Elena Komarova
Anastasia Iakovlevskaya
Elen Evoyan
Andrey Emelyanov
Aleksey Savelyev
The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)
Ekaterina Ivanova
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The digital innovation, based on the algorithm of artificial intelligence, that the social network Vkontakte has recently introduced, has its own symbolic name "Prometheus". Vkontakte, similar to Prometheus from Greek myths, gives people an opportunity to fulfill their dreams, to be heard and seen. "Prometheus" represents a "fire" mark that the users of the social network can see near the "community" title or names of people who create unique and interesting content. However, what we cannot see is the artificial intelligence based on machine-learning techniques and neural networks which selects who will get that "fire" mark. "Prometheus" is aimed at finding and supporting interesting authors and "communities". It helps creative people to attract new subscribers, get the most out of the platform and learn how to deal with VK tools. We believe that this innovation can help to solve the 8th (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 9th (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) Sustainable Development Goals. Firstly, "Prometheus" is a vivid example of the technological digital innovation. Secondly, it gives creators an opportunity to find like-minded people, consumers and eventually make a living by doing what they love and enjoy.
"Prometheus" was put into action at the end of 2017 by the VK team. We suppose that it is an effective tool for individual self-realization. This digital innovation constantly finds the creators of unique content and monitors their achievements. The author or his community gets a "fire" mark and increased social network's coverage for the publications that have received a special attention of the audience. Also, the talented creator's content is shown to people who are not familiar with his work in the mobile apps of the social network VK by the smart service which is called "Recommendations". A "fire" mark is given only for seven days. However, everyone can receive it an unlimited number of times because the author who continues to create and satisfy his/her audience will be selected by "Prometheus" again and again. Moreover, "Prometheus" gives freedom for creativity, authors can upload high quality videos and images, create music playlists, divide the text into paragraphs and insert the media files.
The idea was to improve the process of resource distribution to be able to reach new creators on the platform faster and in a more accurate way. Our interviewee Mr. Schepilov told us that: "Taking into account that 97 million people use our services per month, the search for potentially talented authors has become an increasingly difficult task. Nowadays "Prometheus" serves as a social elevator for our users. One billion views per day of the publications recommended by "Prometheus" can be considered to be one of our achievements." Interesting content helps to retain and grow the audience, especially the audience of the content's creators.
The algorithm of artificial intelligence "Prometheus" explores the entire social network Vkontakte in order to find and help novice writers, musicians, artists or photographers who struggle to achieve success in real life. Each author has his/her own audience and Vkontakte helps to find and reach it. For instance, the books of writers, whose career began with short notes in the social network, are now bestsellers. "Communities" which were created for a small group of friends, are now overtaking the traditional mass media. Intermediaries are no longer needed, talented people can create their success stories by themselves.
The company believes that such cutting-edge technologies as the algorithm "Prometheus" helps to attract a new audience and to retain the current one. Naturally, without people who have been filling the website with their stories and creativity for 11 years already, Vkontakte would be a set of codes and graphics. Furthermore, innovativeness is the competitive advantage of the company and the brand, which makes Vkontakte a leading social media platform in Russia.
"Prometheus" encourages mainly the authors who create non-profit projects. Honestly, it is quite difficult to make a living by doing creative work, thus these people cannot afford to promote themselves or their activities. Nevertheless, Vkontakte promotes emerging talents at no charge. Thus, VKontakte makes a significant contribution to well-being of talented people by supporting them at early stages of their professional development.
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Alexander Schepilov, Head of Gaming and eSports Marketing department, Vkontakte team
The Mail.Ru Group company was established in 2005. The company develops an integrated platform of Internet services for communication and entertainment. Mail.Ru Group operates Russian social networks - Vkontakte (VK), Odnoklassniki (OK) and Moi Mir (My World), provides instant messenger services - Agent Mail.Ru and ICQ, hosts one of the world's leading email service and the largest portfolio of online games. It is important to point out that among all the social networks that the company owns, there is one which draws our attention the most due to its recent innovation and this social network is called Vkontakte (VK). Vkontakte (VK) is one of the leading social networks in Russia which provides authors and publishers with publishing and monetization tools for their content. Furthermore, it provides businesses with a powerful system for communication with their clients.