Memory. Pavel Durov

On October 10, Pavel Durov, one of the creators of the VKontakte social network and the company of the same name, was born.

Personal business

Pavel Valerievich Durov was born in Leningrad, but he went to the first grade in Turin, where his father worked for several years. Returning to Leningrad, Pavel did not study at a regular school for long and entered the academic gymnasium (in -depth study of all subjects plus four foreign languages).

At the age of 11, he became interested in programming (once he changed the screensaver of all school computers to a photograph of a computer science teacher with the signature “Must Die”). Durov was deprived of access to computers, he hacked passwords. In 2001, he graduated from academic gymnasium (with honors). In 2002 he entered the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University with a degree in English philology and translation.

He received a scholarship in the Government of the Russian Federation, and then the scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation. Durov three times was a “Potaninsky scholarshipist”, won at the Olympiads in computer science, linguistics and design. He graduated from the university in 2006 with a red diploma (which, according to rumors, did not take it).

What is famous

Immediately after the university, he created VKontakte. VKontakte is the largest social network in Runet, the first in popularity site on the territory of Belarus, the second in Russia, the third in Ukraine, the fifth in Kazakhstan, the 28th in the world, which is estimated at $ 1.5 billion. For example, in September 2012 the daily audience of the site was an average of 22 million people. In September of the same year, more than 140 million users registered on VKontakte, and in terms of speed of its growth, the social network broke all Runet records.

What you need to know about

Even at St. Petersburg State University, Durov created non-profit Internet projects: Durov.com and Spbgu.ru. The first is the electronic library of the university essays, as well as a place for the exchange of ideas and opinions of students; The second is the University forum, where he was often the initiator of various discussions. There, in particular, he argued with himself under various accounts.

By the summer of 2006, he realized that his student sites, for all his popularity, were ineffective in the unification of students, since many hid their names under nicknames, and real faces under the avatars: students could communicate with each other on the Web, without even suspecting that they were studying in the same group. Then he began to look for a different form for a student site.

Later, Paul's friend, who returned from the United States, introduced him to Facebook, in which users posted their real names and photographs in profiles. Durov decided to introduce such a concept in Russia - "real people under real names." The initial name of the project - “Student.ru” - was replaced by VKontakte, because “sooner or later we all become graduates”.

Pavel and his brother Nikolai Durov founded a VKontakte limited liability company and launched a beta version of the network of the same name, whose domain-vkontakte.ru was, according to official figures, registered on October 1, 2006. At first, the site was closed, but already at the end of the year, registration became free.

In a few days, the network attracted more than 2000 users; The reason is the competition - iPod to one who will invite more friends. A rapidly growing number of users forced the authors to change the server and improve their software. Durov repeatedly came offers on the purchase of his product, but he preferred to attract investors. Already in 2007, VKontakte became the third most popular site in Runet, in 2008 the network occurred, and the number of users exceeded 20 million. In 2010, the company entered the Zinger house, which is located on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the Kazan Cathedral.

Direct speech

Pavel Durov

“When I looked at the people who go to the veneer work in offices every day, I did not imagine such a scenario in my life. The leadership of Internet projects, the organization of university events have accustomed to independence and the thought that I have no direct authorities, ”Pavel Durov.

“Pavel, unlike most programmers, understood what a schoolboy and student want from life and how it looks in design. He knew how to look through the eyes of a man who has an old browser and a slow Internet, ”Oleg Andreev, one of the creators of VKontakte.

10 facts about Pavel Durov

In 2007, the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper Durov was recognized as one of the winners in the competition “Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2007”.
For 2011, Durov, who has a condition of 7.9 billion rubles, ranked 350th in the ranking of Russian billionaires.
In December 2011, Pavel and the head of the DST Global Foundation Yuri Milner launched a StartFellows charity project, which is aimed at financing startups selected on a competitive basis. By the end of December, six startups received 25 thousand dollars each.
On January 24, 2012, at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich, during a joint performance with the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wayles Pavel, he promised to donate one million dollars online. In March, the transfer of the promised amount of money to her account was confirmed. “We are very appreciated by Mr. Durov’s generous proposal and thank for the understanding of the Grant Considering Procedure,” said the representative of the Vikimedia Foundation Jay Walsh.
Some Western media called Paul Russian Mark Zuckerberg. In 2011, Pavel fell into the third place of the Forbes list “9 of the most unusual Russian businessmen - Buds, Eccentrods and Eccentrics” for publishing a photograph in which he demonstrates an obscene gesture in response to the efforts of a major shareholder of VKontakte - Mail.ru Group - to absorb this social network.
Durov was in 42th place in the list of the most cited bloggers in the Russian media in the first half of 2012, according to the results of the study of the Mediassogy company.
When it became known about the search for Facebook employees in Russia, Durov said that VKontakte employees do not switch to employment to another network, since there are no “fools” and Facebook is a “drowning vessel”. Previously, he already called the American social network "a stronghold of pedoliberals", and in May 2012 on his Twitter called it a "cheap fake."
On May 27, 2012, the top managers of VKontakte, led by Durov, threw airplanes with five thousandth banknotes attached to them from the window of the central office of their company in St. Petersburg. Soon a crowd gathered under the windows, which even arranged a fight for this money. Paul later explained that he wanted to create a festive atmosphere on the City Day with his act. Durov then scattered a total of about $ 2,000. It was also reported about the joy with which he watched the reaction of the crowd. According to eyewitnesses, Paul shot what was happening on camera.
On April 16, Pavel Durov announced that on December 13, 2013, the FSB demanded from the leadership of the network to transfer the personal information of the organizers of the Euromaidan groups, to which he refused. In December, a deal was held to sell a share in the company. According to him, the jurisdiction of Russia does not apply to Ukrainian users of the VKontakte social network. Durov noted that the distribution of these Ukrainian users would be not only a violation of the law, but also a crime before millions of users from Ukraine.
On April 22, 2014 it became known that Pavel Durov went abroad and was not going to return to Russia. He reported this in an interview with TechCrunch.

Materials about Pavel Durov

Twitter Durov https://twitter.com/durov

FB Durova https://www.facebook.com/durov

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