Who founded VKontakte. VKontakte: history, success, known and little-known facts

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.

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.

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 the share of 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 the first registered in the Vkontakte.ru system, the third was his former classmate Vyacheslav (Itzhak) Mirilashvili, who then, due to threats, moved to Israel, 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, was the president of the Russian Video company, and sponsored 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" (including the 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, and Federal Grid Company. Forbes devoted a special article to how he circumvented legal restrictions and sold Gazprom shares to 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.

Good day, dear readers of my blog. Do you know how my site differs from many others? Now I sat down and, first of all, decided to look for something on Google to make sure that no new ways to find out who created a group in contact appeared.

I haven’t found many publications on this topic, but they are all unfounded and will not help the reader. Often, authors simply do not understand what they are writing about, and why a person enters such a question into the search bar.

I understand social networks, and therefore I can give you good advice and try to solve a specific problem. I can only think of 3 reasons to look for the creator of the group, we will look at all of them now. If I missed something and you know some others, I kindly ask you to write in the comments why else you can try to find the creator.

Finding a creator for re-registration

Let's start with the fact that the creator is the full owner of the group. He can do anything, for example, turn a group into a community and vice versa. The most common desire. The owner cannot be changed or unlinked.

If you buy a community, it is better to buy the creator’s account along with it, in order to avoid any problems. Which ones? Well, the group seems to be yours, but in fact it belongs to another person who can enter it at any time and do whatever he pleases.

I have encountered the problem of re-registration many times. First you need a group, then you decide that you need to turn it into a community, and so on. In order to make a wish come true, you need access to the creator’s account and if it is blocked, then that’s it. You have no chance of completing the task.

The authors of some publications claim that you can try contacting technical support and asking to change the creator, but I assure you that nothing will work. They will ask you to send a photo with a passport containing the same name, surname and other data that was specified in the creator’s account and will offer to try to restore it.

How to find out the creator if you are one of the group administrators? Very simple. Open the community and go to the “Management” section, the button is located under the avatar.

We find “Participants” here.

If there are many people in the list, then the creator is displayed first, at the very bottom of the list, and under his name in bold letters it says “Creator”.

How to contact the admin regarding advertising or other issue

The second logical need, which can only be fulfilled after searching for an administrator, is purchasing a repost or communicating about cooperation. The easiest way is to look in the “Contacts” section. Carefully read the information under the name about the role of the account.

Choose the most suitable option; it is unlikely that you will quickly agree on advertising if you start corresponding with the general director. After a long, long time, when he finally gets around to answering messages, he will send you down the ranks. To the person who is responsible for advertising or cooperation.

What to do if the Contacts section is hidden? You can try to find those who work on the group and ask them a question. Think in advance whether the person will be interested in your offer.

If he is anonymous, then most likely he does not want to repost and will not agree to some cheap offer; he will need to be interested in something serious. It might be better to look for some other community.

And yet. Go to the “Discussion” section and open any topic.

Below the topic will be the name of the person who created it. It was impossible to do this if the person had nothing to do with the group. He is not necessarily the creator. Possibly an editor, administrator or author.

Topics in a group can be started by different people. The main thing is to see if there is an opportunity for you to open a new conversation in this community. If you are able, then discussions are not moderated. This is a fairly rare occurrence, but if so, then there is no point in writing to the creator of the conversation.

If you are lucky, you scroll down the wall to the very first message and the author's name is indicated in it, then you will find out not only when the group was created (the date is in the lower left corner), but also who its creator is. Most likely he was the one who published it.

Although the easiest way, of course, is to “Suggest news” on the community wall. Don’t worry, it won’t be published, but the administration will contact you if it is interested in the proposal.

Open this field and state your problem.

If you are concerned about the most productive ways to use VKontakte, I can recommend the video course . There is even information about website creation here.

