Vlad Tsyplukhin: “Sometimes Durov’s calmness annoys me” The editors of “Chaskor” learned about the characteristics of the “VKontakte” audience. Vladislav Tsyplukhin: “Durov returned to Russia Pavel Vyacheslavovich Tsyplukhin disappeared

Co-founder of the Publishing House "Committee" Vladislav Tsyplukhin said that the creator of VKontakte and Telegram Pavel Durov has returned to Russia and is developing his own messenger. He lives in St. Petersburg.

Update from 18:30, 07.11.2014

On the same day, the company announced that Boris Dobrodeev, the son of the head of VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev, became the new general director of VKontakte. Developer Andrey Rogozov became the operational director of the social network. In addition, the founder of the social network Pavel Durov, the UCP Foundation and Mail.Ru Group promised to withdraw claims from each other and withdraw lawsuits.

On October 10, Durov announced that he had started a blog on Medium. At the time of publication of the note, there was one post called “Such title”.

On October 19, Durov asked to recommend a conference where he could give a presentation about a certain update for Telegram. He suggested Web Summit (November 4–6, 2014) and Global Mobile Internet Conference (December 1–3, 2014) as his options.

On November 5, Telegram announced two bots in the messenger. Its winner will receive 300 thousand dollars. On the same day it became known that for 500 million rubles.

Over 800,000 people signed up for Telegram within the last 20 hours.

On the Internet, unlike show business or politics, there is a change
generations is happening more often: bloggers with thousands of people are rapidly
they are losing ground to teenagers, and they only remember what chat is
veterans of the network. Facebook's intellectual hegemony is coming
towards the end - VKontakte has ceased to be a network for schoolchildren, heroes
of our time is worth looking there. Sobaka.ru magazine chose
supernovas that turned the web upside down and forced
look at yourself the whole RuNet.

// // //
// // Vladislav Tsyplukhin

Vladislav Tsyplukhin

Just a week ago I was the head of the press service
"In contact with". Thanks to him, it became widely known in Russia
about a new form of public relations, when traditional media are moving away
takes a backseat, and communication plays a fundamentally important role
on social networks and employee identity
or the head of the company.

Isn’t it difficult to leave a company for which you not only worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but also believed in it?

Yes, VKontakte is such a good sect. However, I continue to believe in Pavel Durov’s team. Only now can I sincerely say that I consider Facebook a mammoth that sooner or later will become a hostage to its slowness.

World domination - will it happen?

Pavel Durov has everything for this. Personally, since childhood, I have liked stories where a small army defeats the “big evil”. Like the Spartans, although Durov did not like this analogy: “They finished poorly.”

In Russia today there are only two Internet companies that are moving forward - VKontakte and Yandex. But everyone is against them. And even the state. For example, federal channels promote Facebook and Twitter; they fundamentally ignore Durov’s company, no matter how hard I try to negotiate with them.

Let's start from the beginning - where were you born and studied?

Born in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, in the city of Prokhladny. It was listed on my VKontakte profile for a long time, and everyone began to think that I was being humorous about St. Petersburg, so I had to remove this column. I came here to study at Finek.

During an internship in Germany, I noticed a project in the form of an organization at a university that helped students find part-time jobs in large companies. I remembered it, but didn’t implement it right away.

And one day the general director of the cable company where I worked decided to play a joke on me: he asked if it would be hard for me to get the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper to write about me. I tried calling the section about aspiring entrepreneurs and said that I had my own business, although at that time it was not ready yet. Within a week I made a website and went for an interview. Then I received an order from the “DP” itself: I selected interns for their journalism school, and having nothing else to do, I went to this school myself. After graduating, he became an Internet observer for DP. I managed to stay ahead of other journalists for the publication because I usually worked at night, picked up resonant topics (say, about Polonsky, who promised to eat his tie) and by the morning I had already published material on the site.

“VKontakte doesn’t hire at all
and does not lure superstars -
they grow their own
specialists"

How did you end up on VKontakte?

