Application by Pavel Durov. Biography of Pavel Durov, founder of the social network VKontakte and the Telegram messenger. Pavel Durov's current state

Pavel Valerievich Durov (born October 10, 1984, Leningrad, USSR) - Russian entrepreneur, programmer, ruble billionaire, one of the creators of the social network “VKontakte” and the company of the same name; creator of the cross-platform messenger Telegram. Former General Director of VKontakte (2006-2014). During his student years, he was a laureate of scholarships from the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation, a three-time laureate of the Potanin Scholarship.

In 2001 he graduated with honors from the Academic Gymnasium, in 2006 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University with a degree in English Philology and Translation with honors (which he still has not received). A year earlier, he completed professional training at the Faculty of Military Education of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, after which he received the rank of reserve lieutenant. Immediately after graduating from university, he created VKontakte, currently the largest social network in Russia. As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires.

Pavel is a vegetarian and has libertarian political views. Durov is called the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, and is also often criticized for his eccentric antics and statements. On November 19, 2012, Nikolai Kononov’s book “The Durov Code” was published, describing the formation of VKontakte and its creator; AR Films has already acquired the rights to adapt it.

In 2014, he left Russia and said that he was not going to return.

In 2016 and 2017 included in the Forbes list of the 200 richest businessmen in Russia

Family

Father - Doctor of Philology Valery Semenovich Durov (born 1945), author of many scientific works, since 1992 has headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University.

Mother - Albina Alexandrovna Durova.

Brother - Nikolay (born 1980), mathematician, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, multiple winner of Russian and international olympiads in mathematics and computer science, twice absolute world champion in programming among students, from the date of its foundation until mid-2013 he was the technical director of VKontakte "

Half-brother - Mikhail Petrov, son of Albina Durova from his first marriage.

Pavel's grandfather, Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov (born 1913), participated in the Great Patriotic War. He served in the 65th Infantry Regiment, took part in battles on the Leningrad Front in the Krasnoborsk and Gatchina directions, and was wounded three times. He was nominated for the Order of the Red Star, awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, and on the 40th anniversary of the Victory, the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree. After the war he was repressed.

Biography

Pavel Durov was born in Leningrad on October 10, 1984 into an intelligent family. He went to the first grade of school while in Turin, where his father worked for several years. Returning to his hometown, Pavel briefly studied at a regular school and entered the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium (now Mednikov’s Academic Classes), which provides in-depth study of all subjects, including four foreign languages. There he had a reputation as an erudite and sat at the first desk due to vision problems.

At the age of 11, he first became interested in programming. His trick is known when he changed the screensaver of all school computers to a photo of a computer science teacher with the caption “Must die” (Russian: Must die). Durov was deprived of access to computers, but he hacked passwords to them. In 2001, he graduated from the Academic Gymnasium with honors. In 2002, Pavel entered the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, majoring in English Philology and Translation. For his academic achievements and contribution to student life at the university, he was awarded a scholarship from the Government of the Russian Federation, and then a scholarship from the President of the Russian Federation.

In general, Pavel Durov is distinguished by a passion for languages: “Learn foreign languages. This will unrealistically expand the depth of perception of the world and open up unprecedented prospects for training, development and career growth,” he once gave this advice to readers on his VKontakte page. It also lists the languages ​​that Pavel Durov speaks: in addition to English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, he knows Latin and Persian.

Pavel was a three-time winner of the Potanin Scholarship, and was also one of a select number of St. Petersburg State University students with the highest level of intelligence and leadership abilities. He won competitions in computer science, linguistics and design, and organized university-wide events. Pavel graduated from the university in 2006 with honors (which he never took). A year earlier, he completed his professional training at the Faculty of Military Training of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare. During his studies at this faculty, Pavel served as a platoon commander at the Faculty of Philology, and upon graduation received the rank of reserve lieutenant.

When I looked at people who commute to offices every day for routine work, I could not imagine such a scenario in my life. Managing Internet projects and organizing university events taught me independence and the idea that I had no direct superiors.

Pavel Durov

Even while studying at St. Petersburg State University, Pavel created non-profit Internet projects designed to improve the quality of social and scientific life of the university. These projects were the sites Durov.com and Spbgu.ru. The first project is an electronic library of university abstracts, as well as a place for students to exchange ideas and opinions; the second is the university forum, where Pavel often initiated various discussions, in which, using different accounts, he argued with himself.

But by the summer of 2006, he realized that his student websites, despite all their popularity, were ineffective in uniting students, since many hid their names under nicknames and their real faces under avatars: students could communicate with each other online without even realizing it. that they study in the same group. Then he started looking for another form for the student website. Later, Pavel’s old friend, who returned from the USA after studying, introduced him to an Internet project for American university students - Facebook, where users posted their real names and photographs on their profiles. Durov decided to introduce a similar website concept in Russia, that is, real people under real names.

The original name of the future project - “Student.ru” - was replaced by Pavel with “VKontakte”, since, according to him, “sooner or later we all become graduates.” He began to implement 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, according to official data, registered 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; reason - competition - iPod to the one who invites more friends. The rapidly growing number of users forced the creators to change servers and improve software support for the network. Pavel repeatedly received offers to buy his product, but he rejected them. Instead, the programmer attracted investors to his project. VKontakte developed before our eyes. Already in 2007, it became the third most popular site on the Runet; in 2008, the network was monetized, and the number of users exceeded 20 million. In 2010, Pavel’s company moved into the Singer house, which is located on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the Kazan Cathedral.

