VKontakte: who created the popular social network?

Every day more than 60 million people from different countries visit one of the most popular social networks - "VKontakte". Who created this project, and how did it happen? Considering the fact that the history of the creation of the service itself deserves attention, we suggest that you move to a few years ago and see where everything started and which path preceded so enchanting success. And the appearance of "VKontakte" is closely connected with the name of one of the brightest figures among the representatives of the new generation of entrepreneurs - Pavel Durov.

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

Childhood

Pavel Durov, 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 Semyonovich Durov, the author of a large number of scientific works.

For several years Durov the elder with his family lived in Turin (Italy), where the head of the family worked. It was there that Pavel began to go to school. Upon his return to his native Petersburg, he continued his education in a regular school, but not for too long - he too often had to tell the teachers about their incompetence, which the boy could not reconcile. However, the alternative was found quite quickly - in the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium such as Durov Jr., they recruited a whole group.

In 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-eclipsed him. Nikolai, the elder brother of Durov, a talented scholar, also won contests in computer science and mathematics.

Admission to the University

Immediately after the end of the gymnasium, Pavel Durov, following in the footsteps of his father, enters the St. Petersburg State University, the Faculty of Philology, and graduates in 2006. In his student years, the one who created the social network "VKontakte" did not go with the flow like most students, but actively used time for self-improvement and development.

The first steps towards success

A key moment in the entrepreneur's biography was approaching the appearance of VKontakte. Who created this social network, you already know. However, very few people know that even before her appearance, while studying at the university, Paul worked on several projects-predecessors. One of them is the site durov.com, which had no commercial benefit, but helped students who studied and lived in different parts of the northern capital to exchange opinions and ideas online.

However, soon Pavel let durov.com work on its own and moved attention to a new project - the forum of the university spbgu.ru, starting to spin it. The first thing Durov broke the portal into the faculty sites, then he began to initiate verbal battles, registered under different nicknames and argued with himself, and in real life organized beauty and design competitions. Meanwhile, attendance of the forum reached 3,000 people a day, the resource began to be enriched with new social functions. Users have the opportunity to blog, raise or lower each other's ratings. With extreme caution, Pavel applied to monetization, not allowing the appearance of banners on the site that are not related to education.

By the end of the training, Durov was firmly convinced that one had to deal with his own projects, and not translations from English, as stated in the diploma. By the way, he did not take the diploma himself, so as not to collide once again with the bureaucracy.

At the dawn of a new era

We continue to study the biography of the one who created the social. Network "VKontakte". Against the backdrop of his other ideas, Durov has long thought about the implementation of such a project, where all people could act under real names. Just at this critical moment in his mailbox was a letter from a man with whom Pavel lost contact 7 years ago - Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. A student at the prestigious American University of Tufts saw how social networks are rapidly gaining popularity, and gave the idea to an old acquaintance.

It was worth starting them a little later, and the chances of success would be much lower. In the spring of 2006, the number of users in domestic social networks continued to grow, but even the audience of the leader - the site "Odnoklassniki", hardly could reach up to 500 000 people.

Beginning of work

Own funds for the launch of the project in Vyacheslav was not. He had to borrow them from one of the companies of his father, Mikhail Mirilashvili, the owner of the St. Petersburg casino Conti and the shopping and entertainment complexes PetroMir. Mirilashvili-senior is one of the most famous businessmen of the northern capital of the 90s and is believed to be a good acquaintance of President Vladimir Putin.

Friends established the company, a controlling stake in which remained with Vyacheslav, and minority shareholders were his friends Pavel Durov and Lev Leviev. Durov was not at all embarrassed that the project could be associated with a foreign name. But he left himself a package of voting shares, sufficient to veto unsuitable decisions.

October 1, 2006 there was a key event - the company registered the domain vkontakte.ru. This day is considered to be Vkontakte's Birthday. Who created this site, you now know. It's time to talk about the development of the project itself.

At first the site was closed, and it was possible to register only by invitation. Registration was allowed only for those who indicated the real name and surname. The students of the capital's universities tried to convince each other to register, and in just a few days of November the newly emerged social network attracted more than 2,000 users. And the main motive was participation in the contest, which, again, was invented by Pavel Durov - the one who created the site "VKontakte". The one who was able to invite the greatest number of friends, was promised an original and dear at the time gift - a real iPod.

Already after 3 months, free registration was introduced, and the rapidly growing number of participants in the social network prompted organizers to move to more powerful servers and actively engage in improving the system.

Further development of VKontakte

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