Pavel Valerevich Durov

In the summer of 2006, Durov realized that his student sites, despite their popularity, were not effective in bringing students together, as many hid their names under nicknames and real faces under avatars. Students could communicate with each other online, without even suspecting that they were studying in the same group.

Then he started looking for another form for the student’s site. Later, an old friend of Pavel, after studying in the United States, presented him with an Internet project for university students in the United States: Facebook, where users published their real names and photos in the profiles. Durov decided to introduce a similar concept of the site in Russia, that is, real people with real names. The original name of the future project, Student.ru, was replaced by Pavel in VKontakte, because, as he said, “sooner or later, we all graduate.”

Durov started the project immediately after graduation. Pavel and his brother, Nikolai Durov, founded the limited liability company VKontakte and launched a beta version of the network of the same name, whose domain, vkontakte.ru, was registered, according to official data, on October 1, 2006. At first, the site was closed; in other words, it was possible to register only after a personal invitation. But at the end of the year, registration became free. In a few days, the network attracted more than 2,000 users.