10 years ago, the whole of St. Petersburg was talking about Pavel Durov’s project. Then all of Russia started talking about the new social network. The creator of VKontakte quickly connected new universities to the service, added functions, updated his own blog and had not yet thought about monetization.
VK of those times was the most resonant Russian IT startup of the 2000s - this site really united people for several years.
Users downloaded giant photo albums (Egypt 2008), enjoyed pirated videos (especially movies), painted graffiti on walls, and played apps (for example, the legendary Happy Farmer).
In short, people were not on VKontakte - they lived there.
But over the past five years the situation has completely changed. The inhabitants of VK have long ceased to be active, and the phrase “I only get in touch for the sake of music” can be heard more and more often.
According to visit statistics, VKontakte has not failed - there are still plenty of visits. Another thing is scary: it feels like the social network has fallen into an era of stagnation, when there are no more powerful and bold ideas left.
Below are five symptoms of monstrous stagnation.
No philosophy
Pavel Durov was for VKontakte about the same as Steve Jobs was for Apple: it is not surprising that in April 2014 he was also forced out of the company. The founder of the social network behaved as stubbornly as possible, boldly defended his ideals to shareholders and refused to cooperate with the authorities, but this did not matter.
The point was different: VKontakte users adored and believed in the person whose profile link always hung at the bottom of the page.
Durov actively promoted his own principles - honesty, modesty, and the desire for self-improvement. He regularly wrote about how to work on oneself, and sometimes published comics about how to properly develop Russia.
Pavel was a real preacher, the captain of a ship - with him, VKontakte followed a given route, but without him it lost its bearings.
The same Mark Zuckerberg publicly sets himself a new goal every year: for example, read 52 books, learn a new language, or run 365 miles. In this way, he motivates not only himself, but also the multimillion-dollar Facebook audience who follows the founder of this social network to take useful actions.
VKontakte has not had this for a long time. Today's general director of the social network, Boris Dobrodeev, is probably a talented manager, but he is not a missionary. Where is VKontakte heading now? Most likely, even Dobrodeev himself does not have an answer to this question.
No growth potential
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are, in theory, capable of conquering the entire planet. This won’t work for VKontakte: in Russia everyone is already connected, in the CIS almost everyone is connected, and outside the former Soviet republics no one really needs the social network.
At the same time, growth is perhaps the most important parameter for the development of a service. When it is there, a new audience comes and you can experiment with it. But when there is no growth, bosses only think about how not to lose current users.
VKontakte has already switched to the second model, and it is not clear what to do with it. It is possible (but far from certain) that Pavel Durov could open a window to Europe and the States, but the current leaders are definitely not capable of this.
No top bloggers
VKontakte was very active in protecting opinion leaders and even created a section with recommendations for profiles to follow. Alas, the writing audience still chose Facebook. Probably, the stereotype worked: VK is for schoolchildren, FB is for respectable business people.
It is worth admitting that the top management of VKontakte did not put up with this situation for a long time, but they chose the wrong strategy. For a year and a half (from 2014 to 2016), the marketing department under the leadership of Yaroslav Andreev did the same thing: contacting foreign stars and helping them create pages on VKontakte.
Celebrities agreed and wrote greeting posts for fans, but after that everything died down - the singers and actors themselves forgot where they had created a profile.
In response to Andreev’s actions, the already fired Pavel Durov gave an interview in which he criticized the promotion scheme through famous people.
“Word of mouth is much more effective,” noted the founder of VKontakte. It’s hard to argue with him - he spent zero cents on promoting Telegram to 100 million users.
No pirated content
In the 2000s, the RuNet was free: no one banned films, musicians cried over falling sales, and torrent trackers flourished. VKontakte became a hub for pirated files just in time: there you could listen to any track and watch any movie in good quality.
When Durov was a student, he had a strange habit of not paying for minibuses - according to his concepts, this transport was included in the travel package. If he was dropped off from a minibus, he got out, waited for the next one and got on there. Naturally, without planning to pay.