If you have a nosebleed you need to know the creator

Sometimes it happens that you have a bloody nose and want to know the name of a competitor. For example, a friend of mine was wondering for a long time who administrates a group that does not want to publish his advertisements in any way, but actively promotes its competitors. There were speculations about the relatives of the main competitor.

The question tormented my friend for a long time. What could be done? There are different programs, but frankly speaking, I have never used them and I advised him to simply leave this question unanswered.

I don’t trust either applications that offer to look at visitors to your page, or the creator’s identifiers. Many people say that free programs are dangerous for your account. This may be true, but it is not that important.

An unnecessary account solves a lot of things, but the main difficulty is that they simply do not work. The application gives you a random name. Several years ago, the notorious “Look who visited your page” worked on this principle.

If this article was interesting to you, subscribe to my blog and receive more useful materials about work and.

See you again and success in your endeavors.

Pavel Valerievich Durov- Russian businessman, creator of the social network Vkontakte (VK) and the cross-platform messenger Telegram. During his student years, Pavel Durov was a laureate of scholarships from the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation, a three-time laureate Potaninskaya scholarships. Currently, Pavel Valerievich is a ruble billionaire.

Childhood and education of Pavel Durov

Father - Valery Semenovich Durov(b. 1945) - Doctor of Philology. Valery Durov headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University (from 1992 to 2013).

Mother - Albina Alexandrovna Durova(b. 1951) - taught at St. Petersburg State University, now retired.

Older brother - Nikolai Valerievich Durov(b. 1980) - Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. During his student years, he twice became the absolute world champion in programming among students. Nikolay Durov was the technical director of VKontakte LLC.

Pavel's grandfather Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov(b. 1913), participated in the Great Patriotic War. He was wounded three times. Introduced to the Order of the Red Star.

Pavel Durov began receiving his education in Italy, going to school in Turin, where his father worked for several years. When the Durovs returned home, Pavel became a student at the Academic Gymnasium at St. Petersburg State University. Pavel Durov studied in a class with in-depth study of foreign languages. In addition to English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, he speaks Latin and Persian.

The early years of Pavel Durov (Photo: lukomore.org/Global Look Press)

Pavel grew up as a fairly active child. He became interested in computers early; at the age of 11, Durov became interested in programming and virtual computer projects.

Friends talked about the “innocent childhood fun” of the future creator of VKontakte. For example, Pavel changed the screensavers on all computers in the computer science classroom and easily hacked teachers’ passwords. His love for programming, apparently, did not bring him closer to the computer science teacher, whose photo with the caption “Must die” young Durov placed on the screensavers of school computers.

Pavel Durov graduated from high school with honors and, despite his interest in programming, decided to get a humanities education by enrolling in the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University (specialty “English Philology and Translation”).

Career of Pavel Durov

Pavel Durov created a library for searching important materials and abstracts at the university to simplify the exchange of messages and useful information.

However, in the end, having figured out Facebook, Pavel said that it was a “sinking ship.” He even called the American social network a “stronghold of pedoliberals,” and in May 2012, on his Twitter account, he ironically called it a “cheap hack.”

Pavel Durov was involved in the development of VKontakte together with his brother Nikolai. The first official user registered on the social network in October 2006. Initially, the social network was called “Students.ru”. But it was soon changed to a more acceptable one - “VKontakte”, and over time the abbreviation “VK” took root.

In 2008, the number of registered VKontakte users exceeded 20 million, and Pavel Durov became a real legend, who was compared to the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg.

On April 1, 2014, the founder of the social network VKontakte, Pavel Durov, announced that he was leaving his leadership position. According to Durov, the reason for his departure was changes in the composition of the company's shareholders, which led to a restriction of the CEO's freedom of action. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend the principles that were once the basis of our social network,” Durov wrote on his page.

Durov noted that, as a founder, he will continue to participate in the life of the social network, however, “formal posts in the new conditions are not interesting to me,” the media quoted him as saying.

