Media reports seem plausible only as long as
until they cover something that you are 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 the traditional view of the forum - to 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 of 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 simply introduced new technical possibilities for this. 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 the modern form of social networks, was the Six Degrees website, 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 in a pattern that suggested that people with mutual friends and acquaintances were more likely to form pairs than those who did not.

2003 introduced MySpace to the world. By 2006, it had already become the most popular network in the world. Its innovation consisted in the ability to customize the appearance of the 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. The website durov.com posted a message about the opening of a new database of profiles of students and graduates 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, 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 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 more and more money to purchase and support new servers and to expand its 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 generating profit - they began with the ability to increase their personal rating through 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 also offered the opportunity to host games and other paid services (with the payment of 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 various types of 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.

Every day, more than 60 million people from 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, the author of a large number of 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

A key moment in the entrepreneur’s biography was approaching - the emergence 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 a new project - the university forum spbgu.ru, starting to promote it. First of all, Durov created a portal to the faculties' platforms, then he began to initiate verbal battles, registered under different nicknames and argued with himself, and in real life he organized beauty and design contests. 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 studies, Durov was firmly convinced that he needed to do his own projects, and not translate from English, as was 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, a letter appeared in his mailbox from a person with whom Pavel had 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 their real first 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. The one who was able to invite the largest number of friends was promised an original and expensive gift at that time - 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.

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 is also the technical director of VKontakte, a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, and 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 four foreign languages ​​in depth. Due to poor eyesight, he always sat at the first desk. Already at the age of 11, Pavel became interested in programming. Hacking a 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

Such projects were the electronic library of university abstracts (durov.com) and the 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 Facebook student 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 limited liability company, known to all of us as VKontakte, and registered the first service domain. 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 have been repeatedly sued for copyright infringement (for posting films and videos in the public domain on the website). 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 features have appeared: a pop-up message window, convenient photo viewing, 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. He has a negative attitude towards the social network Facebook and calls it 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.

The CEO of USM Advisors, who owns 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 with 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, his 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.”

Pavel Durov is a programmer, founder of the largest Russian-language social network VKontakte and its director from 2006 to 2014.

In 2007, Pavel Durov won the competition for the best young entrepreneurs of the year in the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper. By 2011, Pavel’s capital was estimated at 7.9 billion rubles. Durov took 350th place in the ranking of the richest people in Russia. The cost of the social network Vkontakte by this time was estimated at one and a half billion dollars.

In 2013, he introduced the Telegram messenger with unique encryption technology to users. After being removed from his post as head of VKontakte in 2014, he left Russia and continued to develop Telegram.

Childhood and education

Pavel Valerievich Durov was born on October 10, 1984 into an intelligent Leningrad family. Durov’s father, Valery Semenovich, is a Doctor of Philology, head of the Department of Classical Philology, Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University. Nikolai Valerievich, the elder brother of Pavel Durov, twice became the absolute world champion in programming among students.

Pavel went to school in Turin, where his father worked for several years. Soon the family returned to Russia, and, after studying for a short time at a comprehensive school, Pavel entered the Academic Gymnasium at St. Petersburg State University.

Durov studied in a class with in-depth study of four foreign languages. I sat at the first desk due to vision problems. From the age of 11 I was interested in programming, and together with my brother I created my first programs.

His school antics related to hacking computer networks are known: Pavel, out of boredom, changed the screensavers on all the computers in the computer science classroom and easily cracked the passwords that the teachers came up with.

After graduating from the Academic Gymnasium with honors, Durov entered the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University (specialty “English Philology and Translation”).

In general, Pavel Durov is distinguished by a passion for languages: “Learn foreign languages. This will unrealistically expand the depth of perception of the world and open up unprecedented prospects for training, development and career growth,” he once gave this advice to readers on his VKontakte page. It also lists the languages ​​that Pavel Durov speaks: in addition to English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, he knows Latin and Persian.

While studying at the university, he repeatedly won competitions in linguistics, programming and design, was a scholarship recipient of the Government of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, became a Potanin Prize laureate for three years in a row, was trained at the military faculty in the specialty “Propaganda and Psychological Warfare”, was a platoon commander Faculty of Philology. He graduated from military training with the rank of reserve lieutenant. In 2006, he completed his studies at the Faculty of Philology with honors, which he still has not taken from the university.

Creation of VKontakte

While still a student, Durov began collecting a database with educational materials for students of humanities faculties, which was located at durov.com. He wanted to unite fellow students scattered across different buildings using a resource convenient for virtual communication - this is how the spbgu.ru forum was born. Each user’s personal account included columns with first and last name, faculty, list of friends and groups, as well as the ability to blog. To promote the site, Durov organized intra-university beauty and design competitions.