He transferred this principle to VKontakte: if a file is uploaded to the Internet, then everyone can use it, and certainly for free. Now, with such an approach, VK simply would not survive - it would either be blocked or closed.
To recoup the money spent on purchasing licenses, nasty advertising was added to the audio recordings - which, of course, forces users to look for other streaming services.
No experiments
In 2010, Pavel Durov replaced the usual wall with a microblog, provoked rallies and protests, but courageously defended his position - people came to terms with the new format. Now sources close to VKontakte say that inside the company they are wildly afraid of a repetition of the situation called “Durov, bring back the wall.”
Because of this, the bosses of the social network do not fundamentally change anything - they are afraid that any reform will lead to an outflow of the audience. Even the redesign last year was carried out in two stages: the management carefully studied user reactions. Now the site looks a little more modern, but this redesign did not bring anything new.
They are trying to develop VKontakte in such a way as not to offend, upset, offend or scare anyone away. This is the basis for projects like Snapster, a mediocre Instagram clone released five years later.
From time to time, topics are raised about how Pavel Durov’s business, that is, VKontakte, was squeezed out of Russia. And it seems like for his political beliefs.
So, Durov sold his business himself, long before any political statements. Moreover, he has always been a libertarian, whom even the most stubborn liberals consider to be completely inadequate.
VKontakte LLC was created in 2007, Durov initially had only 20% of shares in it. 70% belonged to the Mirilashvili family - 60% to their son (Durov’s classmate), 10% to Mishiko himself. Who owned the Conti Group, that is, a chain of casinos in St. Petersburg and throughout the country. The man was no ordinary man, for which he ended up in prison on a kidnapping conviction. He was released in 2009 after winning a complaint to the ECHR (sic!). But he became a member of VKontakte LLC while still convicted. It was with his money that the network was created.
When everything started to take off and VKontakte no longer resembled a Russified Facebook account, additional investments were needed. Durov, naturally, did not have that kind of money; Mirilashvili, with his problems, also did not really dream of investing his funds. Both father and son sold part of their share of Mail.Ru Group, leaving themselves 40 and 6.01 percent, respectively, plus they signed an option for another 7.5%. Mirilashvili had a conflict with Durov over this, and Pavlik even suspended the page of his former classmate on Vktontaktik. Terrible revenge.
But in the end, by the end of the year, Durov himself sold part of the share to Mail.ru, reducing his participation to 12%, while Mail.ru owned almost 40% of Vkontakte. Mirilashvili and Leviev (minority founder) sell their shares to the UCP fund, accumulating 48% of the shares. Durov, who was at war with Mail.ru at the time, at the beginning of 2014 sold his remains not to UCP, which could oppose itself to Mail.ru, but to Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin. This was most likely due to the fact that a potential ally conducted an audit of the company and found out that Durov spent Vkontakte’s money (that is, not his own, but investors’ money) on the development of his product - the Telegram messenger.
By that time, Pavel is completely going crazy. Then he throws stacks of five-thousand-dollar bills from the tower window of the Singer house on Nevsky Prospekt, commenting on this, saying, look how the cattle are struggling and collecting. Either he rides a traffic police officer on the hood of his car, and then escapes pursuit on his own two feet through the courtyards.
Tavrin, who saw what he fit into, sells his share to Mail.ru, which has accumulated more than half of the shares, effectively becoming the managing member of the company. And when Durov submits his resignation on April 1, 2014, it is granted, despite the fact that on April 3 Pavlik changed his mind. But the train has already left, the mailrushers installed their own director, protecting the business from inadequacy. The UCP tried to reverse the appointment, but it was clear that legally the main participant had his right, and the court would only delay the moment of change of power. In this situation, the fund sells its share, and Mail.ru becomes the sole owner of Vkontakte.
Durov flees the country, loudly declaring that the FSB is pursuing him. The FSB was somewhat stunned by such a situation and, they say, even wondered: shouldn’t it really be necessary to pursue. Pavel has since received (bought, it’s possible there) citizenship of the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, and has been wandering around the world, fearing kidnapping.
