Head of the VKontakte development department Andrey Rogozov answered questions about the creation and development of the application platform.
How much money do third-party developers bring to the site, who wins the competition, and why VKontakte does not create applications for its own API.
- What is the VKontakte platform and how long has it existed?
- The platform allows any third-party developers to create integrated applications: for example, games that use information about the user’s friends, or applications that expand the functionality of the site. The first version of the VKontakte platform appeared at the beginning of 2008, when we opened hosting for Flash applications with a basic set of functions. This was enough for a number of games to take off; the same notorious “Happy Farmer” already gained hundreds of thousands of users. In the spring of 2009, the platform was radically updated, developers received significantly greater opportunities for integration with the site - and the market literally exploded. Up to this point, there were 2-3 companies, and for them, developing applications on the Internet was not their core business. Within six months after the launch of our API 2.0, several dozen successful startups with millions in profits appeared in Russia.
- And then you decided to force them to share this profit?
- When we were finishing work on the functions planned for the updated version, Pavel suggested giving applications access to votes (votes are a virtual currency that was used in paid VKontakte services - ratings and gifts - Chaskor) and see what comes of it . A couple of weeks later, we looked at the transaction amounts and decided to charge a “sales tax,” and a couple of months later Pavel was already telling an interested Mark Zuckerberg about this experience.
- Do you think your success has pushed Facebook to transfer developers to virtual currency with a tax?
- The idea itself is quite obvious. They say that in China this model worked before us. More recently, Apple introduced a tax on transactions between the user and the application.
- However, Apple takes 30% from application authors, and you take 50. Isn’t that too much?
- It depends on what you compare it to. In China, too, there are networks that took 80%. It is more important for us that current conditions do not prevent applications from running a successful business, and VKontakte brings more profit to application developers on the RuNet than other social networks.
It seems to us that it is more correct to soften the initially strict conditions than to lure developers to our platform with the absence of a commission, and then suddenly change the rules of the game, as our colleagues did. On our site, the commission percentage will be revised only in favor of the developers.
- Does this mean that developers can expect new conditions soon?
- Now targeted advertising is becoming the main source of income for VKontakte. I accept that our commission may change in the foreseeable future.
- Regarding high earnings on your platform, how much money do the applications earn?
- We are reluctant to disclose our financial indicators. I can only say that in March we paid over $2.5 million to third-party application developers. A year ago the figure was two times less. And now it continues to grow every month.
- Has anyone managed to repeat the success of “The Happy Farmer”?
- The current leader of the section - “Prison” - managed not only to repeat the success of “Happy Farmer”, but also to surpass it in all respects. This application proved that to create a successful product it is not necessary to have a solid background and financial support. For talented developers, there is no such thing as a barrier to entry into the platform. "Prison" managed to gather a gigantic audience in just a few months.
- The counter shows 6 million installations.
- Installations are not as important as app traffic. And these numbers are comparable to what the Happy Farmer had in its heyday. It should also be taken into account that “Farmer” was the first VKontakte application to use social mechanics (attracting friends, etc.) - they had no competitors at the very beginning and less control over promotion methods. And Tyuryaga managed to grab a key market share within three months of its launch in a very competitive environment.
- Does “Prison” earn more than “Farmer” during its heyday?
- I cannot disclose specific figures, I will only say that Tyuryaga is several times more profitable.
Returning to the rule changes on the platform. You know, many say that the rules of the VKontakte game change too often and this harms business.
- At the beginning of the development of the platform, we explored possible options for user interaction with applications, conducted experiments in the spirit of: “Let's give applications function X and see how they will use it.”
The myth that “everything has already been discovered and invented” has existed at all times in many areas of human activity. It can be very attractive to people who want to justify their inaction. However, the world is changing rapidly, and new methods and solutions become possible every day. This allows leaders not only to regularly invent new game worlds and mechanics, but also to apply original approaches to already known ones.
This often resulted in abuses that undermined trust in the platform as a whole. People who encountered fraudulent apps or apps that left advertising messages without their knowledge were reluctant to open the apps afterward and even less willing to vote for them. The introduction of restrictions in these cases has always had a positive effect on the total revenue of the site’s applications. Although lovers of semi-legal methods were hardly happy.
