Pavel Durov's speech at the GMIC conference in San Francisco - the first public appearance of the VK founder and Telegram in Silicon Valley

October 22, at the GMIC conference, the first public appearance of Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte and Telegram, took place in San Francisco, in the Silicon Valley region. Pavel asked Alexia Tsotsis , editor of TechCrunch, one of the most popular technology and start-up resources.

Contrary to popular belief, Pavel doesn’t set a role model for Mark Zuckerberg at all, but Edward Snowden, who “showed courage and sacrificed much of his life in order for people to know the truth about being spied on.” Among these people, Paul considers himself as one of the possible objects for espionage, along with others. When I was asked whether I had met Snowden, I answered that I hadn’t met him (however, I offered him a job), but I would consider it an honor to talk with him personally, because he considers Snowden to be a “hero”. Regarding the similarity of Facebook and VK, Pavel noted: “Mark underestimates VK. He does not use it often enough. VK is faster, more convenient and more functional. ”

It did not go without questions about the pirated content of VKontakte, to which Pavel answered with a stub (obviously expecting this question) that they are already actively deleting illegal content and agreeing with the right holders about replacing it with legal content.
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At GMIC, Pavel presented the Telegram platform. It is the platform, not the product, where third-party developers are actively invited. Especially or not, but a few hours before his speech, Telegram itself was updated in the App Store, which was supplemented with the following innovations:
- optimization for iOS 7,
- “secret” chats,
- the count of "self-destruction of messages", after the recipient read them (so that private information "did not go to the enemy", was not stored on Telegram servers and was not available for "wiretapping"). It is the “inability to listen to” Telegram stands out among its competitors, because the protection of private information is a very sensitive issue in the United States now.

Anyone familiar with Snapchat (a super popular messaging service with photos and videos, where the main “trick” is just the counting of “self-destruction” of messages, more photos and videos are loaded on Snapchat than on Instagram) immediately noticed what “trick” Paul “ stole ”this time =) And Alexia tweeted that Telegram is a mixture of Snapchat and WhatsApp.


Pavel talks about Telegram, Alexia (presenter) is moved by icons

There were also questions about the relationship with the state. In particular, they recalled the story about the problems of Pavel Durov with the traffic police - Alexis asked, jokingly, whether Pavel was violating traffic regulations in the USA.

I especially remember the question about the NSA (which Snowden exposed) —Alexia asked: “What if the NSA turns to you with a request to provide users’ correspondence, ”to which Pavel replied:“ And we’re a Russian company and the NSA do not obey ” with the public in the hall.

After the speech, Pavel Durov went backstage, a group of journalists hurried after him, some of whom Pavel promised to give an interview, but then disappeared somewhere unnoticed - it seems that he did not want to answer the same questions. And on the stage he was replaced by the founder of the top incubator YCombinator Paul Graham, who also told a lot of interesting things.

Several video instagrams from the speech of Pavel Durov:
www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1426779874202283
www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1426779987535605


"We communicate on the sidelines" with Paul. Right in the red shirt is the founder of the top incubator YCombinator Paul Graham

In addition to Pavel himself, it was nice to see other VKontakte employees: marketing vice president Mikhail Ravdonikas, as well as developer Oleg, who, he said, did not come on purpose, but simply traveled around America and decided to watch the manager’s speech.

PS: By the way, the conference was also unexpectedly visited by another celebrity of the Russian (and not only) IT world. Yuri Milner spoke in one of the conference halls, which gathered a full house at the end of the speech. According to rumors, on the same evening, Milner organized a banquet for outstanding global entrepreneurs in his home in Los Altos (California), which was allegedly attended by Mark Zakerberg and Pavel Durov.

Update: Pavel said he was ready to meet with the media and answer questions.

We are grateful to GMIC 2013 in the face of Nikolai Oreshkin for providing assistance and participation in the conference.

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