So, who in this whole story will show me the moment in which Durov’s business was “squeezed out”? In which he initially had only 20% and a director’s position, which was built with money from the owner of the country’s largest casino chain.
It's all about DurovThe founder of VKontakte sold his share
Pavel Durov sold his share in the social network VKontakte, which he founded. On January 24, 2014, 52 percent of the company came under the control of Alisher Usmanov, and another 48 percent remained with the UCP fund. Durov retained the post of general director, but his final departure is only a matter of time. This is confirmed by sources close to the management of VKontakte. Lenta.ru recalls the history of the country's main social network.
The history of VKontakte can be divided into three periods. The first is the shortest, when Pavel Durov’s social network was a clone of an American site that was not particularly well-known to anyone. The second is the most romantic, when the social network turned into the most popular resource on the Runet, forever, as it seemed, overtaking that same American site. And the third is the most dramatic, when this site was taken away from its creators within a year.
A lot has been written about the success story of VKontakte and Pavel Durov personally - posts, articles, and even entire books. The main thing, in a nutshell, is best formulated this way: Durov was able to build the most convenient, most lively and most necessary website. When VKontakte appeared, the question of what a social network is and what it is needed for was, in general, open. Having once taken Facebook as a basis, Durov, nevertheless, built his website from scratch, independently groping and guessing directions for its development.Little is known about the personality of Pavel Durov - mostly myths and anecdotes. It is known that Durov is a vegetarian. It is known that he can afford - literally - throw money away. It is known that he can afford to get to his office in the historical center of St. Petersburg in a white Mercedes. And that this Mercedes may be able to get away with it unscathed.
In 2006, the VKontakte team manually compiled a database of all Russian universities, updating all names and ensuring that each college was renamed into an academy. Then I added functions - from funny graffiti to audio recordings, news feeds and communities from which the current publics grew. It was VKontakte that explained to Russian users that the main thing on the social network is not the search for lost classmates, but the exchange of information.
As a result, VKontakte became one of the most successful Russian projects of the 2000s, and Pavel Durov became almost the most successful Russian manager, despite the fact that he did not fundamentally care about financial performance. For several years, he has argued that the most important thing for a social network is user loyalty. That the surest way to get a loyal audience is to take care of their interests. That the interests of the user are higher than the interests of investors, copyright holders, politicians, and security officials.
In a sense, the history of VKontakte is the story of the confrontation between Durov’s development team and these four groups. And Durov, who knew how to adjust where necessary and be rude where necessary, acted quite successfully in this field. You can show your tongue to the intelligence services. Deal with the presidential administration, so that no one will undermine - please. Why, Durov knew how to explain to users what was best for them.
The hardest thing, as it turned out, was with copyright holders and investors. For the time being, both of them could simply be ignored, but in the end, the history of VKontakte - at least the history of VKontakte under the leadership of Pavel Durov - ended in 2013, when fighters against piracy and shareholders (although others also participated in attacks on the company to the best of their ability).
VKontakte is a non-public company, at least as far as communication with the press is concerned. Durov, as befits an eccentric billionaire, can afford to talk to journalists only when it is convenient for him. News about changes in the fate of VKontakte arrived sporadically and were commented on within the company extremely reluctantly. People started talking about how fateful these changes were only in April 2013, when the co-founders of the social network, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, sold their shares in the company to United Capital Partners.
Actually, it was from this moment that the conflict, visible from the outside, began between the general director of VKontakte and its shareholders. UCP, which received 48 percent of the company, immediately began to make claims to the management of the social network - from justified ones (Durov spends company resources on third-party projects) to conspiracy theories (Durov cooperates with American intelligence services).
The main concerns then were related to the fact that the owner of UCP, Ilya Shcherbovich, is simultaneously on the boards of directors of Rosneft and Transneft. However, the fate of the social network was predetermined back in 2007, when Yuri Milner bought a stake in VKontakte. Subsequently, his share came under the control of Alisher Usmanov - and it was his people who ultimately took over the social network.