In 2007, the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper named Durov one of the winners in the Best Young Entrepreneurs 2007 competition. As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires. In December 2011, Pavel and the head of the DST Global fund, Yuri Milner, launched the Start Fellows charity project, which is aimed at financing startups selected on a competitive basis. By the end of December, six startups received $25 thousand each. On January 24, 2012, at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich, during a joint presentation with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Pavel promised to donate one million dollars to the online encyclopedia. In March, the transfer of the promised amount to the Wikimedia Foundation account was confirmed. “We greatly appreciate Mr. Durov's generous offer and thank him for his understanding of the grant review process,” said Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh.

On May 27, 2012, top managers of VKontakte, led by Durov, threw airplanes with 5,000-ruble banknotes attached to them from the window of the company’s central office in St. Petersburg. Soon a crowd gathered under the windows and even started a fight for the money. Pavel later explained that with his action he wanted to create a festive atmosphere on City Day. Durov then scattered a total of about $2,000. He also reported the joy with which he watched the crowd's reaction. According to eyewitnesses, Pavel filmed what was happening on camera. While working at VKontakte, Pavel lived in a rented apartment next to the office, where, according to him, developers could stay overnight.

On April 5, 2013, it was reported that while driving a car, Durov turned left from Sadovaya Street to the Moika River embankment, violating the requirements of the road sign. The traffic police officer who noticed the offense tried to stop the car. The driver did not comply with the requirement, continuing to drive, and as a result hit an employee, causing him bruises and abrasions. Initially, the VKontakte press service denied Pavel’s involvement in the incident, pointing out that their general director did not have a car. In addition, the car itself belonged to the vice-president of the company, Ilya Perekopsky. But in June, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg proved that it was Durov who was driving. Immediately after the incident, a criminal case was opened against Pavel under Article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (use of violence against a representative of the authorities), which after an investigation was closed in June 2013, and the offense itself fell under Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (disobedience to a lawful order of a police officer) , since the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence of the deliberate use of violence.

In September 2013, it became known that the criminal case was returned for further investigation in order to establish the presence or absence of criminal intent in the actions of Pavel Durov. Evidence indicating that Durov’s actions were deliberate and aimed at using violence against the police officer was again not found by investigators, and at the beginning of 2014 the criminal case was again discontinued.

In February 2014, the United Capital Partners (UCP) Fund, which owns 48% of VKontakte shares, announced that it intends to defend its interests “in Russian and international jurisdictions.” UCP representatives accused Pavel Durov and Mail.ru Group employees of actions contrary to the interests of VK. The fund explained that they had previously tried to resolve the issues peacefully, but all proposals were blocked by representatives of Mail.ru Group and Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin, who at that time owned a controlling stake in VK (52%). The UCP noted that this behavior of the VK co-owners “extremely surprises and worries them.”

Having exhausted all possibilities for a reasonable agreement, we transfer disputed cases on “VK” to legal companies. The brief essence of our complaints is that Pavel Durov and representatives of Mail.ru Group systematically made and continue to make decisions not in the best interests of VK...

UCP Partner Yuri Kachuro

In response, USM Advisors CEO Ivan Streshinsky accused UCP of systematic pressure on VK shareholders:

Since its declared entry into VKontakte, UCP has demonstrated a reluctance to build constructive relationships with other shareholders and the company’s management, preferring a strategy of threats, blackmail and intrigue. In particular, an entire campaign was organized to put legal pressure and publicly discredit the founder of VKontakte, Pavel Durov, with whom the UCP began communication with threats of lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Ivan Streshinsky

In contact with

“VKontakte” is the largest social network in Runet, the first most popular site in Belarus, the second in Russia, the third in Ukraine, the fifth in Kazakhstan, the 26th in the world, which is estimated at $1.5 billion. For example, in September 2012, the site's daily audience averaged 22 million people. As of September of the same year, more than 140 million users were registered on VKontakte. In terms of the speed of its growth, the social network has broken all Runet records. The network's major shareholder is Mail.Ru Group, a holding company that owns, as of April 2011, 32.49% of all VKontakte shares.

VKontakte provides financial support for developing Olympiad programming in Russia and sponsors teams of programmers in St. Petersburg and North-West Russia. Among the company's employees are the best Russian programmers, winners of international programming and mathematics competitions.

On January 24, 2014, it became known that in December 2013 Durov entered into a deal to sell his remaining 12% of VKontakte shares to Ivan Tavrin and ceased to be the owner of the network.

What you own sooner or later begins to own you.

I've been actively disposing of my possessions over the last few years, giving away and selling everything I owned, from furniture and belongings to real estate and companies. To achieve the ideal, I had to get rid of the largest part of my property - a 12% share of VKontakte. I am glad that not so long ago I achieved this goal by selling my share of VKontakte to my friend Ivan Tavrin.

This change is unlikely to affect the management of VKontakte - the board of directors listens to my opinion not because of the presence or absence of my share, but because I created this network and understand its deep mechanisms. I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to continue to monitor the quality of VKontakte. In the end, VKontakte is the best thing that has been created in Russia in the communications field. And my responsibility is to take care and protect this network.

Pavel Durov

On April 1, Pavel Durov announced on his page that he was resigning from the post of General Director of VKontakte LLC, explaining this by reducing the available freedom of action, but then, on April 3, he withdrew his resignation letter. Then it turned out that this was not an April Fool's joke; on April 21, the owners of the social network VKontakte granted the resignation letter, which had previously been sent to them by the general director and founder of the network, Pavel Durov.