I sat at night in the Finek hostel, writing articles. Out of habit, I went to check Pavel Durov’s page, saw new photos and forwarded the link to a friend. He couldn’t look at these photos: that’s how I discovered that Durov had accepted my old friend request. I wrote him a message “Wow. Is Pavel Durov my friend?”, to which he responded in his characteristic ironic manner, “That’s nothing. My friend is Vladislav Tsyplukhin!” At that time, VKontakte needed to hire a person who would establish contacts with the press. My interview lasted about twenty minutes: Durov’s deputy played the role of an evil investigator and asked tough questions that I didn’t always find an answer to, and Pavel himself looked not at whether I was suitable for this position from a professional point of view, but whether I could Is it possible to mold something out of me? I will never forget his heavy scanning gaze. VKontakte does not hire or lure superstars at all - they grow their own specialists.

Overall, was it hard to work?

Yes, primarily because of fear. It’s difficult at 22 years old without experience to become the face of a company that has 100 million users. When the entire RuNet is looking at you, you really don’t want to shit yourself, because any proposal you make easily turns into a negative news story.

And, the most amazing thing is that I managed to screw up in the very first week of work: I wrote a terribly unconstructive post in the IT community “Habrahabr”. Its whole essence fits into one phrase: “you didn’t love us before, but now you will.” Then the VKontakte employees were very dissatisfied with me, and in Moscow they said that I was the son of some oligarch who asked Durov to hire me. Although Pavel himself never told me anything. He rarely criticizes, and this has always made mistakes even more difficult.

You will soon have 200 thousand subscribers on all social networks, do you feel responsible for your words?

Social responsibility?

Yes, at least some.

I tried not to set a bad example. For example, don’t write that I’m sitting at a bar and drinking alcohol with my journalist friends.

Do you mean drinking and smoking are bad?

Badly. Also Russian politics - I have not spoken out on this topic, although I often have my own opinion on these issues. Everything there is dirty and confusing.

I feel responsible, but I have never reposted posts in the “help a child” style. And in general, I consider everyone who “saves children” by pressing buttons to be hypocrites. This is especially true for our stars: while they are getting a manicure on one hand in the salon, there is time with the other hand to save children by pressing buttons on the iPhone. And my conscience was quickly cleared.

Didn't you feel pressured by the fact that there is virtually no place for personal life online? The page on which it says “Vladislav Tsyplukhin” meant more “VKontakte” than the page of a young man who came to St. Petersburg from Prokhladny?

Pressed. Then I got used to it. On an intuitive level, I filtered what I could write and what I couldn’t. People are often fired for posting on social media.

“Shit machine” from an Aeroflot flight attendant?

For example. A great reason to lose your job.

That is, if you wrote “Hello, I did my best yesterday,” and then “Hello, I did my best yesterday - 2,” then once on the third...

I think the word “stuck” would be enough to start the countdown. At the same time, I never wrote that alcohol is bad. I've been looking around this topic. He only talked about work. And everyone's personal business is everyone's personal business.

“I was equally happy with my
the first salary in the newspaper, and in those moments,
when incomes began to rise. Much more difficult -
find peace of mind and time,
to fry eggs"

Pavel Durov is called an eccentric character for a number of statements and actions. Among other things, did you have to smooth out this impression?

I saw him a little differently: this is a young guy who made Russia become one of the countries holding back the onslaught of Western social networks. One of three or four where Facebook hasn't won yet. Durov also showed that there is no shame in being an excellent student and a nerd. It is not necessary to dress in expensive brands and show with all your appearance how much money you have. That developers who wear jeans and a plaid shirt to work are the future.

Money has never been of fundamental importance to me either. The main thing is to have the Internet. At least, I was equally happy with my first salary at the newspaper (25,000 rubles) and at those moments when my income began to grow. It’s much more difficult to find peace of mind and time to fry eggs.

What long-term strategic goals for debunking myths about the company were you facing at that time?

