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May 30, 2012 9:17 PM GMT+0800 In Russia, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces stiff competition forthe role of number one news-making internet wunderkind. His name isPavel Durov. Durov, 27, is the founder and CEO of VKontakte ( In Contact ), aRussian social network most easily described as a Facebook clone.Started in 2006, VKontakte has closely mimicked the Americantrendsetter in terms of design and functionality. With a nativelyRussian-language interface and a marked disregard for copyrightlaws -- users can freely share music and movies -- VKontakte haswon a large following among users younger and less sophisticatedthan those of Russian Facebook. As of April, it had 16.2 millionRussian users every day, compared with Facebook's 2.3 million,according to research firm TNS. Durov's star seems mystically linked to Zuckerberg's. The mostimportant business deals of their lives both took place this month.On May 28, just days after Facebook's IPO, Durov won the power tovote the shares of VKontakte's biggest investor, the Mail.ru Group,effectively giving him full voting control of the company. Thearrangement is very similar to what Zuckerberg had with Facebook'sRussian investor, Digital Sky Technologies, or DST. It alsoinvolves the same investors: Mail.ru Group's controllingshareholder, billionaire Alisher Usmanov, owns DST together withpartner Yuri Milner. But it is Durov's political activities, rather than his businessdealings, that have put him in the spotlight. He has emerged as anunlikely star of the protests against Russian President VladimirPutin. It all started in December, when the Federal Security Servicedemanded that VKontakte close down several anti-Putin groups on thesite, claiming that they threatened state security. Durov respondedwith a cheeky tweet that included a picture of a hoodie-wearingGerman shepherd with its tongue sticking out. The groups remainedoperative. No reprisals followed, and Durov's firmness earned himaccolades in the blogosphere. On May 18, when the magazine Afisha published a set of civicmanifestos by protest-minded intellectuals, Durov's took aprominent place. It is a profoundly libertarian program, callingfor economic deregulation, decentralization and the right of votersto choose which government projects to fund with their taxes. Weshould get rid of taxes and limitations on anything to do withinformation, Durov wrote. Russia must become the first largeinformation offshore zone that will draw progressive people fromall over the world. Durov's background and radical position play into the hands ofPutin's propaganda machine, which is doing its best to convinceRussians that mass protests in Moscow and other big cities are thework of decadent intellectuals with no connection to the heartlandand no regard for traditional national values. To Durov, the son ofa prominent St. Petersburg classicist, contempt for these valuescomes easily, and he makes no secret of it. On May 9, Durov caused a public uproar with a tweet to mark the67th anniversary of Russia's victory over the Nazis. People arecelebrating, he wrote, because 67 years ago Stalin won fromHitler the right to victimize the Soviet population. That wasenough for some prominent Russians, including prizefighter andparliamentary deputy Nikolai Valuyev, to close their VKontakteaccounts. Durov's words are a sacrilege, Valuyev tweeted. On May 27, when St. Petersburg celebrated City Day, Durov, whosefortune is estimated at 7.9 billion rubles ($263 million), went astep further in demonstrating his disdain for the plebs. He and aVKontakte vice president threw 5000-ruble ($165) bills from thewindow of their office in central St. Petersburg. A crowd quicklygathered below. The mob scene was captured by security cameras, andbystanders described people fighting ferociously for the bills.Durov tweeted: My colleagues decided to contribute to the festiveatmosphere with a little happening, but we had to stop quickly:People were turning feral. Public condemnation ensued. He was tossing them out one by oneand filming people as they threw themselves at the money, tramplingand beating each other, a local woman named Yelena Abramova wasquoted as saying by kp.ru. He's such a pig. They tossed out aboutten bills, and people were coming out of the crowd with bloodynoses, climbing traffic lights and generally behaving like apes.And Durov was laughing out loud. Blogger kolch-ch78 suggested in a LiveJournal post that people cometo VKontakte's office and pile small change at the doorstep toprotest the millionaire's crudeness. There were numerous tweets andblog posts calling for a VKontakte boycott. The social networksuffered no discernible losses, but Durov's little happening did liberal protesters no favors in terms of public image. On theother hand, who would have expected anything different fromZuckerberg's Russian alter ego? There is one area, however, where Durov is not going to follow inZuckerberg's footsteps. On May 29, he tweeted that he waspostponing VKontakte's IPO indefinitely, because Facebook's IPOhas destroyed many private investors' faith in social networks. 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