- Can we say that the period of experimentation is over and the rules of the game have stabilized?
- The platform is developing - after new opportunities, abuses arise, to which we are forced to respond. But this does not affect conscientious players. For the last year and a half, we have been revising the terms of the platform only in favor of developers. We have abolished fees for app branding, allowed the placement of any external links and any third-party advertising, simplified pre-moderation and plan to abolish it altogether - the market is ripe for this.
Just recently, links to applications disappeared from user pages. I have heard complaints about this from developers who have lost an additional opportunity to attract new audiences.
- Yes, this is quite a resonant change. We decided to move towards simplifying the user's home page and abandoned using the application block in its previous form. Instead, we've significantly redesigned the main app section, making it easier to access the apps you visit most often. A more convenient way to view notifications from applications has been added; the user has instant access to the application catalog and various ratings. In addition, we have developed the first version of a recommendation system that suggests objects of interest to the user, including applications.
- And what are the recommendations based on? Is this some new type of promotion?
- In general terms, the selection is based on a collaborative filtering method. This technique is used to generate a list of applications similar to those that the user frequently accesses. We analyze the data and compile a matrix of similarities between applications, on the basis of which lists of recommendations are subsequently built. This algorithm is capable of learning on its own, so over time the system will produce more and more relevant results.
Is the application platform a significant factor in the success of VKontakte in the Russian social networking market? Both Mail.Ru and Odnoklassniki opened their APIs much later.
- Perhaps, but we do not consider the platform in this light. It quickly became clear that third-party developers would launch their applications on all available platforms, without giving any one network any advantage. But a good platform is like a nuclear weapon: if one of your competitors doesn't have it, they're in trouble.
Is VKontakte planning to enter the application market? Mail.Ru successfully competes with independent developers on its own sites and increases profits.
“Such steps undermine trust in the platform and destroy the level playing field ecosystem. We are moving in a different direction - we are closing the native VKontakte services, leaving an API for accessing data and more space for the activities of third-party developers.
- Closing services - are we talking about opinions and questions?
- Including, but that’s not the main thing. Indeed, six months ago we closed our “native” services “Opinions”, “Questions”, “Suggestions”, which were popular. But they provided access to the entire database accumulated during the work of “Questions” and “Suggestions”, in such a way that third-party developers were able not only to completely recreate the original services, but also to significantly expand them.
You also cannot create sections that you do not use yourself. There was a period in the history of the site when developers created services not entirely for themselves - these were, in particular, “Anonymous Opinions”, “Suggestions”, “Questions”. There was a feeling that they were in demand, they were worth doing - this year all these services were disabled.
We will soon be closing the “Ads” section - this is not the sector we would like to deal with, we will completely provide it to third-party companies. Our paid services - ratings and gifts - have been gradually winding down over the past months. Operations with ratings already occur only through third-party applications (it is not available in the native VKontakte interface), and gifts migrate every couple of months to less attractive parts of the page, one day this niche will be freed up for third-party developers. We don’t want to spread out in all directions; we prefer to focus on basic services.
In general, we are interested in providing capabilities that are not easy for applications to create on their own.
Many people are concerned about the issue of access to confidential information of application developers. Can developers see, for example, users’ personal correspondence?
- The user must always explicitly allow the application to access their data. There are different levels of such confirmation, depending on the importance of the data. Access to such key things as personal correspondence can only be obtained by verified partner applications, in which we can be 100% sure.
By the way, our versions for mobile devices - the iPhone application and i.vkontakte.ru - are made entirely using the API. In principle, the full version of our API today provides the conditions for creating another “VKontakte”.
Interviewed by Elnara Petrova, editor of DP VKontakte
The day before it became known who would take the place of general director and other key positions at VKontakte. This is not about a simple change of names: where the largest Russian social network will go “after Durov” depends on the new leadership. Apparat has studied all the available information and made conclusions about what to expect.
The Mail.Ru Group company is entirely “VKontakte” and immediately took advantage the ability to single-handedly appoint management. Boris Dobrodeev became the chief director of the social network, Andrey Rogozov became the chief operating officer, and Dmitry Sergeev headed the holding company VK.COM.