One day, his old friend Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, who studied in the States, wrote to Durov. He observed the rapidly growing popularity of the social network Facebook and shared his findings with Pavel. Together they discussed the idea of ​​​​creating a Russian-language social network. Money for the project was borrowed from Vyacheslav’s father. The founders of the company were Pavel Durov and his friend Lev Leviev with Vyacheslav.

In September 2006, the social network VKontakte was launched. Its founders borrowed the appearance from the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg. The budding entrepreneurs were helped by Nikolai Durov, who took upon himself the optimization of the load on the servers.

Interview with Pavel Durov

At first, registering on VKontakte was possible only by invitation, but already in December 2006 the site became open to all users. During the first year of operation, the number of VK users grew by three million. To attract new users, the site’s management organized competitions, such as “We’ll give an iPod to the person who brings the most friends.”

Despite minimizing costs, the new project vitally needed investments to support servers, especially since Contact at that time did not know advertising and was a completely non-profit project. The first investor in VKontakte was Yuri Milner and his Digital Sky Technologies fund, which bought 25% of the shares of the social network for $6.3 million and subsequently sold them to Mail.ru Group.

However, it was impossible to delay the commercialization of the site. In 2007, VKontakte users had the opportunity to increase their ratings and give gifts to friends for virtual currency - “votes”. Two years after the site was launched, the first banners for contextual advertising appeared on it. By that year, the site had already become a leader in terms of traffic in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, and the number of users reached 20 million.

Pavel rented the top two floors of the famous Singer House on Nevsky Prospekt, where the main office of VKontakte moved.

Since December 2011, Durov has taken an active part in financing startups selected on a competitive basis. The first six selected startups received $25 thousand from Durov. At the beginning of January 2012, Pavel donated $1 million for the development of Wikipedia.

In November 2012, Nikolai Kononov’s documentary book “The Durov Code” was published, dedicated to the development of VKontakte. The rights to film the book were immediately acquired by AR Films. Pavel has an extremely negative attitude towards the film adaptation, however, despite his disapproval, the film's release was scheduled for the end of 2017.

In 2012, singer Sergei Lazarev, concerned about the large volume of pirated content on Russia's largest social network, announced his intention to sue VKontakte. After this, Durov wrote on Twitter that all Lazarev’s songs had been removed from VK, which only increased the cultural value of the site. For some time, when trying to play any of the singer’s compositions, users received a message: “The composition has been removed from public access due to lack of cultural value.”

His “corporate war” with one of the main shareholders of Vkontakte, the Mail.ru Group, is known, which in 2011 sought to absorb the social network and merge it with the Odnoklassniki website. In 2012, a conflict also broke out between VKontakte and the management of the Vedomosti newspaper, related to one of the site’s innovations, which allows you to view news from third-party resources without clicking on an active link.

Shareholder conflict between Pavel Durov and UCP

In 2011, Dmitry Grishin, the newly appointed director of Mail.ru Group (formerly DST), which also owned the social network Odnoklassniki, announced to Durov his intention to buy out 100% of the shares of VKontakte and merge it with Odnoklassniki, as well as withdraw shares VK for IPO, that is, to offer them for purchase to a wide range of people. Later it became known that the amount of the potential transaction exceeded $2 billion, if we count the Facebook shares Mail.ru had instead of $1.1 billion.

A week after the negotiations between the two “whales” of the RuNet, Durov posted on Instagram a photo of himself with his middle finger stuck out. The indecent gesture was accompanied by the caption: “The official response to the trash holding Mail to its latest attempts to absorb VKontakte.”

Due to the failed deal, Durov subsequently quarreled with his partners – Mirilashvili and Leviev. They sold their stakes in the social network (40% and 8%) to the investment fund UCP (United Capital Partners), without notifying either Durov or the Mail Group. Pavel insisted that the deal was illegal, since under Russian law, before selling his shares, the shareholder is obliged to offer to buy them out to other shareholders.

In turn, UCP was unhappy that Durov was spending time and money on personal projects, namely, the Telegram messenger, launched in August 2013. Durov himself claimed that he developed the messenger with personal funds. The founder of VKontakte was sued for embezzlement of funds. A counterclaim followed: Durov sued the founder of UCP Ilya Shcherbovich, accusing him of buying out the shares of Telegram LLC and Digital Fortress LLC behind his back with the help of his partners with the further intention of blackmailing him into exchanging these shares for half of the shares of Telegram. Both sides subsequently withdrew their claims.

