| URL | vkontakte.ru, vk.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Social Networking |
| Registration | Open to everyone with a cell phone |
| Available language(s) | Originally Russian, now available in 67 languages |
| Owner | Doraview Limited |
| Created by | Pavel Durov |
| Launched | September 2006 |
| Alexa rank |
401 (January 2012[update])[1] 526 (October 2011[update])[1]455 (September 2011[update])[1] as vk.com |
VKontakte (Russian: ВКонтакте; branded internationally as VK[2]) is a Russian social network service popular in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. VK offers a striking similarity in design and functionality to its American rival Facebook, and as such has been described as a "Facebook clone."[3] Like Facebook, VK allows users to message contacts publicly or privately, create groups and events, share and tag images and video, and play browser-based games. One distinction of VK is its integration with torrent filesharing technology which allows users to share larger files.
As of February 2011[update], VK has around 135 million accounts, but has acknowledged that it has a major spam problem,[4] and no longer advertises user numbers on its homepage. VKontakte is ranked 43 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites and is the fourth most visited website in Russia.[5] In May 2011 vkontakte.ru and vk.com were visited by 23.6 million and 4.9 million people from Russia aged 12–54.[6]
"В Контакте" (V Kontákte) translates to English as "In Contact" or "In Touch".
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Founder Pavel Durov launched VKontakte for beta testing in September 2007, having just graduated from St Petersburg State University. On 1 October 2006 the domain name vkontakte.ru was registered. User registration was initially limited to within university circles exclusively by invitation, but the site still grew quickly. In February 2007 the site reached a user base of over 100,000 and was recognized as the second largest player in Russia's nascent social network market. In the same month the site was subjected to a severe DDoS attack which knocked it briefly offline. The user base reached 1 million in July 2007, and 10 million in April 2008. In December 2008 VK overtook rival Odnoklassniki as Russia's most popular social networking service.
On 6 October 2009 the site was launched in 20 international languages. In December 2009 the site had a user base of 50 million, and by November 2010 that had risen to 100 million. On 11 February 2011 VK reverted to user registration by invitation only.
"LLC V Kontakte" was incorporated on 19 January 2007 with shareholders Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (60%), Pavel Durov (20%), Mikhail Mirilashvili (10%), and Lev Leviyev (10%).[7]
The company is now 100% owned by offshore firm Doraview Limited, based in the British Virgin Islands.[7] The full current ownership is not in the public domain, although Mail.Ru Group (formerly Digital Sky Technologies) have publicly acknowledged a stake of 39.99%.[8]
The site's functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends' pages and news, photo and video hosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Because almost all of the information provided by users is subject to easy search, people are able to look for those from the same school or with similar interests, place of birth, etc. New features are added to the website from time to time, such as the ability to host audio files within groups and personal pages; an "Opinions" function, which allows users to express, anonymously, personal thoughts about a friend on the network; "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", which contain Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms, etc.
VKontakte, like many other major social networks, uses the XMPP protocol as its basis for its chat and presence service.
Users have the ability to control the availability of their content. Users can hide or reveal pictures, videos, and entire pages. Users can also choose who can invite them to join groups, write personal messages, write on their wall, and so forth.
In September 2009 VK launched vk.com and translated the site into twelve international languages in an effort to expand the site's user base beyond Russia and the former Soviet Union.[9] The site now has 67 languages available, including one novelty language dubbed "V Soyuze," which uses Soviet-era language and a red interface branded with the Soviet hammer and sickle.
On July 30, 2009, the media reported that a text file, containing the data of 135,000 users, had spread across the Internet. Experts commented that the file contained passwords stolen from victims who had input their data at the phisher's website. Later, Kaspersky Lab said that the user list was collected by the Trojan Trojan.Win32.VkHost.an.[10][11]
According to Alexa.com Vkontakte is one of the most visited websites in Russia and Ukraine. It holds the 4th position in Russia[12] and the 3rd in Ukraine.[13]
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