Telegram

On August 14, 2013, the first Telegram client was introduced. In November, the program had, according to TJournal, about 1 million installations. In an interview with The New York Times, Pavel said that the initial idea for the app came to him back in 2011, when special forces came to his door. When the latter finally left, Durov immediately wrote to his brother Nikolai. It was then that he realized that he had no safe way to communicate with his brother. The service is built on MTProto correspondence encryption technology, developed by Pavel’s brother Nikolai.

In response to proposals from some officials to ban the messenger in Russia, on December 24, 2015, on his VKontakte page, Pavel Durov stated: “As for Telegram, the project has not and will not issue personal data and encryption keys to third parties. Messenger is popular among tens of millions of users in dozens of markets, and the threat of blocking in one or two of them will not affect its privacy policy.”

Emigration

Pavel Durov and Arkady Volozh at the Yandex Data Factory conference, March 2, 2015
On April 16, Pavel Durov announced that on December 13, 2013, the FSB demanded that the network’s management hand over the personal information of the organizers of the Euromaidan groups, to which he refused. In December, a deal was made to sell a stake in the company. According to him, Russian jurisdiction does not extend to Ukrainian users of the VKontakte social network. Durov also noted that disseminating data from Ukrainian users would not only be a violation of the law, but also a crime against millions of users from Ukraine.

On April 22, 2014, it became known that Pavel Durov had gone abroad and had no intention of returning to Russia. He said this in an interview with TechCrunch. He noted: “Unfortunately, it is impossible to run an Internet business in this country.”

“I'm afraid there is no turning back for me. Especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities. »
The founder of VKontakte also said that in the near future he plans to focus on creating a mobile social network. Later, the UCP fund, which at that time owned 48% of the shares of VKontakte, stated that it did not consider Pavel Durov’s resignation from the post of general director a fait accompli. UCP partner Yuri Kachuro believed that the executive director of VKontakte exceeded his authority and did not discuss such a serious decision with the board of directors.

Durov constantly moves from country to country, never staying in one for more than two or three weeks. His team of programmers travels with him to Paris, Singapore and other cities, with whom he develops the Telegram messenger. Pavel reported that he was not a fan of the idea of ​​the state. “I am very happy now, living without any property and considering myself a citizen of the world.” In addition to the Russian one, he has a passport from the state of Saint Kitts and Nevis; he received this passport after investing in the country’s economy.

Views and beliefs

Pavel Durov adheres to libertarian political views, and is also a vegetarian. He advocates reform of the Russian educational system; abolition of taxes in the field of information; abolition of the visa system, registration and military conscription; reduction of customs duties; granting regions full autonomy; and also for the openness of jury trials. He is inspired by Ernesto Che Guevara and Steve Jobs, and according to his religious beliefs, according to some sources, he is a Pastafarian, according to others, a supporter of the Zen school. On October 10, 2017, on his birthday, he spoke about seven things that he gave up many years ago, and which, in his opinion, negatively affect consciousness: 1) Alcohol 2) Animal meat 3) Pills and any pharmaceutical products 4) Nicotine and other narcotic substances 5) Coffee, black and green tea, energy drinks 6) Fast food, sugar, carbonated drinks 7) Television and its analogues.

Relationship to Facebook

When it became known that Facebook was looking for employees in Russia, Durov said that VKontakte employees do not switch to employment in another network, since “there are no fools” and Facebook is a “sinking ship.” A month earlier, he had already called the American social network “a stronghold of pedoliberals,” and in May 2012, on his Twitter account, he ironically called it a “cheap hack.”

Business style

Durov is characterized by a tough, sometimes even arrogant style of doing business. In 2011-2012, he waged a “corporate war” with Mail.ru Group, a major shareholder of VKontakte. The conflict began in March 2011 with the holding’s attempts to absorb the social network by purchasing 100% of its shares and merge the site with Odnoklassniki. In response, Durov called Mail.ru a “trash holding”, showed them the middle finger and convinced the co-founders of VKontakte not to sell their shares. In April 2012, the “war” stopped.

In the spring of 2012, a conflict broke out between VKontakte and the editors of the Vedomosti newspaper. Thanks to a technical innovation on the site, users could view the full texts of articles from web publications without clicking on an active link. Vedomosti considered this illegal and openly accused the social network of copyright infringement. VKontakte ignored the statement, and later disabled the activity of links to publications on the Vedomosti website. In the end, the newspaper’s editors removed the VKontakte widgets from their website and “froze” the publication’s official page on the social network. The managing director of the Vedomosti publishing company accused Durov of his inability to conduct a “civilized business.”

What's happened?

Pavel Durov's team presented the online publishing service Telegraph. Platform users can create and post posts anonymously, without registration or authorization.

“Today we are launching Telegraph, a publishing tool that allows you to create impressive publications based on markdown (a lightweight text markup language for the web. - Esquire), with photos and all kinds of embedded elements,” the messenger’s official blog says.

As an example scenario for using the tool, the creators offered the following option: “With Telegraph, your Telegram channel can submit stories just like the media.” Is the service capable of taking on the mission of replacing or duplicating modern media? Let's answer this question.

How does Telegraph work?

Anyone can use the new publishing tool. The service is located at www.telegra.ph. When clicking on it, the user will find an almost empty white page with several lines. Each of them is signed, so it is impossible to get confused or confused in the algorithm of actions.

The topmost field was left for the title. By the way, it, along with the date of publication, will be displayed in the online address of the future post. For example: http://telegra.ph/This-line-for-title-12−03.