On April 21, 2014, VKontakte LLC announced the dismissal of Pavel Durov from the post of general director of the social network in connection with his earlier resignation letter. Durov did not recognize his resignation as legal, since he withdrew his statement.

In his 2016 interview, Pavel Durov published ten lessons he learned in the process of creating VKontakte. According to him, “VK” was made quickly and efficiently, which put it above its competitors. Also, according to Durov, you need to pay attention to pleasant little things, since even insignificant but well-thought-out details “bring new loyal users.”

Durov admitted that when creating the site, he listened to the opinions of “elders and wise men,” but only wasted time, since “you should only listen to your intuition.” He noted that the VKontakte staff was small, but consisted of talented and motivated people: “such a team is more effective than an army of mercenaries working for a salary.”

According to Forbes, Pavel Durov sold his stake in VKontakte to the CEO of Megafon Ivan Tavrin.

Emigration of Pavel Durov

Pavel Durov received citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, but does not live there. The passport of this small state allows Durov to travel around the world freely. Durov constantly moves from country to country, never staying in one for more than two or three weeks. His team of programmers travels with him to Paris, Singapore and other cities, with whom he develops the Telegram messenger. Pavel reported that he was not a fan of the idea of ​​the state. “I am very happy now, living without any property and considering myself a citizen of the world.”

Photo: lukomore. org/Global Look Press

Pavel received a passport from the state of Saint Kitts and Nevis in 2014 after investing in the country’s economy; the news wrote that Durov donated 250 thousand dollars to the Sugar Industry Diversification Fund; a donation in this amount entitles him to automatic citizenship. Before this, the former general director of VKontakte conducted a survey on his Facebook page about which country to choose as a new place of residence.

Conflict around Telegram

After leaving Vkontakte, Pavel Durov did not stop developing new projects. Back in 2013, Durov introduced the Telegram messenger. The peculiarity of Durov’s project was the use of special correspondence encryption technology, which was invented by Nikolai Durov, and created a truly secure communication channel.

Telegram instant messaging system (Photo: Sergey Konkov/TASS)

Government representatives several times proposed blocking Telegram if it did not change its privacy policy, but Pavel remained adamant and officially stated that the messenger did not and would not give out users’ personal data.

Advisor to the President of Russia on Internet development issues German Klimenko believes that the creator of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov adheres to an “anarchic position” in his dispute with Roskomnadzor.

According to Klimenko, terrorists can use various messengers when planning terrorist attacks, but the management of all these messengers, unlike Durov, is ready for dialogue with the Russian authorities, TASS writes.

In April 2017, the creator of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov spoke about what innovations users should expect in the near future. Thus, it became known that through the messenger it will be possible to make commission-free financial transactions and make video calls. Payments will be made using the Stripe payment system.

June 23, 2017 head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov stated that the department will block the work of Telegram in Russia if its creators do not send the data necessary for the official inclusion of the messenger in the register of information dissemination organizers. In turn, Pavel Durov promised his users that Telegram would not give out their personal data to any of the world’s intelligence services.

On April 16, providers in Russia began blocking access to the Telegram messenger. Free Press reported that Alexander Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor, said that on behalf of the agency requests would be sent to the App Store and Google Play application stores demanding that the Telegram messenger be removed.

According to Durov, the decision to block the Telegram messenger will reduce Russia’s national security, since some of the personal data of Russians will go to the US-controlled WhatsApp and Facebook messengers. At the same time, Durov noted that the terrorist threat in Russia will remain at the same level, since “extremists will continue to use encrypted communication channels - in other instant messengers, or through VPN.”

“The quality of life of 15 million Russians will worsen, as Telegram without a VPN may be inaccessible at times. We consider the decision to block unconstitutional and will continue to defend the right to privacy of Russians’ correspondence,” the owner of Telegram summarized, as reported in the news. Durov also said that he would provide grants to everyone who would support services that can be used to bypass the blocking of the messenger.

