Both projects were non-profit, but successful. On spbgu.ru Pavel tried to make changes to traditional look forum - add, in addition to nicknames and avatars, fields for full names, photographs, 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 a basic set social functions, with the help of 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 has simply introduced new ones for this technical capabilities. The transfer of certain types of communication to the global web greatly facilitated them, so resources with a social direction were very popular and developed rapidly.

It all started with the first bulletin boards and chat rooms. The first, closest to modern look social networks, 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 differed from previous static sites by the ability to constantly update user blogs.

The first full-fledged social network, in its current understanding, was Friendster, with the help of which you could find your friends, then, among their lists, new friends, and so on. That is, the network was constantly expanding according to a pattern suggesting that people with mutual friends and acquaintances are more likely to form pairs than those who do not have them.

2003 introduced MySpace to the world. By 2006, he had already become the most popular network in the world. Its innovation consisted in its customization capabilities appearance profile.

The next favorite, Facebook, allowed you to post photos and videos on your profiles. It was originally intended for Harvard students, but quickly included other universities, and then people 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 on the Runet today - the VKontakte Internet resource.

§ 2. First days

The alpha version of the social network VKontakte began functioning in the summer of 2006, that is, its chief developer Pavel Durov was almost 22 years old at that time. Beta testing began in September - using the finished version to identify errors before the final release. On October 1, 2006, the domain vkontakte.ru was registered, and the official launch day was October 10. A message about the opening was posted on the website durov.com new base data from student and graduate questionnaires and an image of Pavel Durov’s page. This message remains on the site to this day.

The project appeared as closed. Only students with invitations under their real first and last names could register. At this point, the main services were already working - search, the ability to configure profiles, select a place of study, private 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 began advertising company to increase the number of users. The move taken to attract a new audience turned out to be very successful. A competition 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, its popularity grew like an avalanche, because as soon as someone from a group of students or friends registered on the site, in a couple of days the rest were there. In just a few weeks, the load exceeded the server's capacity and capacity had to be increased.

Already in January, the resource was among the fifty most promising sites on the Runet in terms of growth rate. In 2007, it was 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 100 million.

§ 3. Owners, cost, profitability

As the resource gained momentum, increasing the number of users and adding new functions, it needed everything more money for the purchase and support of new servers, for expanding the staff. The required amounts amounted to millions of dollars. The owners of VKontakte received many offers to purchase and, in the end, chose the DST fund (Digital Sky Technologies), which received a 24.99% stake in VKontakte for $16.3 million.

From the very beginning, the site was positioned as solely user-oriented, for maximum convenience of search and maintaining connections between people and refrained from advertising.

However, it soon became clear that it was impossible to delay receiving income, given the ever-increasing costs of photo and video hosting. VKontakte still refrained from advertising, but used other tools for making a profit - they started with the ability to increase personal rating via paid SMS messages. Next, they introduced the paid service “Gifts” - pay and send a virtual postcard or item to your friend. Virtual currency was sold for real money.

And yet, the revenue was not enough to pay for the site, so in the summer of 2008 it, as well as the possibility of posting games and other paid services(when paying a “tax” to the site). Placing on the website and online applications by independent developers gives them access and virtual game attributes from the sale. Part of this money goes to the social network. This practice, quite popular among similar sites, brought VKontakte $10 million in 2009 just through the game “Happy Farmer.”

There is information that in general in 2009 the VKontakte website earned about a billion rubles, but it is difficult 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. Managers of Mail.ru Group have repeatedly stated their intention to completely buy out 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 value was approximately $2 billion.

§ 4. Criticism and problems

The main attacks on VKontakte owners are related to the distribution of pirated content and the presence of pornographic materials on the site. At the beginning of 2011, the site was included in the list of publications that illegally distribute counterfeit goods and copyrighted content, which was compiled based on the results of research by the US administration. Copyright holders claim that half of the video views on the Runet are on VKontakte. Unresolved issues with pirated content are preventing shares from entering Western stock exchanges. Perhaps this was the reason - now you can get an account only by inviting a friend who has indicated the mobile number of the newly created 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 about the legality of posting information, the main problem is, of course, the security of the site. Throughout the history of VKontakte, there have been many successful attempts to send spam and different types fraud against users.

§ 5. Prospects

Now the VKontakte audience continues to grow. In terms of the number of users and traffic, the site is still ahead of 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 are registered).

From the statements of managers, we can conclude that the company will soon try to enter world markets. They plan to bypass Facebook by meeting the national needs of residents of a particular country.

At the same time, there are also pessimistic forecasts associated with the decline in the popularity of social networks in general.

§ 6. Creative team

The origins of the project, of course, were the legendary Pavel Durov, who was already described above, as well as his brother Nikolai, a mathematician who at one time did a lot to optimize the load on servers and subsequently took the post of technical director.

Now the collective of VKontakte creators is a circle of like-minded programmers, among whom are many of Durov’s university friends. As a rule, only the best, the “very best”, excellent students, graduates of prestigious universities and winners of Olympiads can get into the company. In a word, masters of their craft.

A suitable place for their work has been chosen. In the very center of St. Petersburg, on the main highway 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 her status. The Singer House business center is a large representative building built at the beginning of the 20th century for the Singer company.

The luxurious office has all the conditions for work and good rest, however, the requirements for the team are strict: employees are prohibited from smoking and drinking alcohol at work, even at corporate events; quarrels among themselves and the use of obscene language are also unacceptable.

In 2011, VKontakte employees took first place in Europe at the World Programming Championship. Alexey Levin, Valentin Fondaratov and Arseny Smirnov represented St. Petersburg State University and received a gold medal, as well as fourth place in the world. In 2001, Nikolai Durov won first place at 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 on the Runet.