Below is the field that the developers left for the author's name. But since the service is declared anonymous, it is not necessary to enter personal data. If desired, you can specify any nickname.

The Telegraph authors created the third line for the main content of the publication: text, embedded components and links. For editing, the user has a fairly limited number of tools. The text can be bold or italic and enlarged. There are only two orientation options. By default, the material “tends” to the left edge. Center orientation is available as an option. But in this case the font and size change.

What does this give?

So far, Instant View only works with a few sites, including, for example, blog hosting Medium and the TechCrunch resource. It is the Instant View option that has taken on the role of a tool that should lock the audience into the messenger as closely as possible, cutting off the desire to go back to the original source of the publication.

But the creator can edit the finished content only if the cookies are saved. Once the browser cache is cleared, it will no longer be possible to change the content of the post. Just like trying to change something from another device. This is the price for anonymity.

Some media channels have an audience of up to one million people. At the same time, all Telegram channels collect four hundred million views daily. Pavel Durov shared these figures at the Mobile Congress in Barcelona in February. Then he added that the next step in the development of the messenger would be channels for the media and bloggers. They will provide direct access to the audience. In traditional social networks, achieving it has become much more difficult, since your voice is lost in news feeds, Durov is sure.

The emergence of Telegraph and Instant View is more of a natural development than a breakthrough. I agree with this and Head of Viber in Russia and CIS countries Evgeniy Roshchupkin. According to him, the current state of social networks is a consequence of user requests: “New media, which include instant messengers, are developing at incredible speed, transforming into full-fledged platforms for business and the end user. Already now, using the example of public accounts in Viber, we can say that brands, and especially the media, understand that this type of communication is a response to users’ requests. Within the framework of this functionality, it is possible not only to post news, but also to receive feedback from readers, who represent a very high-quality mobile audience. However, it is too early to talk about direct competition with the media: messengers are a promising, but additional and specific tool for generating content. And although we have examples of successful public accounts with an audience of more than a million subscribers, we understand that maintaining this level of content requires great professionals. Thus, in my opinion, messengers can be a good help for the media, but will not absorb them.”

The fact that the title of pioneer goes to Facebook also suggests that Telegram’s new features are not a breakthrough. Zuckerberg's brainchild was the first to launch Instant Articles, a feature comparable to Instant View. It has been integrating materials from the mobile versions of National Geographic, BuzzFeed, The New York Times and other publications into the social network without users going to their parent sites since April. And in test mode, the calculation began in 2015. Today, many social networks, including Russian ones, are working on a similar platform idea.

Will Telegraph and Telegram kill the media?

The expression “killer of anything” (product, service, industry) sounds at least vulgar. At most, this phrase devalues ​​and discredits the very source of the threat. Remember those countless iPhone killers, Uber, which killed all taxi services. Such things rather change the market, introduce new rules, but do not suddenly make someone disappear.

Whether there are prerequisites for replacing the media with social networks and managers depends on the view of the concept of mass media, she said Vice President of Mail.Ru Group Anna Artamonova. “If by media we mean channels for information to reach people, then absolutely yes. If we mean a certain editorial office with people who have their own opinions, the range of topics they cover, and the policy for presenting the material, then no. Messengers and social networks strive to become a platform, not a unit of meaning. This is a broader and more correct strategy. The idea is to give anyone a platform to convey information, but not express their position in doing so. Messengers and social networks will definitely not maintain their own editorial staff, which will produce content: write texts, film stories, and the like.

In addition, there are two factors. The first is legislation. Now the media, especially in Russia, are quite strictly regulated in the legal field. And someone should be responsible for some opinion or information. And secondly, the ability and desire to write texts and create any content is not the destiny of many people.”

Classic media will not disappear, or rather, those who will be able to transform their business model will survive, believes Executive Director of the Institute for Applied Data Analysis at Deloitte Alexey Minin: “Why does the future belong to Google, Amazon, Facebook and other IT companies? Because they, essentially becoming marketplaces, demonetize the brand of those organizations that provide them with services. The media will need to abandon the traditional model of offering information. People don't want to look for her anymore. It is much more convenient for them to have some kind of media aggregator, where they can receive relevant information upon request to a chatbot or in some other way. That is, the media become a source of products that will be supplied to a single platform for communication with clients.

In general, the main point of a marketplace is that it knows everything about its users. For example, at what time and with what frequency do they read certain news. And the task of such aggregators is to cut off the media from clients, because it is precisely these clients that they will subsequently sell. Similar transformations of business models are already taking place in the banking sector and in retail (especially in electronics retail). In the near future, changes will affect the print media, and then the entire media sphere.”

In other words, we now see that the media, as best they can and as best they can, are mastering social networks, learning to export and even reproduce content on an ongoing basis on new platforms.

While social networks and instant messengers are not a threat to the media, and Telegraph is a completely unsuccessful product, he said Head of the Community Laboratory Vladislav Titov: “If Durov’s first two startups were successful (VKontakte and Telegram), then as for Telegraph there are big questions. Anonymity of authorship can be widely used by extremist informal organizations. They can agree to receive conditionally coded messages with seemingly meaningless text at a certain time. And those who need it will read these messages. If WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook Messenger are quite loyal to all intelligence services in all countries and actively fight against illegal elements, then Pavel Durov insists that Telegram is free from this. And Telegraph has an even wider field; you don’t even need to register there. And I very much doubt that this service will be of interest to ordinary users.”

According to the Statista resource, by September of this year Telegram had been installed by 100 million users. At the same time, according to Similarweb research, Telegram was in 21st place among the most popular social networks in the world.

