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 suggest you go back a few years and see how it all began and which path preceded such an enchanting success. And the appearance of VKontakte is closely connected with the name of one of the most prominent figures among the representatives of a 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 so 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 Semenovich Durov, the author of a large number of scientific works.
For several years, Durov Sr. and his family lived in Turin (Italy), where the head of the family worked. It was there that Paul began to go to school. Upon returning to his native St. 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, with which the boy could not put up with. However, an alternative was found quite quickly - in the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium such as Durov Jr., they scored a whole group.
In school, Paul sat at the first desk, often alone, received high scores and was considered a very erudite child, but the “stars” of the class — the winners of various olympiads — overshadowed him. Nikolai, the elder brother of Durov, a talented scientist, also won competitions in computer science and mathematics.
University Admission
Immediately after graduating from high school, Pavel Durov, following in his father's footsteps, enters St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Philology, and graduates in 2006. In his student years, the one who created the VKontakte social network did not go with the flow like most students, but actively used time for self-improvement and development.
The first steps towards success
The key moment in the entrepreneur's biography was approaching - the appearance of VKontakte. Who created this social network, you already know. However, few people know that even before her appearance, during his studies at the university, Pavel worked on several predecessor projects. One of them was durov.com, which did not have any commercial benefits, but helped students who studied and lived in different areas of the northern capital to exchange opinions and ideas online.
However, Paul soon put the work of durov.com to its own devices and moved his attention to a new project - the university forum spbgu.ru, starting to spin it up. First of all, Durov broke the portal onto the faculty sites, then began to initiate verbal battles, registered under various nicknames and argued with himself, and in real life organized beauty and design contests. Meanwhile, the attendance of the forum reached 3,000 people per day, the resource began to be enriched with new social functions. Users got the opportunity to blog, raise or lower each other's rating. With extreme caution, Pavel was monetizing, not allowing banners that were not related to education to appear on the site.
By the end of his studies, Durov was firmly convinced that he needed to engage in his own projects, and not translations from English, as indicated in the diploma. By the way, he never took the diploma himself so as not to run into the bureaucracy once again.
At the dawn of a new era
We continue to study the biography of the one who created the social. VKontakte network. Against the background of his other ideas, Durov had been thinking for a long time about the implementation of such a project, where all people could speak under real names. Just at this turning point, a letter came from his mailbox from a person with whom Pavel lost touch 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 friend.
As soon as they started a little later, 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 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 the companies of his father, Mikhail Mirilashvili, the owner of the St. Petersburg casino "Conti" and shopping and entertainment complexes "PetroMir". Mirilashvili Sr. is one of the most famous businessmen in 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 retained a majority stake , and his friends Pavel Durov and Lev Leviev became minority shareholders . Durov was not at all embarrassed that the project could be connected with someone else's name. But he left himself a package of voting shares, sufficient to veto objectionable decisions.
On October 1, 2006, a key event occurred - the company registered the vkontakte.ru domain. This day is considered the birthday of VKontakte. 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 registration was possible only by invitation. Registration was allowed only for those who indicated their real name and surname. Students of metropolitan universities vied with each other to register, and in just a few November days, the newly-emerged social network attracted more than 2,000 users. And the main motive was the 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 greatest number of friends was promised an original and expensive gift at that time - a real iPod.
After 3 months, 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 engage in improving the system.
Further development of VKontakte
Now you know how the VKontakte social network appeared, who created it and continued to develop it. Nowadays, the site is constantly changing and improving. It is no exaggeration to say that VKontakte has become a whole world for those who like to chat, make new friends, listen to music, watch videos, play games, read news and interesting notes.