I Have a Friend - Is VK.com Really the Russian Facebook?

I got this email message here at What Do I Know?

whatdoino,

Вадим Блинов has added you as a friend on the website VK.com

You can log in and view your friends` pages using your email and
automatically created password: XXXxxx

VK.com is a website that helps dozens of millions of people find their
old friends, share photos and events and always stay in touch.

To log in, please follow this link:
http://vkontakte.ru/loginxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You can change your password in Settings.

Attention: If you ignore this invitation, your registration will not be
activated.

Good luck!Best regards,
VK Administration

It turns out VK.com is a Russian version of Facebook.  Here are some comments on a Stream Recorder.com forum in 2009:

I wanted to delete the thread at first, but then realized that it might be useful. Many of my friends really use vkontakte mainly to listen to music. It is absolutely free and they don't have any ads. And you can find almost anything there. Although vkontakte itself doesn't allow to download music, it is pretty easy to download/save HTTP mp3 music streams. You can use many free programs for that or even download such streams with your browser. You can also use Replay Media Catcher that renames and tags songs automatically.

10-13-2009, 08:14 AM

I registered in vkontakte and I like it! I would add that not only music but video could just as easily view and download!

Wikipedia has this article (which they say needs verification):

VKontakte (Russian: ВКонтакте, internationally branded VK) is a Russian social network service popular in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Because of its design and functionality, VKontakte is often claimed to be a clone of Facebook, accommodating not only a similar concept, but also a comparable business model.^{[citation needed]} However, its incorporation of other features makes it more like YouTube, Pandora, and MySpace rolled into one, with an interface highly reminiscent of Facebook.
As of December 2010^[update], the network has around 102 million users and is the leading site in Europe in terms of user visits, page views, and the amount of data transfers per day. VKontakte is ranked 35 in Alexa's global Top 500 sites and is the third most visited website in Russia.
Since 2007, major Russian companies have been sending job offers via VKontakte. Most of the site's users are university and high school students. However, as the site's popularity increases, more and more people are joining, many of whom are youths of various age groups.
In English, В Контакте or V Kontákte is literally translated as "In Contact", but basically means "In Touch". It can be alternatively translated as "Linked In", which is another mostly business-oriented social network.

There's even an iPhone app:

Chat VK.com

By NOOTEK Co., Ltd.

View More By This Developer Open iTunes to buy and download apps.

The app functionality includes easy access to friends profiles, statuses (online/offline), activities, a simple, fast and powerful messaging system with animated smileys, etc.

App support URL handling + internal browser, cool animated smileys, landscape and portrait orientations, full copy/paste, etc.

App work very easy!
App work very fast!

Now you can receive new messages when app work in background.

Image from iTunes Store

I took it as my blogger responsibility to my readers to check this out, but,

It's clearer and bigger if you double click

using an online translation site, I got this and gave up:

You entered an invalid ID code. Personal identification code must come to the phone as an SMS, if one of your friends sent you an invitation. Personal code: Attention! Send invitations to all the users can not facebook. If you know they do not, you can not register.

The code I got was in Western alphabet, so maybe that was the problem.  Another problem I just noticed was the date of the email which just came today:

Tue, December 15, 2009 4:07 am