What consequences could result from weakening the encryption of user correspondence? He expressed confidence that communication tools like Telegram and WhatsApp messengers “cannot become unsafe only for potential terrorists.”

“Encrypting these services either protects all users equally or puts them all at risk. Refusal of end-to-end encryption in a single country will leave tens of millions of people defenseless against attacks by hackers and blackmail by corrupt officials,” the entrepreneur warned. Durov again recalled that weakening encryption in instant messengers would undermine the country’s national security, since foreign intelligence services would also gain access to the correspondence of Russians. “At the same time, the risk of terrorist attacks will not disappear - as the events in Paris showed, disposable phones and ordinary CMC without any encryption are enough to carry out a terrorist attack,” the billionaire is sure.

On June 23, the head of Roskomnadzor turned to the owner of Telegram Durov with a demand to transfer data to include the messenger in the register. He threatened to block the messenger if he refused to cooperate with the department. The entrepreneur said, in turn, that a possible blocking of the Telegram messenger in Russia will lead to the transfer of information about the correspondence of Russian citizens to US-controlled cloud services. “As soon as Telegram is blocked, the correspondence of Russian officials, their communications with friends and relatives and other sensitive data via WhatsApp/Viber will go to the American-controlled Apple iCloud/Google Drive clouds,” the billionaire emphasized.

Later, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia reported that during the preparation of the terrorist attack that occurred in the St. Petersburg metro on April 3, the suicide bomber and his accomplices used the Telegram messenger “to hide their criminal intentions at all stages of the organization and preparation of the terrorist act.” The intelligence service clarified that in Russia, terrorists and their accomplices most actively use the Telegram messenger, “which provides terrorists with the opportunity to create secret chats with a high level of encryption of transmitted information.”

Zharov, in turn, again recalled that the time to resolve the conflict with Telegram is “counted in days” and the last opportunity for communication and dialogue should be “used.” “In the optimistic scenario, he responds, we add the Telegram messenger to the register of information dissemination organizers, and this is where the work of Roskomnadzor ends. Pavel Valerievich demonstrated that he is ready to work in the Russian legal field, and that’s all for now,” Zharov explained on NTV.

The Kremlin agreed to switch to other messengers if Telegram is blocked in Russia. This was stated by Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov. “If in the end the services of this messenger are unavailable, then we’ll switch to another one and see which one will be more convenient. In this case, there is competition, there is plurality, that is, choice,” said the Kremlin representative.

Updated: On April 13, 2018, the Tagansky District Court decided to block Telegram. The messenger refused to provide the FSB with the keys to decrypt user correspondence. On April 16, Russian providers began blocking. Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the messenger will use built-in methods to bypass blocks that do not require action from users, but 100% availability of the service without a VPN is not guaranteed.

In October 2013, popular Arabic blogger Khaled published several posts about the Telegram messenger that just appeared in the App Store. It all started when another user, @AboMayar, recommended that he try this app. Khaled responded by posting an angry cat, but then began encouraging followers to use Telegram. The blogger's posts contributed to a surge in downloads - after a few weeks, the Telegram audience grew to 100,000 users. Khaled and @AboMayar are still promoting the messenger on their Twitters, and Telegram denies that the bloggers are paid employees.

Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf countries, has become one of Telegram’s growth points. Bill Hyder, a developer from Saudi Arabia, wrote in on your Twitter account: “Telegram is becoming popular. I know of two government agencies that asked their employees to register in the messenger.”

Pavel Durov based the marketing of his project on the idea of ​​“security” under the slogan “Taking back our right to privacy” and in every possible way instilled in users confidence that no intelligence services would be able to read their messages. According to the entrepreneur, Telegram is growing thanks to a good product - users communicate about it to each other in one way or another - and also because WhatsApp's main competitor “sucks.” “We need to roll out at least a serious product update every month that will lead to a revolution,” Durov told Secret about his strategy. - You need to be faster, more beautiful, simpler and at the same time more functional than your main competitors. You need to have a serious ideological basis that will appeal to trendsetters. We need to change the industry both in narrow technological and mainstream aspects.”

It sounds, as always, inspiring, but the story of Telegram’s promotion would be incomplete without examining several bizarre episodes. All marketing stories around the messenger were based on the topic of security. And it worked - in June 2014, Telegram was named the fastest growing startup in Europe, and in February 2016, Durov’s service surpassed the 100 million user mark.

“The Secret” figured out the conflicts associated with the growth of Telegram and the nature of the messenger’s success.

A year after VKontakte, first employees

Telegram was born in scandals. Since the spring of 2012, Telegram has had a separate legal entity, where the first employees moved from VKontakte. The service concept has changed several times. Initially, Durov planned several projects in parallel: Telegraph was supposed to develop towards geo-chat, dating, and so on, Telegram was built on the idea of ​​end-to-end encryption and encrypted voice communication, Pictograph was supposed to adopt the ideas of Instagram. After a scandal erupted in June 2013 around data published by former CIA employee Snowden, Durov decided to concentrate on the security of communication. He used ideas from Telegraph and Pictograph in the messenger.

Telegram appeared as part of the non-profit organization Digital Fortress and was launched with Durov’s money. He is still financing the project alone, having earned about $300 million from the sale of his share of VKontakte. According to Durov, costs amount to more than $1 million per month. In an interview with the Washington Post, Axel Neff, who opened a company in the United States and bought servers for Telegram, described the concept as follows: “Create a series of instant messengers that rely not on phone operators, but on data centers.” Durov stated that Telegram is located in several jurisdictions and this allows it to avoid pressure from the authorities of any country.

