VK (originally VKontakte, Russian: ВКонтакте, literally “in touch”) is the largest Russian social network in Europe. It is available in several languages, but is especially popular among Russian-speaking users, particularly in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Like other social networks, VK allows users to message each other publicly or privately, to create groups, public pages and events, share and tag images, audio and video, and to play browser-based games.
As of November 2014, VK had at least 280 million accounts. VK is ranked 22 (as of November 1, 2014) in Alexa’s global Top 500 sites and is the second most visited website in Russia, after Yandex. According to eBizMBA Rank, it is the 8th most popular social networking site in the world.[9] As of January 2015, VK had an average of 70 million daily users. In 2013, the Mirilashvili family sold its 40% share in VK to United Capital Partners for $1.12 billion, while Lev Leviev sold his 8% share in the same deal, giving United Capital Partners 48% ownership. In January 2014, VK’s founder Pavel Durov sold his 12% stake in the company to the CEO of Megafon, which is controlled by Alisher Usmanov. Following the deal, Usmanov and his allies controlled around 52% of the company. Shortly thereafter, the CEO of Megafon, sold his 12% stake to Mail.ru, thus allowing mail.ru to consolidate its controlling stake of 52% in VK.
On September 16, 2014, the Mail.ru group bought the remaining 48% stake of VK from Blesmir Development and Palagon, thus becoming the sole proprietor of the social network.