In April 2013, when it became known that the UCP fund had acquired almost half of the shares of VKontakte, it seemed that this event came as a surprise to Alisher Usmanov. It is no secret that he himself was not averse to purchasing these securities, but was in no hurry, believing that he had no competitors. Durov’s package, thus, turned out to be a kind of “pendulum” - in the event of a potential conflict between shareholders, it was the founder of VKontakte who could decide the fate of this or that decision, joining either Usmanov or Shcherbovich. Durov’s relationship with the latter did not immediately work out, so it is not surprising that the package eventually went to structures close to Usmanov. How two businessmen with considerable lobbying resources will share VKontakte without Durov is an open question.Usmanov, who owns 39.9 percent of VKontakte, entrusted the management of his shares to Durov, did not make any claims against him and did not comment on the UCP attacks. Until December 2013, when he unexpectedly spoke out in the spirit that Pavel Durov, of course, is a gifted young man, but the interests of investors are above all. Obviously, it was at this time that all the decisions were made - at least, Vedomosti's sources claim that it was in December that Durov sold his 12 percent of VKontakte to Ivan Tavrin, the general director of Megafon, which is controlled by Alisher Usmanov.
The events of January 2014 in this case are already a consequence of the December decision. Rumors circulating for many months about the departure of developers from VKontakte, led by Durov’s brother Nikolai, were supplemented by the announcement that the vice president and financial director, Ilya and Igor Perekopsky, who had worked in the company with the Durov brothers since its founding, had left the team. Ilya’s place was taken by Dmitry Sergeev, the former general director of Kommersant, also controlled by Usmanov. The new financial director was Alexander Tretyakov, who previously worked at Yota, which, through Megafon, belongs to the same Usmanov. Relations with investors will be handled by Boris Dobrodeev, the son of the head of VGTRK, who previously headed the Internet asset management department at the Usmanov holding.
That, in fact, is the whole story. The management of the new generation, who created VKontakte, was completely forced out of the company by hired managers in a few months of 2013 - nothing personal, just business. In recent months, the history of VKontakte has been reminiscent of a classic plot from American literature: the capitalists on the board of directors are step by step taking away the company he has grown from the hero; all that remains is to wait for the final vote.
Pavel Durov still remains the general director of VKontakte, calls Ivan Tavrin a friend and
Pavel Durov terminated his powers in VKontakte as the general director of the social network, VKontakte executive director Dmitry Sergeev told Forbes.
On Monday, April 21, 30 days expired from the moment Durov submitted his resignation at his own request - the period provided for by Russian law for withdrawing the application. According to Sergeev, it was not legally withdrawn, but posts“VKontakte”, in which Durov, do not have any legal force.
“The only possible legitimate solution in this regard is to satisfy this application, and in the conditions of a shareholder conflict, the company is simply obliged to act strictly within the framework of legal norms,” the VKontakte press service quotes Sergeev. In this press release, Sergeev also expresses the hope that Durov and the shareholders “will agree on his further participation in the development of the network and in the formation of the product strategy.”
The company currently does not have an active CEO. He will be selected at a board meeting, the date of which has not yet been set. The candidacy of Pavel Durov for the post of general director may also be considered, Sergeev told Forbes. At the moment, the operational management of the company is carried out by Sergeev himself and Deputy General Director Boris Dobrodeev.
In addition, the press release indicated that the position of “Chief Network Architect” was created at VKontakte. “I am sure that the best solution would be to offer it to Pavel. It will not require his involvement in the operational business and constant participation in current processes, which has become difficult for Pavel, given international projects and lawsuits, but will maintain the connection between Pavel and the company,” leads press service of Sergeev's words.