First of all, Pavel Durov asked me how VKontakte looked from the outside - he listened more than he spoke. He made it clear that he had absolutely no time to deal with the press. The set of myths about the social network was as follows: development of the FSB; piracy; Facebook clone; the main audience is schoolchildren; Pavel Durov does not exist.

I wouldn’t say that I coped with them, but the train definitely started moving. Perhaps the worst thing I did was overcome the myth of piracy. Although we collaborated with copyright holders and legal platforms and specifically initiated positive causes like: “Channel One and VKontakte provided copyright protection for the film “Vysotsky. Thank you for being alive.”

“Vysotsky” was quickly forgotten, and a tweet about “The cultural value of VKontakte audio recordings has increased sharply” and about Sergei Lazarev’s songs is circulating on the Internet in full force.

It was a great move. Pavel, as a matter of principle, does not negotiate with people who are trying to promote themselves at the expense of his company. If the copyright holder calmly writes to the legal department, then the songs are deleted, but Lazarev’s move deserved a missile strike from Durov.

What I mean is that with the advent of social networks, the model of communication between companies and their audiences has changed; the media in the new model have been quite seriously squeezed out. There are many striking examples of how this model works, say, at MVideo, but VKontakte uses it to the fullest.

We didn't need a classic approach. In Russia, many PR specialists believe that press releases and iPhone giveaways on social networks are enough. But I can’t even articulate how much everything has changed. And there are no specialists in the country who can confidently juggle new formats of interaction - they are developing very rapidly. And we are all pioneers.

At VKontakte, the most important task seemed to me to be working with trendsetters. If I gave up everything and did only this, I would bring maximum benefit to the company.

You usually talked about trendsetters in connection with Facebook and Moscow. There is a difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg in the perception of VKontakte. Here it is initially a network of St. Petersburg State University students and then everything else. And for Moscow users - VKontakte - these are tons of incomprehensible lol gifs, porn and an endless set of jokes about “so you have to go to school tomorrow” and “how? Is it really tomorrow that’s Monday?”

For which Moscow users?

For all.

No, not for everyone, but for you, for the media community, for your social circle. This background changes - in small ways, of course. Yuri Saprykin wrote a post about the contact, a series of materials about publics was published in W-O-S. Afisha will do an issue about non-pop intellectual communities on VKontakte, where, say, they discuss higher mathematics.

“I reached a dead end, switching to myself a lot
public spotlights. And the simplest
way to change everything - completely
reboot"

The official reason for leaving is “I don’t want to do the same thing anymore”?

The general reason is fatigue. Like I said, I was bombarded with the same questions, and instead of concentrating on the fundamentals, I spent my days making the same commentary to the media.

In addition, it became difficult for me psychologically: everyone was constantly expecting something from me. Let’s say, if I didn’t write anything for a week, then people in the company and outside it thought that Tsyplukhin had stopped working. It turns out that he has reached a dead end, having turned so many public spotlights onto himself. And the easiest way to change everything is to completely reboot.

Vladislav Tsyplukhin leaves his post. In his interview on “Zuckerberg Calls,” he shared some details and reasons. According to him, he no longer liked his position, which had turned from an interesting position into a constant routine.

VKontakte will conduct further activities without a full-fledged press secretary; some of his responsibilities will be taken over by Georgy Lobushkin, who already worked in the press service of the social network. In an interview with “Zuckerberg will call,” Tsyplukhin also noted that he wanted to remain on VKontakte as the head of special projects, but here his views differed from those of the founder of the social network, Pavel Durov.

Let us recall that Vladislav held the position of press secretary No. 1 (as he called himself) since 2010, before that he worked at the newspaper Delovoy Peterburg. Note that during his time on VKontakte, Vladislav was remembered not only for his love for bows, but also proved himself to be a high-class industry professional - after all, he is responsible for all the latest high-profile news events on VKontakte, which is worth a lot.

We decided to talk with Alena Vladimirskaya, the founder of the main RuNet hunting agency PRUFFI.

