vk.com

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Globe icon of the infobox
Vkontakte.ru
Website logo
social network
languages 81 languages
operator Mail.Ru Group
editorial staff Pavel Durow ,
Nikolai Durow
user 90 million (2016)
On-line 2006 (currently active)
http://www.vk.com/
The headquarters of vk.com are located in the Singer House in Saint Petersburg

vk.com , until January 2012 Vkontakte.ru ( Russian В Контакте “in touch”, “in contact”), is a multilingual social network that originated in Russia . Registered users can create a profile on vk.com and exchange information with other users. According to the operator, there were over 100 million active users in March 2014, mainly in Russia, Ukraine and the other CIS countries . According to Alexa Internet , vk.com is one of the most popular websites in Russia.

history

2006

In the summer of 2006, the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov programmed an alpha version of Vkontakte.ru, for which an internal beta test took place in September 2006. Originally the project was supposed to be called Studlist.ru . On October 1, 2006, "Vkontakte" was established as a limited liability company and the Vkontakte.ru domain was registered. The project officially started on October 10, 2006. Until the end of November 2006, only certain people could register with their full names. At that time, Vkontakte was mainly used by students. At the end of November 2006, registration was generally released and an advertising campaign was started; Vkontakte users have been promised various prices and benefits when attracting new users.

2007

In 2007, Vkontakte.ru's popularity rose rapidly in Russia. On February 26, 2007 it already had 100,000 users, on November 18, 2007 it was around 3 million. In 2007, Vkontakte.ru was the second most popular Russian website. It reached 4th place in Kazakhstan , 7th place in Belarus and 10th place in Ukraine . Vkontakte.ru was continuously modernized in 2007. A hosting system for video and audio files, a rating system and a Vkontakte toolbar for common browsers appeared .

2008

On January 16, 2008 the new service “professional contacts” was launched. This was a sub-platform of Vkontakte.ru, which was tailored to professional users from the IT , legal and financial sectors . From February 2008 Vkontakte.ru was also offered in Ukrainian . On April 1, 2008, Vkontakte became VSojus for one day as part of an April Fools joke . “Soyuz” means “Union” and is the slang term for the Soviet Union . The logo of the site was decorated with a hammer and sickle. At the beginning of April 2008 it was also announced that 10 million users were registered with VKontakte.ru. In the same month, the operators of Vkontakte.ru reacted to the increasing criticism regarding the data security of the social network and from then on offered users the option of extended security settings. Vkontakte.ru experienced a further surge in popularity in September 2008. This month began cooperation with Yandex .ru , one of the most popular search engines on the Russian-language Internet. Since then it has been possible to receive private messages from Vkontakte via the messenger Y.Online , developed by Yandex.ru . In October 2008, the website had approximately 5.8 million unique visits and 800 million page views per day, as well as over a million concurrent users during peak evening hours. In December 2008, Vkontakte.ru overtook competitor Odnoklassniki.ru with its number of users .

2009

Also in 2009 Vkontakte.ru continued to grow. In July 2009 Vkontakte already had 14.3 million users, almost twice as many users as Odnoklassniki.ru with 7.8 million. On September 5, 2009 Vkontakte.ru bought the domain vk.com. As the purpose of the purchase, the operators stated the "further development of Vkontakte.ru on the international market". The purchase price was not disclosed. In November 2009, according to Alexa Internet, Vkontakte.ru was currently the second most popular website in Russia and Ukraine and was thus ranked 30th worldwide (November 2009).

2010

Vkontakte co-founder Pawel Durow on his 26th birthday (October 2010)

On February 2, 2010, there were 60 million users registered on Vkontakte.ru. In July it was 75 million, at the end of August 86, at the beginning of October 91 and in mid-November 99 million users. On April 1, 2010, the operators revived the custom of the April Fool's joke. While in 2008 Vkontakte.ru was designed in the “Soviet” style, in 2010 it was the “pre-revolutionary” style with motifs from the Russian Empire . On November 24, 2010 the one hundred millionth user registered. On December 2, 2010, the Russian Internet search service Yandex.ru announced that 25 million Vkontakte user profiles can now be found using the search engine. This made it possible even for unregistered users to view the public content of 25 million user profiles. This has met with harsh criticism both inside and outside Russia.

2011

On January 19, 2011, the Russian record company “Nikitin” sued a 26-year-old Vkontakte user from Moscow who had uploaded 18 audio files from an artist who was under contract with “Nikitin”. The public prosecutor's office initiated criminal proceedings against the young man from Moscow on the basis of Article 146 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Copyright infringement”). The record company is also filing a claim for damages in the amount of 108,000 rubles. The 26-year-old Vkontakte user is even threatened with a prison sentence of up to six years. The name of the artist whose pieces were uploaded is not disclosed. On January 27, 2011 the design of the site was revised. On February 12, 2011, the information in his profile that had been released by the user as public was also made visible to unregistered users. This measure by the operator also met with numerous protests from users. On March 17th, 2011 a microblogging function was introduced at Vkontakte . On March 30, 2011, the developers presented an iPhone app for Vkontakte. On May 21, 2011 the news function was modified. It was now possible to invite several users to a conference. Before, private messages could only be exchanged between two users. From June 11, 2011 it will be possible to hide certain users from the friends list from others. On June 15, 2011, a Vkontakte client for the Android smartphone operating system was presented. On July 1, 2011, Vkontakte.ru increased the security standards on the website. From then on, only the HTTPS communication protocol was used when logging on . On July 28, 2011, the official Vkontakte.ru chat was opened. On August 4, 2011 the profile field “Beliefs” was introduced. The user can enter what is most important to him in life and what his attitude towards smoking and alcohol is. From August 19, 2011 it will be possible for Vkontakte.ru users to have their profile completely removed. From October 4th, 2011 you can mark user contributions with "Like". On October 10, 2011 Vkontakte.ru celebrated its fifth anniversary. On December 1, 2011, the "authenticity check" for user accounts was introduced.

