Facebook vs Vkontakte, Athens vs Sparta, USA vs USSR, liberalism vs power vertical

It is very interesting for me to follow the development of Facebook and Vkontakte in the long term. It is interesting not even from the user or business points of view, but in philosophical and historical terms. These two social networks are wonderfully built on completely different basic principles that reflect the opposite mentality of the countries and political systems where their creators were born and grew up.

Facebook is as open to the world as possible. He considers himself part of the Internet, and acts to enrich him and get maximum dividends from the fact that he is part of a large, global world.

Vkontakte seeks to maximize closeness, to existence in the form of "the Internet on the Internet" (well, purely "iron curtain" with a permissive system of traveling abroad).

')

Facebook is happy to give traffic out (because of what it gets even more traffic from the outside).

Vkontakte fixes outward traffic all sorts of obstacles.

Facebook is developing in every way viral tools to distribute useful information to users (i.e., it strongly encourages the principle of free distribution of information).

Vkontakte on the contrary - drowns out viral tools, believing that “if you want to spread information faster, pay for advertising”.

Facebook first created the maximum free market environment and the best conditions for business and application developers. Of course, this attracted those - and in just a year and a half the competition in this social network increased so much that companies and application developers began to pay huge amounts of money for advertising.

Vkontakte stupidly said: if you want to launch a branded application - let's pay the entrance fee and the monthly tribute . And the fact that the size of the tribute is very large for an application that has not yet earned and it is not known how it will go - these are your problems.

In Facebook, you make an application, publish it - and it works. An application can be closed only if it violates the rules of Facebook and users complain about it.

In Vkontakte, all applications must go through pre-moderation - who knows what they will do there, and what if something happens!

Facebook is completely open for integration with other services. Found an interesting video on YouTube and want to share it with your friends? No problem, give me a link to a video on Facebook, and friends can watch it right here (without violating, by the way, the copyright of the person who uploaded it to YouTube).

But: did you find an interesting video on YouTube and decided to share it with your friends on Vkontakte? No problem - from * from it from the copyright holder from YouTube, with the help of dances with a tambourine, download the swf file, upload it to VKontakte, and only then your friends can enjoy the results of your violation of copyright.

Facebook decided to earn more with the introduction of its currency, introduced it, but it did not prohibit other payment methods.

In Vkontakte, they decided to make money on their own currency, introduced it, and God forbid you want to accept the payment not in votes ... At the same time, on the part of Vkontakte, the attitude to your own currency, to put it mildly, dismissive - for example, you cannot pay for branded applications you have earned, you can only use the voices that you bought directly from Vkontakte via cashless transfer.

Facebook has a roadmap, which indicates what important changes in the service will occur in the future - so that the business can prepare for them in advance, and this was not a surprise for them.

Vkontakte introduces major changes in the rules and services without any notice - for example, the Hallmark channel invested money in creating the application, launched it, on the same day Vkontakte introduced a clause prohibiting external links into the rules, and instantly blocked this application for violating this clause.

It's amazing how Vkontakte reminds me of the USSR and Putin's Russia with its manual control of the “vertical”, and how much Facebook reminds a democratic country that does not want excessive regulation, and which, if necessary, creates the conditions for everyone just like that, instead of giving orders and controlling everything personally.

In the history of similar oppositions of opposing approaches were in addition to the confrontation of the USSR - the United States. Take the same Athens and Sparta. In Sparta, even their currency (obols) was multi-kilogram, so that if someone made a lot of savings, this bunch of dough (literally) could be seen by everyone, and society could condemn such a person. And Athens was strong above all by its openness, soft power. If they were friends with Sparta because they were afraid of her troops, then it was profitable to be friends with Athens. Name at least one great scientist, philosopher, writer who would live and work in Sparta, and who is remembered even now, thousands of years later - you can hardly do it. But Athens and her personalities still remember.

PS: I am far from hanging labels like “Vkontakte is the axis of evil”, and “Facebook is a bulwark of good”. I only analyze the basic principles on which these social networks are built, and compare it with historical analogies.

PPS: Yes, Athens executed Socrates (more precisely, as a free Athenian citizen, he exercised his right to take poison himself, but it does not matter in this case). But in Sparta, people like Socrates were thrown off a cliff as a child, when they were just beginning to talk not about the things that, according to the Spartans, a man should talk about.