Pikabu (Russian: Пикабу) is a social news website from Russia with an emphasis on user-generated content, where users can submit links, images, gifs, and videos which will then be voted by the community.[2][3][4] It was founded on August 1, 2009 by Maxim Khryashchev to create a website similar to Reddit.[3]
As of February 2023, Pikabu was the 22nd most visited website in Russia and the 283rd most visited website in world, according to Similarweb.[5]
History
The name of the website comes from the children's game Peekaboo.[2] The site was created based on a modified free Digg-like software.[6]
The Pikabu trademark was registered on July 25, 2016.[7]
The site works on the principle of user-generated content. Users can post and comment on content that can be text, as well as images, gifs, and videos.[2][6][10] Comments on Pikabu are infinitely branching.[11]
Users can also cast positive and negative votes on a post or a comment, and depending on its score it can appear higher or lower on the site.[3]
Registration on the site is required to post and comment, viewing the site (except for NSFW content) is available for everyone.[3]
Monetization
Pikabu earns money from advertising posts, which are marked in a special way and fixed at the top of the page, as well as from referral tags to external links.[12] An advertising system with targeting is being developed, the introduction of paid accounts is not currently under consideration.
Pikabu also earns money from selling tickets to concerts, theater, sports and children's events. The Tickets project on Pikabu was created with the support of White Label.
On November 8, 2017, the site was blocked by the Ministry of Information and Communications of Kazakhstan on the territory of the country due to a post on the resource, which recommends reading the book "Strike of the Russian Gods", which is recognized as extremist in the country.[14][15] On November 10, after the administration of the site removed the relevant content, the blocking was lifted.[16]
In February 2022, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin filed a lawsuit in a Moscow court against the owner of Pikabu after articles about his then-hidden connection to the Wagner Group.[17] The lawsuit is not available for publication under the law of 22.12.2008, No. 262-FZ (Article 15, paragraph 5).[18][19]
In early March 2022, the unencrypted user data of more than four million visitors to the site was discovered to have been leaked - 1 million of which were publicly available. The Pikabu website administration confirmed the data leak.[20][21][22]
On September 29, 2022 it became known about the change of ownership of the portal, the new owner was Altair Media. Experts estimated the deal at 1 to 2 billion rubles.[23][24] The news of the sale immediately hit Pikabu itself, with the post gathering a lot of negativity: the top mostly included comments in which users said goodbye to the site. Alexei Nechaev, the founder of Altair Media, and the press service of his New People party denied any involvement in the deal.[25][26] Maxim Khryashchev remained general director until September 1, 2023. After that, Maxim Khryashchev, founder and CEO of Pikabu, announced his resignation from the company.[27][28][29]
On July 24, 2023, the site administration announced another update of the site, which affected the general system of evaluations and rating, which led to mass dissatisfaction of the resource users.[30]
