The monthly audience of VKontakte in the world in May reached a record 107 million users, said Marina Krasnova, CEO of the company. In an interview on the sidelines of SPIEF, she spoke about bloggers’ incomes, record donations, which social media services users spend the most time on, the Internet based on blockchain, and shared her opinion about modern VR devices. Interviewed by Alexey Chalov.
— What is the current audience of VKontakte
— Our audience is constantly growing, we regularly show it in our quarterly reports. The last quarter confirmed this again. We saw over 11% year-on-year growth in daily and monthly audiences. In May, we set a new record: the monthly audience of VKontakte in Russia amounted to 84 million people. Also in May, we set a new record for daily attendance in Russia with 54.2 million people. If we talk about the world, then there is also a record for monthly audience — 107 million people.
— What does the average social network user look like?
— » 86% of Runet use monthly, and 97% use VK products in general. Therefore, we can say that our average user is an average Internet user. If we talk about the core of the audience, then the most active age group is young people aged 14-24. They spend the most time on social media.
— In how many countries are you now present, besides Russia?
— When we talk about the whole world, it really is the whole world. We record a uniform growth in all points of presence. Today, the VKontakte interface has been translated into 80 languages. The social network supports not only the most popular languages in the world, but also rarer ones — thanks to this, almost anyone in the world can use Vkontakte.
— At the moment, separate elements of the metaverses — widgets, NFT tokens — penetrate into the daily life of social network users. When do you think full-fledged metaverses like in science fiction films can appear? What technologies should be developed first of all for this?
— Now there are no technologies or devices that would be convenient for a person natively. We see announcements and trials of various vendors, but so far VR devices are limiting a person. If we talk about virtual reality glasses, you need to wear them, they restrict movement, you cannot feel fully in society and are closed inside your metaverse.
We believe in the digital universe itself, we build it around our online tools that erase boundaries of communication.
— What are the company's plans for web3 (Internet based on blockchain, NFT and cryptocurrencies)?
— We opened the veil of this mysterious world for our users by launching several projects in this area. We made connecting crypto wallets simple scenarios, showing the audience the mechanics of interaction with web3 technologies. They gave users the opportunity to create their own digital twins — vmoji. We see how it has become popular with users. Since the launch of VK NFT, tens of thousands of users have set themselves NFT avatars. The number of users who have created vmoji has reached nine million. If you look at the growth rate of installations and the creation of digital and NFT avatars, it is quite obvious that in a few years there will not be a single person who, being online, does not know that it is possible to have some kind of value that is supported by NFT technologies. . Further, we plan to move towards content management using web3 technologies, when you can use NFT to confirm ownership of not only images, but also music, videos, texts. And, of course, we are moving towards our own NFT marketplace.
— What will this marketplace look like? When do you plan to launch?
— We plan to launch the marketplace before the end of the year. Any user of VKontakte will be able to mint (create NFT items with their registration in the blockchain) and lay out their collection, make a drop (start selling a collection of NFT items), buy tokens on the primary and secondary markets. All operations can be carried out for rubles. We plan to add various recommendation engines to make it easy for users to find collections of interest to them.
— So you are going in the direction of more people becoming owners of NFT items? Is this your way to build a global metaverse?
— We are expanding the possibilities associated with NFT technology, starting with the most basic mechanics to gradually engage users. There are already more than 3.7 million active users in the VK NFT application. We see a lot of interest from brands who come to us and ask to tell us how it works and how to make NFT drops with them.
— What is the current income of bloggers in the services of your social network? What tools do they have?
— In 2022, communities using official monetization tools earned a record four billion rubles. Another tool for earning authors on the platform is VK Donut. This is a paid subscription to support authors and access to exclusive materials, which can be issued by any user of the social network. According to the results of the first quarter of 2023, the growth in earnings of authors using this tool amounted to 178% year-on-year and exceeded 168 million rubles in three months. The number of communities using this tool grew by 67% year-on-year, and the number of subscribers transferring funds through this platform increased by 113% year-on-year in the first quarter.
— What a record donate in the service?
— Since the launch of VK Donut in 2020, the most generous and active user has spent almost 300 thousand rubles to support their favorite communities.
— How are things going with the supply of equipment for the company's services? Are there any problems with them now?
— There are no problems with the supply of equipment. We purchase equipment in such a way as to be ready for a multiple increase in loads. In addition to the traditional peaks during the New Year holidays, when there is a tenfold load on some services, there are loads that depend on other factors. For example, we launch a broadcast that millions of people watch online, or popular content that collects tens of millions of views within 12 hours. We cope with all these loads, among other things, thanks to the timely purchase of additional capacities. This is facilitated by the development of technology and infrastructure. We learned how to redistribute traffic so that individual segments work smoothly despite the increased load.
— Vkontakte has a mini-application platform where any developers can add their services. Which apps are growing the fastest?
— There are more and more mini-apps on the platform, and they are used more often: the average monthly active audience of the VK Mini Apps platform in January — March 2023 increased by 4% year-on-year to 43.3 million people, and the ad monetization of mini-apps grew by almost 2.5 times. When it comes to the most popular mini-apps, first of all it is the Health platform, including Steps, Running and Workouts with a monthly audience of more than 8 million, as well as Games with an active audience of 10 million. Another popular service on the platform is Dating, which has a monthly active audience of over 2.4 million.
— Which Vkontakte services do people spend the most time on? And where is the biggest increase now?
— Most of the time users traditionally spend in the news feed, video and messenger. For example, more than 67 million people use the messenger every month, they exchange 15 billion messages daily. In terms of growth rates, the absolute leader is Clips. In the first quarter of 2023, daily views on the service doubled year-on-year to 956 million. Thanks to the new recommendation system, the average time that users spend on the service has increased by 2.5 times over the year. Views in the feed are growing every quarter — in January-March of this year, the increase was 37%, including due to the development of recommendations and increased audience engagement.
— Let's talk about your call service. Do you plan to add any new features there?
— In the next major launches, we will focus on ML speech recognition technologies. Let's add automatic subtitles — right during the call, neural networks will turn the speech of the interlocutors into text on the screen. Users will be able to participate in video meetings without unmuting the device. We are also working on call transcription technology so that at the end of the meeting you will have the opportunity to receive a text version of everything that was discussed. In the future, we will be able to make a short summary of the call in the form of a few main points.
— Do you feel staff shortage right now? How many IT professionals have you hired in the last year and a half? Do specialists come from abroad?
— Recently, we have seen a strong influx of candidates. So strong that we have to raise the bar for applicants in order to hire only the best. Over the past year, the Vkontakte team has grown by more than a third.