Soon after this, Durov sold the remaining stake (12%) of VKontakte shares to Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin. Experts estimated the transaction value from $200 million to $400 million. A couple of months later, Tavrin sold the acquired shares of Mail Group, which ultimately became the owner of 52% of the company.

On April 1, 2014, Pavel Durov on his VKontakte page announced his resignation from the post of general director “due to changes in the shareholder composition.” It turned out that on March 21 he submitted his resignation of his own free will. A little later, he explained that the information was a hoax and that he would not leave his post, so easily betraying everything he had done for the site.

On April 16, Durov spoke about the demands of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to hand over data to the organizers of the Euromaidan community and block Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption community Rospil. Durov refused both demands.

On April 21, Durov learned of his dismissal from the media. It turned out that the board of directors of VKontakte found errors in the application for the rollback of the previous application (about leaving at his own request on March 21), and therefore he was automatically removed from his position. “Today VKontakte comes under the full control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov. Probably, in Russian conditions something like this was inevitable, but I’m glad that we lasted 7 and a half years,” he concluded.

Soon Durov left Russia, taking with him a team of 12 programmers, bought citizenship of the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis and does not intend to return to his homeland until at least 7 conditions are implemented in Russia. Among them: open courts, elimination of contradictions between laws (deregulation), open elections for leadership positions, maximum taxes on the raw materials sector with the abolition of VAT, economic sovereignty of the regions, reforms of the education system and the “abolition of feudal remnants” such as military service and the cult of registration.

Criticism of Durov

Many of Durov’s eccentric actions and statements are subject to harsh criticism. A wave of angry articles hit him after the action of throwing airplanes with banknotes from the window of his office. Bloggers and journalists call this act of Durov “a merchant’s whim,” and Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky spoke even harsher: “A citizen who treats his people like cattle should get the profession of a seamstress-machine operator in the zone.”

Flying money by Pavel Durov

On the eve of Victory Day on May 9, 2012, Durov again turned RuNet against himself with a statement on Twitter: “67 years ago, Stalin defended from Hitler the right to repress the population of the USSR.” Many bloggers and public figures sharply condemned this post and deleted their VKontakte accounts, and Sergei Minaev called Durov “scum.” Later, Vladislav Tsyplukhin, at that time the press secretary of VKontakte, said that Durov respects Victory Day, and the post on Twitter is related to the fact that his grandfather, who went through the entire Great Patriotic War, was later repressed.

"Pavel Durov" hit a traffic inspector

In 2013, the founder of VKontakte allegedly hit a police officer with his car. A video has appeared on the Internet in which a man similar to Pavel Durov violates traffic rules, runs over an inspector, and then flees the scene of an accident. It is noteworthy that this story happened precisely at a time when the spheres of influence were being redistributed among the shareholders of Russia’s largest social network.

Personal life of Pavel Durov

A little more than nothing is known about Pavel Durov’s personal life. A number of rather “yellow” media cited excerpts from documents from the St. Petersburg registry office, according to which Durov is the father of two children (born in 2009 and 2010), whose mother is journalist Daria Bondarenko, who graduated from the history department of St. Petersburg State University. The VKontakte press service called this information “tabloid gossip”; Durov himself put it more harshly: “And then I went nuts when I found out this.”

Those who knew Durov even before his wealth and popularity claimed that he once actually dated Daria, but the couple did not have any children.

Pavel Durov now. Telegram against Roskomnadzor

After leaving VKontakte, Pavel Durov began developing Telegram, which, according to various estimates, cost him up to $12 million a year to maintain.

In May 2017, Durov came into conflict with Roskomnadzor. The head of the department, Alexander Zharov, did not rule out blocking the messenger on the territory of the Russian Federation due to the refusal of Durov, known for his libertarian views, to cooperate with the authorities and provide them with data for registering the messenger, the very concept of which implied complete anonymity of correspondence, for the safety of which Durov feared.

After the refusal, Telegram was hit by an information attack. The largest federal channels aired stories in which Telegram was directly called the main communication channel of terrorists, and FSB representatives stated that the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro was coordinated using the messenger. Businessman Oleg Tinkov called Durov “cattle”, pointedly deleted Telegram from his smartphone and promised money to those who follow his example.

On June 28, Durov nevertheless provided data for registering Telegram in the Russian Federation, but expressed hope that it would not come to providing encryption keys or user data. Otherwise, Pavel said, there will be no cooperation.