In the previous months, these same people were involved in the social network as temporary management while VKontakte shareholders were in conflict. Now that their status is officially secured, the new leadership can act more freely and on a larger scale. And since their views differ in many ways from the views of Pavel Durov and his team, there is reason to expect changes.
Boris Dobrodeev is a member of the board of directors of Mail.Ru Group and the son of the head of VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev. Last November, he took the position of First Deputy General Director, and has now been promoted.
Andrey Rogozov is one of the key employees of VKonakte, who has worked in the company since 2007 (the social network appeared in 2006). According to current and former colleagues, in recent years his role has been very large, which became especially noticeable when Pavel Durov began to devote more and more time to the Telegram project. After a number of key employees left VKontakte (Nikolay Durov, Ilya Perekopsky, Igor Zhukov and others), he remained one of the few “stars” of the old team.
Dmitry Sergeev also recently joined the company. Previously, he headed the Kommersant publishing house, redesigned Gazeta.Ru and led sports and gaming projects at Rambler-Afisha-SUP. At the beginning of this, he came to the position of executive director of VKontakte, which became vacant with the dismissal of Ilya Perekopsky. Then he told Forbes that he was appointed personally by Pavel Durov, but did not specify who proposed his candidacy. The obvious option is co-owner of Mail.Ru Group Alisher Usmanov. Sergeev worked at Kommersant, owned by a billionaire.
The difference between the new leaders of VKontakte is obvious: Rogozov is close to the startup culture, Dobrodeev and Sergeev are close to the corporate culture. Rogozov came to the company as a young developer, when it consisted of only a few programmers who were passionate about the idea, and the concept of “manager” was absent. Dobrodeev and Sergeev belong to the older generation of managers and immediately came as managers; Mail.ru Group, whose interests they represent, has thousands of employees.
The final transfer of management to Mail.Ru Group caused a lot of fears and expectations among users of the social network related to the difference in their approaches. Pavel Durov is known as an opponent of aggressive monetization, government regulation (he is the author of the words “the best legislative initiative is its absence”), censorship, as well as
Managing Director of the social network VKontakte Andrei Rogozov accused Roskomnadzor of misunderstanding the principles of the Internet. Previously, the department blocked one of the company’s IP addresses, which is why some users lost access to it. Rogozov emphasized that transferring keys to decrypt user messages, which the FSB requires from Telegram, is impossible by definition.
Rogozov currently holds the post of director of development at VKontakte. After Pavel Durov left, VKontakte was headed by Dmitry Sergeev, but only in the status of executive director.
The VKontakte social network will be headed by its operating director Andrey Rogozov. “In connection with the transition of Boris Dobrodeev to the position of General Director (CEO Russia) of Mail.Ru Group, the company is changing the management system of VKontakte and announces the appointment of Andrey Rogozov, Chief Operating Officer of the social network, to the position of Managing Director,” the company said in a statement. .
The vacant position of General Director of VKontakte, which became vacant after the departure of Pavel Durov, will be filled by Andrey Rogozov. This news was reported by a source extremely close to Mail.ru Group.
Currently, Rogozov works at VKontakte as a development director. It is noteworthy that after the departure of the founder of the social network Durov, Dmitry Sergeev took over his responsibilities. However, he took the chair not of the general director, but of the executive director. Now, VKontakte will receive a full-fledged general director who will perform direct responsibilities and functions. It is worth noting that today Mail.ru Group completely bought out the shares of VKontakte, becoming the absolute owner of this social network.
Mail.Ru Group changed the VKontakte management system and appointed Andrey Rogozov to the position of managing director. Rogozov was at the origins of the social network and worked as the director of operations, responsible for technical development and the emergence of new functions on the website and applications of the social network.
Mail.Ru Group announced the appointment of Andrey Rogozov to the position of Managing Director of the VKontakte social network.
In connection with the transition of Boris Dobrodeev to the position of General Director (CEO Russia) of Mail.Ru Group, the company is changing the management system of VKontakte and announces the appointment of Andrey Rogozov, Chief Operating Officer of the social network, to the position of Managing Director.