The first thing we asked was, of course, your opinion on what's next. After working in such a position in such a bright company as VKontakte, it will be difficult to find something even more enchanting, and you will no longer want to settle for anything less. Now just your own business? Alena said that this is a prejudice and such areas as political PR, work as the head of the press service of a large company from the real sector with an aggressive manner of doing business (remember the same Tinkov) could become the next step for Tsyplukhin’s career.

Vlad mentioned that he offered himself to Durov for the position of head of special projects. And the first could be the creation of an external platform based on VKontakte, where the entire RuNet media community could be gathered. I immediately remembered the flash mob in the fall of this year of the Runet TOPs (in which Alena took an active part) with mass migration from Facebook to Vkontakte. We asked if this was a test campaign? But Alena did not admit to the “conversation” with Tsyplukhin, she noted that she constantly tries new sites and stays where the tools are more convenient, but Vlad really helped with all the questions.

The last question, of course, was whether Alena had already made a job offer, whether the clients had a suitable place for Tsiplukhin. To this Alena said that she had not proposed yet. She knew that Vlad was negotiating with Durov, but until recently she did not believe that he would leave the company. Both Vlad and Pavel are impulsive people, but it was difficult to imagine that such a decision would be made.

Found a typo? Select the text and press Ctrl + Enter

In No. 33 of Novaya Gazeta dated March 27, 2013, material was published "In contact with FSBuka", where, based on documents, we talked about the cooperation of the social network “VKontakte” with government agencies - the FSB, Directorate “K” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Presidential Administration (AP). Many readers and bloggers questioned the authenticity of the letters quoted in the newspaper and posted on the website by the then press secretary of VKontakte Vlad Tsyplukhin with a report on the work he was doing at the request of the AP and the letters of the general director of VKontakte LLC Pavel Durov Vladislav Surkov.

Following numerous requests from readers, on the Novaya Gazeta website we are publishing part of the extensive correspondence between Vladislav Tsyplukhin and Pavel Durov with employees of the Department of Internal Policy (IDP) of the RF AP Konstantin Kostin (head of the department), Irina Fedina (deputy head of the IVP department), and writer Sergei Minaev. The correspondence represents reports on the work done on political PR on the Internet in 2011. The cooperation, judging by the dates, began in July 2011 and continued until December 2011. It was financed (again, judging by the correspondence) by the Administration of the Russian Federation.

From the vast array of correspondence presented in the form of (screenshots), we tried to select only those letters that, in our opinion, are truly of public importance.

Screenshots are presented in the form of correspondence pages opened in the mail program The Bat. Each letter is given in two screenshots. The first screenshot is the letter itself. The second screen is a letter with the so-called “headers”, that is, service information of mail servers. It’s theoretically possible to fake something like this, but it’s difficult: it’s easy to make a mistake in IP, codes (numbers), etc. The combination of this information with the contents of the letters, their details, dates of correspondence, their correlation with the published by no means secret products of the Tsyplukhin group (the projects of which we found in the attachments of the letters and are also published on the newspaper’s website) convinces us and the IT specialists who advised the editorial office that the authenticity of the archive received by the editor.

And now - about some other subjects of public interest.

“They played well on Kudrin’s trend (the joke about sex with his wife went very far)”

The title of this chapter is an original quote from the report (September 2011) by Mr. Tsyplukhin, presented in an elegant slide presentation and submitted to the AP. The report was made on behalf of the Pentagon Internet Laboratory (pentagonagency.ru - now such a server does not exist on the Internet, the group, apparently, has long been disbanded) and is a description of various projects, to one degree or another, of interest to the AP and the network "In contact with". For example, the quote about Kudrin is news written for the “News from the Future” section, which still exists on VKontakte ( http://vk.com/vestifuture).

In particular, the Pentagon report about this section says the following - quote:

"Examples:

year 2013: Ramzan Kadyrov celebrated his birthday modestly, in the circle of Chechnya.

2045: The first presidential elections in Russia based on the results of the Unified State Exam ended in scandal.

year 2012: Alexey Kudrin refuses to have sex with his wife without consulting Putin.