Durov's older brother Nikolai wrote the MTProto information encryption protocol. According to Secret, the design of the messenger was developed by former VKontakte designer Alexey Dobromyslov and Pavel Durov himself, and artist Andrei Yakovenko also took part in the development of the corporate identity. The application hit the App Store in August 2013, and two months later the Android version was launched. At the same time, Telegram employees (mainly developers), by order of Durov, were organized a separate space on the sixth floor of Singer’s house and were given new magnetic cards to enter the office.

The then shareholder of VKontakte, the UCP fund, believed that Durov was using the company’s resources to create his own application. Durov denied everything: he said that the Telegram developers are not associated with VKontakte and even that “strictly speaking, Telegram is not my project.” In 2014, as a result of the proceedings, Durov had to launch a new application on iOS - Telegram HD - and transfer users from Telegram Messenger there.

According to the official version, Telegram is based in Berlin; European media often refer to the company as German. The Secret found out that Telegram never had a main office in Berlin (although Durov rents out an apartment there); key developers worked on Telegram from the same Singer house where VKontakte sits. Several sources confirmed that Durov still visits Singer’s house. His brother Nikolai remained to live in St. Petersburg, although he sometimes travels with his brother. Former Telegram CEO Andrei Lopatin never left St. Petersburg.

The developers, together with Durov, often visit different countries. For example, six months ago telegram workers noted company birthday in Venice with Napoleon cake. Their leader’s movements can be tracked on his Instagram: Dubai, San Francisco, Venice. Another source is Airbnb, through which Durov rents apartments and receives reviews from the owners. For example, Vincent from Paris writes that Pavel and Nikolai are “excellent guests.”

Durov still hires employees through competitions. Thus, Mikhail Filimonov wrote the Telegram desktop application for Mac OS. In 2012, Pyotr Yakovlev won the competition to develop the VKontakte messenger for iOS, but Durov quickly transferred him to work at Telegram.

"The Book of Revelations" and Interpol

In December 2013, entrepreneur Alexander Vasiliev flew from Dubai to celebrate (in the photo - second from right) the New Year together with VKontakte employees and Pavel Durov. The holiday took place in the Terrace restaurant behind St. Isaac's Cathedral, Vasiliev sat at a table next to photographer Alexander Mavrin, who invited female models to the party. Vasiliev was interested in the recently launched Telegram messenger.

At that time, the service had already attracted those first 100,000 active users, mostly from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. According to Durov, the second wave of Telegram growth in Saudi Arabia is due to the fact that popular TV channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya began to open their own channels, and users followed them.

According to one of the former employees of VKontakte, it was not only about the TV channels - it was no coincidence that Vasiliev was invited to the party at Terrace, and it was he who could contribute to promotion in Arab countries. But how?

For a long time, Vasilyev headed the board of directors of the Ukrainian consortium EDAPS, which produced documents, in particular passports, not only in Ukraine, but also in the USA, and also worked with the countries of the Persian Gulf. The company is owned by Vasiliev’s uncle, entrepreneur Yuri Sidorenko. In the spring of 2015, the US Supreme Court accused the concern of corruption: in 2005–2010, company representatives paid bribes to an official of the International Civil Aviation Organization, Maurizio Siciliano, who was responsible for projects related to machine-readable documents. According to investigators, in exchange for his help, Siciliano received monthly money, as well as assistance in finding employment for his son in EDAPS structures in the UAE, where Sidorenko and Vasiliev lived. According to the case materials, the main project that Siciliano lobbied for at the request of the Ukrainians was the introduction of electronic passports for Interpol employees.

Important evidence for the prosecution was the email correspondence between Siciliano and the owners of EDAPS, which investigators, with the permission of the court, read for several years via Gmail and Facebook. Vasilyev spent time in a Swiss prison in this case and was extradited to the United States in April 2015. He and his uncle have had close ties with the UAE for a long time - for example, in 2011, Sidorenko built the first Orthodox church in the country.

During the EDAPS scandal, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble, who had worked there for 14 years, resigned. After this, he opened the security document company RKN Global in Dubai in partnership with EDAPS. Vasiliev helped organize Noble’s meeting with Durov. After rumors appeared that Microsoft wanted to buy the manufacturer of Blackberry smartphones, which were used by Interpol, the international police began to look for a messenger for internal correspondence.

Durov does not deny that he met with Interpol, but on a different issue: he found out whether he would be extradited at the request of the Russian authorities in the event of an aggravation of the situation around VKontakte and Telegram, and was convinced that Interpol would not hand over people like him . According to him, no ideas for partnership were discussed in detail. (Noble did not respond to The Secret’s request.)

Vasiliev said that he helped promote Telegram, but did not share details: “I help ideas in which I believe. This is all a non-public story due to the people who are involved in it. I can say that these were people who could influence many others.” Sources close to the Telegram team said that Vasiliev could have advised the new messenger to top managers of Arab telecommunications companies and other representatives of the local elite, which rhymes with Haider’s tweet about recommendations to use Telegram in government agencies in Saudi Arabia.

Durov denied assumptions about business ties with Vasiliev and called information about such a promotion in the elite of Saudi Arabia “game.”

Vasiliev lured several programmers who worked on Telegram to join him. He launched an application that replicates Durov’s messenger functionality - Actor. Former VKontakte tester Ivan Gusev introduced Vasiliev to Telegram developer Stepan Korshakov, who took up the project. It was not difficult to lure Korshakov - by that time his relationship with Durov had deteriorated. When Vasiliev was convicted, funding for work on the application stopped. Korshakov continued to develop Actor, the company received investments from the leaders of the Fotostrana social network and is working on the project. There are 10,000 users and the idea is to focus the messenger on b2b communications.

