Vkontakte.ru

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Vkontakte.ru
URL	http://vkontakte.ru/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Social Networking
Registration	Required
Available language(s)	Russian, Ukrainian, English (in beta)
Owner	Doraview Limited
Created by	Pavel Durov
Launched	September 2006

Vkontakte.ru (Russian: В Контакте) is the most popular social networking site in Russia,^[1] and the most visited Russian site overall (even more than searching engines such as Yandex).^[2] Because of its design and functionality, Vkontakte.ru is often claimed to be a clone of Facebook,^[3] accommodating not only a very similar concept, but also a comparable business model.^[4] As of May 2008, the network has more than twelve million users.^[5]

Since 2007, major Russian companies have been sending job offers via Vkontakte.ru.^[6] Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, more and more people are joining, many of whom are youths of various age groups.

1 Functionality
2 Privacy
3 Popularity
4 April Fool's Day joke
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

[edit] Functionality

The site's functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends pages and news, a photo- and videohosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Almost all of the information provided by users is a subject to easy search, therefore people are able to look for those with similar interest, school, places of birth, etc. New features are being added to the website from time to time, such as ability to host audiofiles in groups and personal pages, "Opinions" function allowing one to express personal thoughts about a friend on the network anonymously, "Offers" to ask people whether one wants to do something together with the user, "Questions" to answer the question that is asked by user and "Applications", containing Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms etc.

[edit] Privacy

Users have the ability to control the availability of their content, for instance it is possible to hide one's pictures, videos, and entire pages. Users can also choose who can invite them to groups, write personal messages, write on their wall, and so forth. It is claimed that the site content is not indexed by the search engines

[edit] Popularity

The number of registered users of the site is rising all the time. According to Alexa.com the site is the most popular and most visited site in Russia and Ukraine. And has ranking position of 2 and 3 in Kazakhstan and Belarus, respectively. It is at number 36 in world traffic rankings.

[edit] April Fool's Day joke

At the April Fool's Day the alternative interface and language has been added. The language that has been added is nostalgic. Instead of VKontakte (which literally means In Contact), which is normal name for the site, the name has been changed to VSojuze (In Union). A picture of Hammer and sickle has been added next to the logo. The language of the pages has changed as well, to phrases which normally were used in Soviet Russia. Instead of My Friends, the button said My Comrades and so on. Although this was April Fool's Day joke, the user can still change the language and interface to the nostalgic, in their language settings.