The operating director of "VKontakte" responded to the criticism of Durov and called 7 advantages of redesign

Today, Andrei Rogozov, operating director of the social network VKontakte, published the post “7 key improvements in the new design of the web version of VKontakte,” according to which, in his opinion, the redesign benefited VK. It was prompted by the recent publication of 7 points of criticism of the new design of social services. network from its founder, Pavel Durov.

1. It became more convenient to communicate. In the old design, a list of open dialogs was displayed on top and covered part of the correspondence. Now it is displayed on the right side of the screen and does not take away useful space. Users who participated in the testing of the redesign, began to send 6% more messages.

2. Focus on content. The new smart tape algorithm changes the order of the news, displaying interesting entries above the rest. The font size and width of the entries are optimally selected for comfortable reading and perception of information. As a result, in the new interface, users began to look at 5% more entries and 10% more often click "Like".

Apparently, this is a “first interesting” function, which is turned off by default and can be enabled by the user to read news in chronological order.
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3. Simplify navigation. Additional column on the right allowed more efficient use of free space on the page. In particular, thanks to the block of recommended friends in the news, users began to send 12% more requests to friends.

In fact, the removal of “possible friends” into the feed occurred from the user's main page, which, due to a forced redirect to the news feed, was used much less frequently when entering the social network. It was not possible to find out where the "possible friends" were gone, because the author did not appear in the newsletter instead of or with advertising.

4. The music section is faster. In the redesign, the audio service has been completely rewritten, and the audio player has been transferred from Flash technology to HTML5. These changes have significantly accelerated his work. As a result, the number of auditions increased by 10%.

Most likely, the growth of auditions was influenced by the transition to HTML5, which is in no way connected with the redesign directly. However, Andrey does not share the application of the new technology and the change in appearance, “merging” these events into a single whole. At the same time, users have long been waiting for a more intelligent search for audio recordings and drawing up a priority sample of originals / HQ, but so far no such innovations have been seen.

5. Improved video player. Following the audio, and videotapes are translated from Flash to HTML5. The updated player starts up faster and makes it easier to switch between videos. The control buttons are larger and more convenient. Thanks to this, users are already watching 10% more videos.

Approximately the same situation as with the increase of auditions of audio recordings. Likely "culprit" - HTML5.

6. New features. The new design made it possible to implement dozens of improvements, including a photo editor with the ability to apply stickers and text, as well as draw graffiti over photos, tooltips of stickers in messages and comments, etc. You can read more about all changes here: vk.com/live/review

All these changes are exclusively “cosmetic” and absolutely no useful functionality is provided to absolutely all users.

7. Secure connection. Along with the transition to redesign, all VKontakte users automatically switched to a secure encrypted connection using the HTTPS protocol. In addition, notifications about all authorizations on the page have been added - not a single visit will go unnoticed.

Undoubtedly, an important update, as well as notifications about the entrance, for which you no longer need to go to the settings and check the activity on IP and devices. But, as with the HTML5 situation, the merits of introducing HTTPS are attributed, for some reason, to the redesign team.

Andrei Rogozov cites statistical figures, not daring to challenge the criticism of Durov. In fact, the operating director of VKontakte brought seven positive points as opposed to the seven negative points presented by the former CEO and founder.

Some of the points can be argued, while others, which do not raise any doubts about their usefulness (translation of audiovisual content to HTML5 and the use of HTTPS instead of HTTP), unfortunately, are far from designers.