Now Vasiliev, according to him, has found his life’s work and is developing the “Book of Revelations” application, which predicts fate by date of birth. By the way, it was created by Vyacheslav Krylov, who won Durov’s competitions for developing Telegram clients.

Open source

Telegram launched when the WhatsApp application of a native of Ukraine, Jan Koum, was already popular all over the world. Another competitor, Viber, had tens of millions of users in Iran, Russia and other countries. In addition, local messengers developed in certain regions: Hike in India, WeChat in China, Line in Japan. To become noticeable in the market, Durov needed to loudly declare himself. The focus on security and the “top-secret protocol” played an important role, although Durov was criticized for it by many experts and competitors - he allegedly builds marketing on the fear of users. Durov also created an open platform based on the Telegram API, where any programmer can create clients and their own applications.

According to Priori Data, Telegram was downloaded 2 million times on iOS and Android in Italy in 2015 (although WhatsApp still leads there and ranks first among all applications). Programmer Riccardo Padovani (who works for the drone company Archon and supports open source) believes that the main reason for the popularity of the messenger in the country is the strong community of open source developers, which promotes open source products like Telegram. They love such projects: for example, even the Italian army uses the Libreoffice office suite.

In addition, Windows Phones still have a large share in Italy thanks to Nokia, and Padovani believes Telegram works better on the platform than WhatsApp. In Italy, there is a popular bot called SpacoBot that makes obscene jokes in large groups and has become a reason for some to download Telegram.

Following users, officials and ministries began to open their channels on Telegram. The parish of the Catholic Church in Pompeii started a channel for the Pope's sermons, and then the channel was opened by the Ministry of Economy and Finance - @MEF_GOV.

In 2015, WhatsApp was the most popular application in Brazil - according to Nielsen, it was used by about 70% of smartphone users. In February 2015, a Brazilian court issued a ruling to block the messenger, but the service was never disabled. Against the backdrop of this news, 2.5 million local residents joined Telegram. According to Priori Data statistics, in 2015 Telegram received almost 10 million downloads on Android in Brazil (vs. 691,000 on iOS).

This was achieved thanks to the ZapZap service, the most successful application on the Telegram API (more than 6 million downloads on iOS alone). Users of such applications are considered Telegram users because they are stored on Durov’s servers. In an interview with Secret of the Firm, ZapZap founder Eric Costa said that “ZapZap gave birth to Telegram in Brazil and turned it into a social network.” When a user likes the app, it sends an invitation and calls to his friends - this is how it gets distributed. ZapZap has more than 20,000 user-created groups. The company regularly communicates with Durov’s team to resolve technical issues. Recently, the Brazilian authorities began to implement a program to support outsourcing projects in order to reduce the cost of royalties to foreign companies like Microsoft. So far Costa has not received any support.

Large companies have also built applications using the Telegram API. For example, Samsung launched its Socializer based on the service, but did not achieve success (10,000 downloads on Android; Samsung did not respond to The Secret’s request on this matter).

Prohibited

In 2014, Telegram showed rapid growth in Iran. Locals joke that the biggest migration in history has occurred - from Viber to Telegram. Due to Viber’s Israeli roots, this service was banned in the country, and 20 million users gradually switched to Durov’s messenger. Viber CEO Mikhail Shmilov did not comment on the Telegram breakthrough, but clarified that “Viber is now available there via VPN, which complicates the user experience.”

Iranian politicians addressed the country's residents on Telegram during the election campaign. The video of former President Mohammad Khatami was watched by 3 million users within 24 hours. “Telegram is much simpler and clearer,” political activist Ali Alemni, who campaigned for voters to join Telegram, told The Associated Press. Following the election results, the authorities named Telegram as one of the important channels that led them to victory.

Telegram was accused of being used by ISIS terrorists (an organization banned in Russia), because in 2015 it was the only one with secure end-2-end encryption with self-deleting messages. The channels caused a great stir, since, according to Vocativ, terrorists even collected money for weapons through the application. In November, Durov banned 78 channels dedicated to ISIS.

With the growing popularity of the messenger, the authorities began to ask its authors questions. Iranian cyber police demand that servers with user data be moved to Iran and threaten to block them; From time to time Telegram becomes partially or completely unavailable. Police have already arrested administrators of 20 groups, accusing them of distributing “immoral content.”

In 2014, at a press conference with the participation of the Russian Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Vaezi, it was said that the countries would support each other in terms of “security and politics.” Loyalty to Russians is perhaps one of the reasons why Telegram has not yet been blocked in this country.

Recently, Iranian authorities held a tender to develop their own messenger. When it appears, they can block Telegram to force users to switch to a local service. By the way, the winners of the tender are creating a messenger on Korshakov’s Actor platform.

Statements from the authorities about blocking Telegram have so far benefited him: the messenger is gaining more and more fans among freedom fighters. Statements about tightening censorship motivate users to look for more secure messengers, and first of all they think about Telegram.

For example, in Korea, the news that the state would control people through the popular KakaoTalk service brought millions of users to Telegram. According to research firm Ranky.co, KakaoTalk lost 400,000 users in one week, while Telegram was downloaded by a million Koreans. “Through Telegram, Korean users can promote their culture,” Durov promised in an interview

In November 2014, WhatsApp users in India became...