Application

They played well on Kudrin’s trend (the joke about sex with his wife went very far). The community according to Prokhorov was used once. The joke is written:

year 2012: Mikhail Prokhorov explained the failure to pay 10 million rubles to Right Cause employees by saying that he forgot change in the pocket of another jacket.

And in the comments to the joke a person appears:

I don’t know what the comedians from this group meant, but I was actually hired by Prokhorov’s Ukrainian PR people, and now after he left I didn’t receive any money for my work: (And now my Moscow friends helped bring this to the masses, for which I thank them! http://www.lifenews.ru/news/70196".

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist or a Kremlin political scientist to guess: the political meaning of this creative work full of humor is the direct political discredit of Alexei Kudrin and Mikhail Prokhorov. Probably, such tasks were set by the presidential administration to its Internet assistants. Perhaps, sometimes even at meetings with “himself.” As evidenced by the playful remark of the accountable person:

“The main thing is that Vladislav Yuryevich invites you to inspiring conversations more often :-).”

This remark was made on a very specific occasion - the promotion of The Twitter Journal project (tjournal.ru), which was mentioned in our previous publication.

From the correspondence and reports (the editors have two of this kind) it follows that the fate of tjournal.ru was closely followed by both representatives of the AP and the leaders of VKontakte, even at the level of shareholders and very serious businessmen who were interested in the business component of the promising project ( AP, naturally, was interested in its other component - PR). Quote from the September report:

“Shareholders, including Pavel Durov, periodically inquire about the status of The Twitter Journal project. Pavel and Yuri Milner (co-owner of Mail.ru - Novaya), who are now launching the fund, offered a free grant in the amount of $25,000. I refused for now, because a one-time injection of money is unlikely to change anything.

Lev Leviev

And a couple of days later, another shareholder of VKontakte called me, Lev Leviev, who was at the meeting with you. I asked him to tell me more about the principles of the project and the plan for the coming months. I showed him the second version of the project. And a day later they offered me to invest in the project. I explained that I could not do this without approval. Quotes from correspondence:

- Vlad, what are your plans for tjournal.ru, how is business?

I don't have any business plans yet. I made it to solve certain information problems.

Let's make a business out of this. We will buy a share from you or invest in the company. This could make a good large-cap project. Moreover, your guys are talented. This will not interfere with solving information problems. Channel One also solves information problems, but it is also a business that generates income.

I don’t want to do such things without approval. The project was not done with my money.

Yes, agree. I'm not talking about buying control. I'm talking about 25-35% depending on your appetite. Moreover, such a project must have legs: some kind of investment fund, so that no questions are asked. I am sure that this can be turned into an international project. It will be possible to influence global trends. We will simply act as a financial investor and provide money for international facilities - this business can cost more than a hundred million dollars.”

Each of the reports ends with an estimate of the costs of operating the Internet laboratory that was involved in all these projects. The estimate for October is 567 thousand rubles. These include the salaries of employees, including the press secretary himself, and the rent of a company apartment (120 thousand rubles). The structure of expenses shows that the main content of the classes is the tjournal.ru and vestifuture projects: the authors of fake “news about the future,” including spicy stories about Kudrin and Prokhorov, received a modest 30 thousand rubles per round. Well, never mind, our people are ready to vote for whomever they say, even for 100 rubles...

Novaya Investigation Department

P.S. The face of the tjournal.ru project is a very young man, Nikita Likhachev. The summer report of 2011 says that to promote tj, he will come to Sergei Minaev’s television broadcast in a T-shirt that depicts the famous Internet figure Anton Nosik and says “Only dolboeb (Nosik’s nickname on the network - “Novaya”) has not yet reads The Twitter Journal." In this T-shirt, as stated in the report, the “face of the project” should take a photo with Nosik.

How The Twitter Journal was created

Vladislav Tsyplukhin, former press secretary of Vkontakte:

I have no affiliation with the Twitter Journal project. I know those who have.

- Have you corresponded with Konstantin Kostin and Irina Fedina about Twitter Journal and “News from the Future”?

No. I don't know anything about this. I know them myself. I once talked...

