NEW DELHI: VK Russia’s version of Facebook has launched a photo-sharing mobile application that is reportedly aimed to give Instagram a run for its money. Snapster, which like Instagram allows users to post and share pictures that can be edited with filters, available on Apple and Android phones, a report by IBN Live said. Pictures however, get automatically deleted after a certain time space. The launch comes just over a year after the departure of its founder Pavel Durov’s from the VK group. Durov – known as Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg — created VK originally as VKontakte in 2006. He resigned last year after an enduring conflict with Kremlin-linked shareholders. Following Durov’s departure, VK came under the control of Russian Internet group Mail.ru. VK is available in several languages, but is especially popular among Russian-speaking users, particularly in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Like other social networking sites, it allows users to send messages to each other; create groups, pages and events; share and tag images, audio and video, and play games. VK however did not have a picture sharing feature making Russia’s “selfie generation” to turn to Instagram. “This is VK’s first service for mobile phones that functions independently from the social network, while being closely integrated to it,” VK operations director Andrei Rogozov said in a statement on Monday. “We are creating a new global project that is not limited to the site’s users.” As of November 2014, VK had at least 280 million accounts and is ranked 22 in Alexa’s global Top 500 sites. It is also the second most visited website in Russia, after Yandex. [According to eBizMBA Rank, VK is the 8th most popular social networking site in the world. As of January, VK had an average of 70 million daily users.
