Topic summary
VKontakte
Extracted from the Wikipedia article VK (service).
History
VKontakte was conceived in 2006 when Pavel Durov, creator of the popular student forum spbgu.ru, met his former classmate Vyacheslav Mirilashvili in St. Petersburg after graduating from the Faculty of Philology at St Petersburg State University. Mirilashvili showed Durov the increasingly popular Facebook, after which the friends decided to create a new Russian social network. Lev Leviev, an Israeli classmate of Mirilashivili's, became the third co-founder. Mirilashvili borrowed the money from his billionaire father and became the largest shareholder. Lev Leviev took over operational management, and Durov became CEO. Pavel Durov convinced his older brother Nikolai, a multiple winner of international math and programming competitions, to develop the site.