2012

On January 26th, 2012 Vkontakte finally moved to the new domain Vk.com . On March 28, 2012 Vkontakte opened its first foreign agency in the Ukrainian capital Kiev . On October 27, 2012, Vk users were given the opportunity to make their photo albums available to others (“share”). Since November 23, 2012, it has been possible to create file attachments in the comment function. On November 24, 2012, the mobile version of Vk.com was extensively updated.

2013

The investment group United Capital Partners acquired 48% of the shares in the social network company.

2014

In the course of 2014 the Mail.Ru Group took over 48.1% of the shares.

Boris Dobrodeev became the chief executive officer.

2015

On August 4th, vk.com was inaccessible for over three hours due to a cable break between two data centers.

2016

The identity of porn actresses and suspected prostitutes was discovered via the biometric facial recognition service FindFace , which assigns facial portraits uploaded to profile pictures on Vkontakte.

Functions

The system is part of social software and offers the following functions, among others:

  • Creation of a profile with the option of providing various information (contact details, interests, hobbies, etc.)
  • Function to search for other members, also via the interests stored in profiles and jointly visited schools or universities.
  • Formation of groups with group discussion forums.
  • Create photo albums and upload photos.
  • Photo tagging : individual persons on photos can be linked to their user accounts.
  • Extensive audio and video functions, including a database with over 10 million audio recordings.

The website is available in more than 30 languages ​​including Russian, English and German.

Economic situation and financing

The Russian Internet company and Facebook shareholder Mail.Ru Group bought 7.5 percent of the shares of vKontakte.ru on November 17, 2010 for 112.5 million US dollars, increasing its stake to 32.5 percent.

On July 16, 2011, Mail.ru increased its stake to 39.9 percent and became the sole owner on September 16, 2014.

people

Until April 2014 the company Vkontakte.ru belonged to the founder and programmer Pawel Durow , who lived alternately in Saint Petersburg and Turin . His brother Nikolai Durov is the website's system administrator. In September 2014, Alisher Usmanov took control of the company with Mail.ru.

criticism

Like Facebook and the German StudiVZ , Vkontakte.ru is exposed to the accusation of data mining . Membership in the Vkontakte.ru online community can also have disadvantages, such as being tracked down by bank agents who are looking for debtors.

The platform is also used quite openly by neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups without any action against them: Registered users who presented themselves as admirers of Adolf Hitler received a "Miss Ostland " on the network's Adolf Hitler fansite - Beauty pageant , one of them posing with an officer's cap of the Wehrmacht .

The Russian journalist Roman Dobrochotow publicly criticized the fact that the Russian investigative authorities (especially the FSB ), which had unimpeded access to the network, were not making any efforts to suppress right-wing extremist or racist currents on the platform, while government critics could expect sanctions.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ izvestia.ru
  2. ↑ nic.ru
  3. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  4. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  5. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  6. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  7. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  8. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  9. ↑ clubs.ya.ru
  10. ^ Growth of V contacts by Pawel Durov, October 16, 2008
  11. ↑ vesti.ru
  12. ↑ lenta.ru
  13. ↑ vedomosti.ru
  14. ↑ W Contacts at Alexa
  15. ↑ combonews.ru
  16. ↑ top.rbc.ru
  17. ↑ rian.ru
  18. ↑ mk.ru
  19. ↑ vkontakte.ru
  20. ↑ Владислав Новый, Роман Рожков: United Capital Partners купила 48% “В контакте”. In: Коммерсантъ-Online . kommersant.ru, April 17, 2013, archived from the original on April 20, 2013 ; Retrieved April 17, 2013 (Russian).
  21. ↑ Mail.ru Group приобрела 48.01% ВКонтакте за 1.47 миллиарда долларов. РИА Новости , September 16, 2014, accessed November 18, 2014 (Russian).
  22. ↑ Benjamin Bidder: Start-up boom: How Russia earns billions with IT businesses . In: Spiegel Online . March 2, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 2, 2019]).
  23. ↑ Гендиректором «ВКонтакте» назначен Борис Добродеев. ИТАР-ТАСС, September 18, 2014, accessed September 18, 2014 (Russian).
  24. ↑ Соцсеть «ВКонтакте» оказалась недоступна на три часа из-за разрыва кабеля между дата-центрам
  25. ↑ RIA Novosti: Facebook shareholder mail.ru increases stake in Russian online network vKontakte.ru. RIA Novosti, November 17, 2010, accessed November 17, 2010 .
  26. ^ Pro-Kremlin Tycoon Usmanov Buys Up Russian Social Media , Radio Free Europe, September 16, 2014
  27. ↑ Information on Vkontakte.ru (Russian)
  28. ↑ Article in the newspaper Kommersant (Russian)
  29. ↑ Presentation of the competition on the US talk show “ The Young Turks ”; the candidate in the Wehrmacht look can be seen briefly from 0:42.
  30. ↑ tagesschau.de: "Russian Network: In the VK-Netz des Druiden" from January 28, 2017, 10:32 pm (accessed at 11:23 pm).