Slashdot Mirror
Celebrated Russian Hacker Now In Exile
An anonymous reader writes: VKontakte is a Russian social network, more popular there than even Facebook. Its founder, Pavel Durov, was a celebrity for his entrepreneurial skills, much like Mark Zuckerberg elsewhere. But as Russia has cracked down on internet freedoms, 30-year-old Durov had to relinquish control of the social network. He eventually fled the country when the government pressured him to release data on Ukrainian protest leaders. He's now a sort of roving hacker, showing up where he's welcome and not staying too long. "Mr. Durov, known for his subversive wit and an all-black wardrobe that evokes Neo from the Matrix movies, is now a little-seen nomad, moving from country to country every few weeks with a small band of computer programmers. One day he is in Paris, another in Singapore." Durov said, "I'm very happy right now without any property anywhere. I consider myself a legal citizen of the world."
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20...
The Russian Internet giant Mail.ru said on Tuesday that it had bought the remaining stake in Vkontakte, the country’s largest social network, that it did not already own for $1.47 billion.
Mail.ru is owned by Alisher B. Usmanov.
From http://qz.com/268023/this-puti... :
Usmanov is one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “oligarchs,” a group of businessmen with close ties to the Kremlin, and last year Putin awarded him Russia’s highest civilian award, the Order for Service to the Fatherland.
That ought to clear up who is running/owns VKontakte.