They say that it is bad to count other people's money. But how can one not do this when we are talking about a genius businessman who, at the age of 32, made it into the top 100 richest businessmen in Russia? So today we'll count Pavel Durov's condition- one of the most famous dollar millionaires in Russia and the creator of Telegram.

Durov's first money

It is interesting that Durov never worked anywhere on a permanent basis. At the same time, he does not consider VKontakte and Telegram to be work. As Pavel admitted in an interview, this is too interesting to call it work.

During his student days, Durov worked as a freelancer: he created websites, wrote articles, and organized events. In addition, he won large grants several times: scholarships from the President of Russia, the Government of Russia, Vladimir Potanin.

While still a student, Durov developed several programs to improve the social life of the university. For example, he created the electronic library Durov.com with university coursework. Another of his projects, the student forum Spbgu.ru, became the prototype of the VKontakte social network.

Later, Durov realized that forums where everyone hides behind nicknames have no future. He came up with the idea of ​​creating a resource where people would use real names and photographs and add information about themselves. The project was called “Student.ru”, later it was renamed “VKontakte” so that graduates could also use the service. Thus began Durov’s path to a multimillion-dollar fortune.

Durov's salary on VKontakte

During the existence of VKontakte, Durov’s payment increased 218 times. He received his first salary - a little more than 26 thousand rubles - at the beginning of 2007 as general director. After the probationary period, Durov’s salary increased to 115 thousand rubles, and in 2008 it was increased to 345 thousand. In 2013, Durov already received 5.76 million rubles.

In 2014, Russian media published news about an inspection carried out at the request of shareholders on VKontakte. It was reported that Durov in 2012-2013. spent about 273 million rubles from the company budget for personal needs. It also turned out that Durov set his own salary and wrote out multi-million dollar bonuses every month. It was clarified that during the year he wrote out 8 bonuses for himself in the amount of about 28 million rubles.

Later, VKontakte executive director Dmitry Sergeev denied this information. According to him, Durov did not set his own salary, and his salaries grew in proportion to the development of the company.

Durov's first billion

In 2011, Durov became a ruble billionaire - then his fortune was estimated at 8 billion rubles. By that time, he occupied 350th place in the list of the richest people in Russia. From that moment on, Pavel began to constantly appear on Forbes lists, including the magazine calling him the best startuper on the Runet.

In the same year, the idea of ​​the Telegram messenger was born. When the special forces came to Pavel’s door, he wrote to his brother Nikolai. At that moment, Durov realized that he needed a resource for safe communication with loved ones.

The first version of Telegram was released in 2013. In three years, the messenger managed to gather an audience of 100 million people, and it continues to grow.

Sale and dismissal from VKontakte

In January 2014, Durov sold his stake in VKontakte to Ivan Tavrin, CEO of Megafon. According to experts, he received for his 12% from 360 to 480 million dollars.

The founder of the social network explained that his share did not allow him to influence the board of directors, but thanks to the sale, Pavel will be able to develop Telegram without third-party investors. At the same time, Durov assured that he would remain working in the company as general director and would continue to develop VKontakte.

However, four months after the sale, in April 2014, Durov resigned from the company and emigrated from Russia. He paid $250,000 to the Sugar Fund of the Caribbean country of St. Kitts and Nevis and automatically received citizenship of that country. This gave him visa-free access to 124 countries, including Schengen countries, the UK, Singapore and Brazil.

Durov and charity

Durov spares no money for charity. So, in 2011, he founded the Start Fellows fund, which supports startups. In 2012, he donated $1 million to Wikipedia and $60 thousand to the winners of the Open World Teen Programming Championship.

Pavel’s last charitable act was an offer for developers of the best chatbots on Telegram. Durov promised from 25 thousand dollars to each author. The total amount was about a million dollars.

Current condition of Pavel Durov

In May 2015, VKontakte bought ICVA Ltd, which owned the main data center of the social network, from Durov. Most of the information about VK users is stored there. So Durov replenished his fortune by another 909 million rubles.

In 2016, the founder of Telegram took 135th place in the Forbes ranking, rising to 100th place within a year. By 2017, Durov’s fortune grew from 600 to 950 million dollars, that is, he now owns almost 60 billion rubles. Another hundred million and Durov will become a dollar billionaire.

Durov's main asset is Telegram, and it shows good growth year after year. For the first two years, Durov paid all expenses from his own pocket. In the summer of 2015, he said that he spends $1 million a month on the messenger. According to Pavel, several companies offered to finance the project, but he prefers to spend his own funds on development.

In the summer of 2015, Telegram launched an open platform for creating bots that can interact with external services and applications. In the spring of 2017, Telegram got its own. You can pay via Apple Pay or Android Pay. What is important is that Telegram does not take a commission for payments: bot developers take the entire income.

So Durov is introducing his own business model, which is not focused on maximum profit - unlike most commercial projects. The creator of the messenger said that the Telegram team plans to earn exactly the amount that will be needed for equipment, transportation and salaries for “the best developers in the world.” When it will start bringing in that kind of money remains in question.

Analysts estimate the messenger at $1 billion - that's exactly how much Google was willing to pay. Durov himself named the amount at 3-4 billion dollars, citing recent proposals for sale. However, he is not going to sell his brainchild.

At the beginning of 2018, Telegram finally began to monetize thanks to the launch of an ICO and the release of its own. As a result of the Pre-Sale, $1.5 billion of investments were attracted, even before the official start of the ICO itself. The release of the Gram currency will make Telegram a profitable project. All relevant information about the development of Durov’s blockchain system is published in the channel