- Did you send them any estimates?

No. At that moment I was working on VKontakte.

- Did you have any side projects?

Nikita Likhachev, creator of The Twitter Journal:

The project was created by me and my programmer friend with the goal of understanding what was happening on Russian Twitter. We decided to analyze the base of popular bloggers and see in principle what they discuss, what gets on the information agenda thanks to them. We looked at what happened and decided that it might be interesting to someone. And they made a website. This all happened in the spring of 2011. We launched in the summer of 2011, at the end of July.

In the first version, the top tweets appeared. There was a script that analyzed a small database of bloggers and aggregated all their tweets in one place, building popularity by the number of retweets. You can see the technology on the website, everything is absolutely transparent. The database is made up of those people who are read by our official Twitter account - 400–500 people.

At first we analyzed just tweets, then we started analyzing pictures and videos separately. Then a section with news appeared - with the help of scripts and parsers (programs that perform parsing - Ed.) we extracted links to news articles from tweets, processed them, made a section, which later turned into a so-called mediator - news articles, sorted, ranked by popularity on social networks. Everything is transparent there too, you can see the like counter on VKontakte and Twitter. An editorial section appeared, a Foursquare project appeared (users mark themselves on the city map. - Ed.). There was also a Twitter exchange, but it closed at the beginning of 2012. One of my friends picked it up and now does it himself.

Internet agency "Pentagon" - this is how we signed up initially, on the first version of the site. This company has never been registered and does not exist. I wanted to create such an atmosphere of mystery.

Now we are read by about 10 thousand unique visitors every day. We have four employees on staff, not counting the guys who write articles for us.

Initially there was no budget. We made a page that did not waste any resources. Just one website, hosting, server that processed all this information - we chipped in with our personal money for this. And in the fall we received a small grant from Start Fellows - from Durov and Milner in the amount of $25,000. Well, Pavel Durov - the creator of VKontakte and Yuri Milner - a famous investor - they distributed grants without obligation, selected startups simply based on their personal... What they are interested in, what they would like to support. We were included in the first wave of this competition. And for some time we subsisted on this money until we had shareholders. I can’t say anything about them; I’m bound by a non-disclosure agreement.

We did not discuss the creation of the site with Vlad Tsyplukhin. We talked with him when we received this grant, in the fall of 2011. At that time he worked in the press service of VKontakte, including selecting applications for Start Fellows. If I'm not mistaken, he personally selected the list, which was subsequently approved by Pavel Durov and Yuri Milner. I’ve known Tsyplukhin for quite a long time, since about 2010. I saw it at a conference in Moscow. This was the day when VKontakte closed the wall and introduced a microblog, and I came to troll: “Durov must return the wall.” I did not give him permission to act on behalf of the project. But yes, I told all my friends what I was going to do.

I heard about Kostin, but I don’t know who she is about Fedina. The presidential administration... In the spring of 2011 they contacted us, we tried to discuss something with them, but in the end it led to nothing. They were interested in what type of project the project would be, how it would develop, and, probably, what kind of participation they could offer. I can’t quote you more precise expressions... They were just interested in the project. But we didn’t have any common ground with them. We didn't even meet, we just talked on the phone.

The project was just being created at that time, but they apparently knew about it. This alarmed me, but I didn’t worry too much, because there were no threats, no such serious things. There were no specific proposals. At that moment we did not really need funding. Nobody knew how interesting the project would be, how successful it would be, how quickly it would develop. After everything changed for us, we, naturally, didn’t try to contact them in any way. I didn’t really want to. We were unable to obtain comments from Konstantin Kostin. At the reception of the Civil Society Development Foundation, the head of which Kostin has worked since May 2012 - after his departure from the Administration, the secretary answered us. She said that issues related to comments for the media are supervised by the Foundation's press secretary, Ilya Kiselev.