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that Vladimir Putin is aware of the situation with the blocking of the Telegram messenger in the country.

“The question is rather a government one, but, of course, the president is aware of the decision made by the court to block,” RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.

Personal life of Pavel Durov

Durov adheres to libertarian political views. He supports vegetarianism and, according to some reports, has even become a vegan. In addition, Pavel does not drink alcohol and loves to travel.

Pavel is well-mannered, but unsociable and does not like to talk about his personal life. Nevertheless, photos of Durov often appeared on the Internet with various models.

In the photo: Alena Shishkova and Vika Odintcova (Photo: instagram.com/missalena.92 / instagram.com/viki_odintcova)

Pavel Durov was credited with having a relationship with Alena Shishkova And Vika Odintsova, according to his biography on the 24-SMI website, you can also often find references to Durov’s common-law wife Daria Bondarenko, who allegedly gave birth to Pavel two children. But Durov does not publish photos with this woman and children on Instagram and other social networks, keeping his personal life secret. One can only speculate about who Pavel Durov is dating from the news of the tabloids and the yellow press.

In the photo: Russian entrepreneur, programmer, billionaire, one of the creators of the social network VKontakte and the company of the same name; creator of the cross-platform Telegram messenger Pavel Durov (third from right) (Photo: lukomore.org/Global Look Press)

Pavel is inspired Ernesto Che Guevara And Steve Jobs, and according to his religious beliefs, according to some sources, he is a Pastafarian, according to others, a supporter of the Zen school.

In 2011, Pavel was ranked third in the Forbes list of “The 9 Most Unusual Russian Businessmen - Extravagant, Eccentrics and Eccentrics” for publishing a photo in which he made an obscene gesture in response to the efforts of a major shareholder of VKontakte - Mail.ru Group - to absorb this company. social network.

The scandal involving the throwing of banknotes folded in the form of paper airplanes from the window of the VKontakte central office caused no less resonance. Durov and VKontakte top managers threw about $2,000 out the window, according to his biography on Wikipedia. Pavel, commenting on the story in an interview, noted that “he threw money out of the window and was glad to see both the pandemonium and the reaction of people not because that he wanted to prove his wealth and importance, but because he saw surprise and joy on the faces of the townspeople.”

Durov’s tweet on May 9, 2012, which said that “67 years ago, Stalin defended Hitler’s right to repress the population of the USSR,” caused a great resonance. This quote caused outrage among many, Nikolay Valuev announced that he was closing his accounts on VKontakte. Writer Sergey Minaev called Durov scum.

Press Secretary of VKontakte Vladislav Tsyplukhin, commenting on the scandalous news, said that Durov respects Victory Day, and his entry is connected with the fact that “his grandfather went through the whole war,” “and in gratitude he was repressed without trial.”

Pavel Durov actively uses Instagram and posts his photos. If fans cannot find photos of his girls there, then Durov himself, in particular, is a lot half-naked on Instagram. Most often, Durov poses for photos in a black T-shirt. He also posts pictures from his numerous travels; recently on Instagram he posted an image of a seaplane in the Maldives, captioning the photo “seaplane - more freedom.”

In August, the founder of VKontakte and the Telegram messenger announced the launch of the #PutinShirtlessChallenge flash mob (roughly translated as “Take off your shirt like Putin”). Pavel Durov invited users to publish their photos with a naked torso “in response” to numerous photographs of the shirtless President of Russia. Durov himself accompanied the post with his photo without a T-shirt, taken, judging by the geolocation, in the city of Ubud on the island of Bali.

“My Instagram has had to seriously take things to the next level to keep up with the growing competition of shirtless Mr. Putin. If you're Russian, you need to join the #PutinShirtlessChallenge (or face oblivion). Putin’s two rules are no photoshop and no pumping [multiple repetitions of the exercise to make the muscles look more prominent]. Otherwise, you are not an “alpha,” Durov signed the photo.