As of November, 2009, the network has more than 50 million users and is the leading site in Europe in terms of user visits, page views, data transfer per day.[5] As of March 19, 2009, VKontakte is ranked 28 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites with a traffic rank of 25.[6]
Since 2007, major Russian companies have been sending job offers via VKontakte.[7] Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, more and more people are joining, many of whom are youths of various age groups.
In English "V Kontakte" is literally translated as "In Contact", but basically means "In Touch".
Functionality
The sites functionality includes personalized pages, easy access to friends pages and news, a photo- and videohosting, a simple messaging system, groups that users can participate in, and notes. Almost all of the information provided by users is a subject to easy search, therefore people are able to look for those with similar interest, school, places of birth, etc. New features are being added to the website from time to time, such as ability to host audiofiles in groups and personal pages, "Opinions" function allowing one to express personal thoughts about a friend on the network anonymously, "Offers" to ask people whether one wants to do something together with the user, "Questions" to answer the question that is asked by user and "Applications", containing Flash API based games, tools, chat rooms etc.
[edit]Privacy
Users have the ability to control the availability of their content, for instance it is possible to hide one's pictures, videos, and entire pages. Users can also choose who can invite them to join groups, write personal messages, write on their wall, and so forth. It is claimed that the site content is not indexed by the search engines. Indeed, the Russian market's dominating players, Yandex, Rambler, and to a lesser extent, Google, not only don't link to privacy-locked VKontakte pages, but also do not link to users who choose to open their pages to the general public; in fact, search engines provide no indication whatsoever that any user is registered on VKontakte. Unless users post external links to their pages elsewhere, the only way to find a VKontakte page is by using VKontakte's own search protocols.
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