Type of site
|
Social networking service |
---|---|
Available in | 83 languages |
Owner | Vkontakte Ltd |
Created by | Pavel Durov |
Revenue | RUB121.4 million (2013) |
Parent | Mail.Ru Group |
Website | vk |
Alexa rank | 14 (November 2016[update]) |
Registration | Required |
Users | 350+ million |
Launched | October 10, 2006 |
Current status | Active |
VK (VKontakte; Russian: ВКонта́кте, meaning InContact) is one of the largest European online social networking services, based in Russia. It is available in several languages, and is especially popular among Russian-speaking users. VK allows users to message each other publicly or privately, to create groups, public pages and events, share and tag images, audio and video, and to play browser-based games.
As of June 2016[update], VK had at least 369 million accounts. VK is ranked 14 (as of November 2016) in Alexa's global Top 500 sites. It is the second most popular website in Russia, behind Yandex. According to SimilarWeb, VK is the 4th most popular website in the world. As of October 2016, VK ranked as the second most popular social networking website in Israel, after Facebook.
VKontakte was incorporated on 19 January 2007 as a Russian limited liability company. Founder Pavel Durov launched VKontakte for beta testing in September 2006, having just graduated from St Petersburg State University. The following month, 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 briefly put it 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.