Naturally, the Foundation’s press secretary could not answer questions about whether Kostin knew Tsyplukhin and whether he had contact with him during the pre-election period of 2011, since he (Kiselev) at that time worked not in the Kremlin, but in Izvestia "

Two hours later we called the Foundation back and learned that our questions had been brought to Kostin. Another hour later, Ilya Kiselev called us back and said: “Kostin doesn’t comment on nonsense.”

Interviewed by Elena Kostyuchenko and Irek Murtazin

Any mention at central headquarters of the idea that the bulk of their audience consists of teenagers is accompanied by a tired sigh from company representatives.

The head of the press service, Vladislav Tsyplukhin, who seems to have to deal with such statements most often, looks more irritated than everyone else. As a result, just a few minutes after the start of the conversation, he leaves the office to get some papers.

“Do you really think that 43% of the Russian population are schoolchildren? Then the future looks pretty bright for our country,” he says, returning with printouts of the TNS Web Index Report. “No matter how you look at it, no matter how slightly objective statistics you take, thoughts about the widespread youth of the VKontakte audience look absurd. But it’s not very fashionable today to substantiate statements,” says Vladislav.

According to TNS data, 60.6% of VKontakte users are over 25 years old.

Everyone is too ossified in the belief that VKontakte is made up of students and schoolchildren. But we must remember that the network was launched in 2006 and in five years the students have already graduated and become adults. But the habit of using VKontakte remained.

“I have to listen to arguments like “you’re playing with numbers” or “adults don’t sit there anyway.” However, I myself don’t like general graphs; it’s much more informative to check data in combat conditions,” says Tsyplukhin. The combat approach is that a random sample of users who are currently writing or commenting on the site is arranged in real time.

In our presence, 3995 users fall into a random sample, 57% of whom are men, 41% are women. To the press secretary's surprise, 34% of users active on the site by midday on a weekday are under 18 years of age. According to him, usually “this figure is much lower.” However, an equally significant percentage is made up of older audiences: people between 18 and 27 years old account for 45% of activity. “For those who are afraid that all activity in this category ends by the age of 20, we have more detailed figures,” Vlad smiles.

19% of those randomly selected are married.

To the question “Why don’t you talk about this?” Tsyplukhin answers unexpectedly: “We talk about this, but not to everyone. Firstly, there is a majority of the population who do not need to be told about this; they already know. If our fellow citizens sometimes repeat stories they hear from unreliable sources, there is nothing wrong with that.

One has to talk seriously about the age of the audience in strictly defined circles. There is a layer of society in which it is generally accepted that VKontakte is students, Odnoklassniki is pensioners, and Facebook is the “elite,” and this can be understood. So, for example, it is much more convenient to communicate with advertisers if you are a studio involved in SMM. You can say: “Look, we cover all categories: you want these, you want these.” Moreover, these categories are successfully wrapped in separate domains and equipped with logos. It’s really convenient, no doubt about it.”

The head of the press service of the social network shared with Private Correspondent the intermediate results of his educational work: “Stereotypes change slowly, especially in such a dense environment. I myself, often under the influence of Moscow conversations about trends and the so-called Runet elite, flirt with this topic so much that for a while I begin to think in terms of a party and forget about all the other users - this is a big professional mistake. The only thing that sobers me up is conversations with Pavel, who periodically brings me down to earth.”

The headquarters of the VKontakte development team has always been located in St. Petersburg, located far from the financial and legal office on the other side of the city. This allowed both teams to maintain their own atmosphere, minimizing the mutual influence of people with different values.

Vladislav complains about the nervousness of working in conditions when stories from the sidelines of Moscow do not affect the leadership: “Sometimes Durov’s unshakable calmness is very annoying. I want to start a riot, in some cases even quit. And in response: “Calm down and do priority things.” There are plenty of such priority tasks, including in the field of feedback from users of different levels and parties. Outside the company, you often encounter irritation caused by Durov’s habit of going about his own business, instead of meeting with someone, discussing something, explaining something. At first it was hard for me to put up with this too, until I realized that it was just a different method of solving issues - going and doing something instead of talking. And now I go, discuss, explain, while here at headquarters the rest are making decisions,” concludes Tsyplukhin.