Vkontakte
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Please expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia. (October 2009) After translating, {{Translated|ru|В Контакте}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance.Translation instructions · Translate via Google |
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| URL | http://vk.com/ |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Social Networking |
| Registration | Required |
| Available language(s) | English, Russian, Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Serbian, Greek, Albanian, Romanian, Czech, Belarusian |
| Owner | Doraview Limited |
| Created by | Pavel Durov |
| Launched | September 2006 |
VKontakte (Russian: ВКонтакте, internationally branded VK[1]) is the most popular social network service in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.[2] Because of its design and functionality, VKontakte is often claimed to be a clone of Facebook,[3] accommodating not only a similar concept, but also a comparable business model.[4] However, its incorporation of other features makes it more like YouTube, Pandora, and MySpace rolled into one, with an interface highly reminiscent of Facebook.
As of December, 2009, the network has more than 53 million users (about 0,8% of World population) and is the leading site in Europe in terms of user visits, page views, data transfer per day.[5] As of March 19, 2009, VKontakte is ranked 28 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites with a traffic rank of 25.[6]
Since 2007, major Russian companies have been sending job offers via VKontakte.[7] Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, more and more people are joining, many of whom are youths of various age groups.
In English "V Kontakte" is literally translated as "In Contact", but basically means "In Touch".
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[edit] Functionality
The sites functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends pages and news, a photo- and videohosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Almost all of the information provided by users is a subject to easy search, therefore people are able to look for those with similar interest, school, places of birth, etc. New features are being added to the website from time to time, such as ability to host audiofiles in groups and personal pages, "Opinions" function allowing one to express personal thoughts about a friend on the network anonymously, "Offers" to ask people whether one wants to do something together with the user, "Questions" to answer the question that is asked by user and "Applications", containing Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms etc.
[edit] Privacy
Users have the ability to control the availability of their content, for instance it is possible to hide one's pictures, videos, and entire pages. Users can also choose who can invite them to join groups, write personal messages, write on their wall, and so forth. It is claimed that the site content is not indexed by the search engines. Indeed, the Russian market's dominating players, Yandex, Rambler, and to a lesser extent, Google, not only don't link to privacy-locked VKontakte pages, but also do not link to users who choose to open their pages to the general public; in fact, search engines provide no indication whatsoever that any user is registered on VKontakte. Unless users post external links to their pages elsewhere, the only way to find a VKontakte page is by using VKontakte's own search protocols.
[edit] Phishing
On July 30, 2009 in mass media reported that in the Internet has spread a text-file with data of 135,000 users. Experts note that the base was aggregated with passwords stealing from victims who have inputted their data at the phisher's website. Later Kaspersky Lab said that the user-list were collected by the Trojan Trojan.Win32.VkHost.an.[8][9]
[edit] Popularity
The number of registered users of the site is consistently rising. According to Alexa.com, the site is the most popular and most visited site in Russia and Ukraine and is the second most popular in Kazakhstan and third in Belarus. It also generates more traffic than other popular social networking sites, such as bebo.com, ranking 24th in overall traffic world-wide.[6]
VKontakte has never been advertised in any fashion. Its popularity has grown entirely from people sharing it amongst each other. VKontakte has no option for users to delete their accounts[citation needed] the number of accounts is rising every second.
[edit] Availability in Poland
Although VKonatkte has interface in Polish language, it in fact blocks requests originated from Poland[1].
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Vkontakte to launch vk.com site in 12 languages". Tatar-inform. Kazan: Tatmedia. 8 September 2009. http://www.eng.tatar-inform.ru/news/2009/09/08/26598/. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
- ^ (Russian) http://roem.ru/2007/10/01/vkontakte/
- ^ Copycats: Top 10 International Facebook Clones
- ^ Topical news on - TopicPlus.com » Blog Archive » Baker’s dozen of a Runet
- ^ "Welcome!". VK. http://vk.com/index.php. Retrieved 8 October 2009.
- ^ a b "vkontakte.ru - Traffic Details". Alexa Internet. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/vkontakte.ru. Retrieved 2009-04-02.
- ^ "Consort-Peterburg - HR Experts Debate Networking Sites"
- ^ "Пароли к «ВКонтакте» оказались в общем доступе" (in Russian). WebPlaneta. 2009-07-30. http://webplanet.ru/news/security/2009/07/30/vkontakte_hack.html. Retrieved 2009-10-12.
- ^ "В открытый доступ попали тысячи логинов и паролей от аккаунтов сети «ВКонтакте»" (in Russian). WebPlaneta. 2009-07-30. http://soft.compulenta.ru/445500/. Retrieved 2009-10-12.