A new round of confrontation between Telegram and the Russian authorities began in April 2018. On the 13th, the court decided to block the messenger for refusing to give the FSB encryption keys, which, according to Durov, are in principle impossible to provide to anyone for technical reasons due to the specifics of the software. On April 16, Roskomnadzor began blocking. Pavel refused to cooperate with the authorities and posted a photo on Instagram on a white horse with the comment: “To be free, you must risk everything for freedom.”

After several days, Telegram was still available to most users. In an attempt to destroy the messenger, Roskomnadzor blocked more than 20 million IP addresses, which led to disruptions in the operation of many large services based on cloud hosting from Amazon and Google.

Pavel Durov is one of the youngest Russian millionaires, the founder of the popular social network “VKontakte”, born on October 10, 1982 in Leningrad.

Childhood

Pavel was born into a very intelligent professorial family. His father taught philology at Leningrad State University, defended his candidate's thesis early on, then his doctorate, and instilled in his sons (Pavel has an older brother) a love of science and taught him to think logically and work effectively with various information sources.

Pavle spent his childhood in Turin - his father worked there for several years under a contract. There the boy went to first grade. But then the family moved to Russia again. My father considered education in a regular school too average, so he soon transferred Pavel to the gymnasium at the university where he worked.

It cannot be said that Pavel was an exemplary student, but his academic performance was always excellent. Partly because he usually sat on the first desks (the boy simply could not see further, and did not want to wear glasses), partly so as not to spoil the reputation of his father, who was well known at the gymnasium.

Problems arose mainly due to the curiosity of the boy, who in high school became seriously interested in computers. In addition to standard school assignments, Pavel tried to write his own programs. One day he got into trouble for hacking into the gymnasium’s network server. But in general, the teachers encouraged his interest and often offered individual assignments.

Students

After receiving a certificate of secondary education, Durov remained at the university, enrolling in the Faculty of Philology. By this time, he already knew 4 foreign languages ​​and dreamed of a career as a translator. He chose English as his specialization, which became more and more popular throughout the world every year.

During his student years, Pavel continued to intensively study programming. At that time, he was mainly engaged in the creation of non-profit projects that made life easier for many students. Almost all of them were successful, and some are still functioning, for example, the university website and the library of electronic abstracts.

Studying was easy for Pavel, so he had enough time for his own hobbies. In parallel with his main studies, Pavel also attended the military department, where he acquired the specialty “Propaganda and Psychological Warfare,” which was very useful to him when organizing large Internet projects and creating a social network.

"In contact with"

The idea of ​​creating a social network was suggested to Durov by a friend who came from the States and was delighted that there he could communicate with real users, not hidden behind avatars, and exchange news and gifts. We were talking about Facebook, which was then actively gaining momentum, but was not yet widely known in Russia and did not have a Russian-language version.

Pavel instantly realized that this was a very profitable idea, and he could become the first in a new niche, and began to actively develop a new project. But, being savvy in the methods of information warfare, he began by officially registering a corporation for the project (together with his brother) and patenting the name. He then purchased the domain and launched a pilot version of the project.

Users liked it. 2006 is considered the year of VKontakte’s founding, and just a year later it was recognized as one of the most promising and rapidly growing commercial projects.

Unlike Facebook, this network had a more entertainment focus. Pavel constantly came up with new competitions for users and invested decent money in its development.

In 2008, the network already had more than 20 million users, and Durov understands that the time has come to make a profit from a successful project. He hires workers, rents a prestigious office for the company and continues to actively develop and improve VKontakte.

Today, the network is confidently among the top three sites in terms of traffic, and Pavel is among the richest people in Russia.

Durov today

Despite the fact that Durov is actively involved in charity work and supports aspiring businessmen, opinions about him as a person are extremely ambiguous. On the one hand, he values ​​his own staff very much and is loyal to his employees.

On the other hand, many people condemn his business methods and call them too harsh. He deals with competitors according to the principle “all means are good in war.”

From time to time he attracts attention with very provocative antics. For example, one day he began launching airplanes made from banknotes from the windows of his own office. As a result, a crowd gathered under the windows and even clashes broke out, which were dispersed by the police.

In 2013, Durov knocked down a policeman trying to stop his car at almost full speed. But experienced lawyers managed to hush up the case, and Pavel escaped with only material losses. However, the same person allocated a million rubles for the development of the information and educational non-profit project “Wikipedia”.

One way or another, he remains a bright and extraordinary personality, a successful entrepreneur and an eligible bachelor, whose heart is still free. In 2014, Durov categorically refused to provide data from users of the VKontakte network to the intelligence services and soon left Russia.

He considers himself a citizen of the world, constantly moving from one country to another. Currently developing a new project Telegramm.