Pavel Durov himself later stated on his VKontakte page that he learned about his dismissal “from the press,” and the shareholders of the social network “didn’t have the courage” to tell him about it directly. “The Board of Directors of VKontakte today *suddenly* discovered that the withdrawal of my resignation letter from the post of CEO on April 3 (which they had previously publicly accepted) turned out to be “not in accordance with all the rules,” so I am automatically relieved of my position. As far as I understand , this opaque position is common to all shareholders,” Durov wrote.
He also told Forbes that the withdrawal of the resignation letter could be regarded as incorrectly executed because “it is an email, not a scan with a signature” and clarified that “he will look into it.”
In addition, Durov stated that now VKontakte “comes under the complete control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov.” “Probably, in Russian conditions something like this was inevitable, but I’m glad that we lasted 7 and a half years. We accomplished a lot. And part of what has been done cannot be reversed,” the message states.
Thus, for the first time, Durov openly announced his participation (No. 1 in the ranking of the most expensive top managers in Russia according to Forbes, total compensation - $50 million) in the leadership of VKontakte. Previously, only the author of the book “The Durov Code” Nikolai Kononov, citing anonymous sources, said that the president of Rosneft oversaw the deal to sell shares of the social network to the UCP fund. In turn, the elder brother of the creator of the social network and former technical director of VK Nikolai Durov in early January said that Sechin and Usmanov could liquidate VKontakte.
Pavel Durov said on April 1 that he was no longer interested in formal positions in the leadership of the social network for the post of general director of VKontakte. He explained this decision by the fact that freedom of action in managing the company was greatly reduced after the UCP fund, which was a social network owned by businessmen Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, became a shareholder of VKontakte in April 2013.
However, two days later, Durov sent a letter to members of the board of directors withdrawing his resignation letter. On my
Boris Dobrodeev has been appointed general director of VKontakte, who has actually been acting as general director since April of this year, the company reported. Dobrodeev’s job responsibilities will include developing a strategy for the social network; he will be responsible for its financial and commercial activities.Boris Dobrodeev, the son of the head of VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev and a member of the board of directors of Mail.ru Group, until his last appointment was the acting general director of VKontakte. He joined the management team of the social network on January 23, 2014, taking the post of First Deputy General Director for Investor Relations. Before joining VKontakte Dobrodeev worked for the company of Alisher Usmanov - was a member of the board of directors of Mail.ru Group.
The head of the VKontakte development department, Andrey Rogozov, has been appointed to the position of chief operating officer and will head all product and technological areas of the company’s activities, including development, infrastructure, network, technical support, international development and marketing. Dmitry Sergeev, who was the executive director of VKontakte, will become the general director of the holding company VK.COM, ITAR-TASS reports.
“Today, appointments were made that we had already proposed to make earlier, before increasing the share in VKontakte to 100%, and which could not be implemented due to contradictions between shareholders. We are confident that these appointments and the end of the period of instability will make it possible to implement our plans projects and initiatives that the VKontakte team has in the best possible way,” the press service of Mail.ru Group reported.
Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group became 100% owner VKontakte since September 16, after it completed a deal to buy out 48.01% of the shares of the social network from the UCP fund for $1.47 billion.
Mail.ru Group noted that the deal will put an end to all litigation between the UCP fund, Mail.ru and Pavel Durov. The powers of the network founder Pavel Durov as general director of VKontakte were terminated on April 21. Durov's resignation was sought by the UCP fund, which became a shareholder of VKontakte in April 2013, having bought a stake in the social network from co-founders Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (about 40%) and Lev Leviev (8%).
Mirilashvili and Leviev sold their stakes without notifying Mail.ru Group and Pavel Durov. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but Durov stated that it was illegal, since according to Russian law, sellers are required to first offer a buyout to existing shareholders, that is, Durov and Mail.ru Group.
UCP also had complaints against Durov; the new investor was not happy that the head of the company spent a lot of time on personal projects. Durov, being the general director of VKontakte, in parallel developed own Telegram messenger to the detriment of the interests of the social network.
Due to a conflict with UCP, Durov first had to sell his stake in VKontakte to MegaFon CEO Ivan Tavrin, and then leave the company.
In April, Pavel Durov wrote on
