Committee

Aktivs

As of April 2022, the assets of the publishing house include:

• site "Zuckerberg will call (later VC.ru)"
• website about computer games DTF.ru (since 2016)
• TJournal website (closed 2022)

Performance indicators

Below are the data of LLC "Committee."

Revenue:

• 2021: 298.3 million (+ 54%)
• 2020: RUB 193.3 million
• 2019: RUB 127 million

Gain/Loss:

• 2021: 48.3 million
• 2020: -6.5 million rubles

History

2022: TJournal closes due to plummeting revenue and staff cuts in DTF.ru

On August 22, 2022, it became known that the publication TJournal (blocked in) Russia Roskomnadzor would cease to work from September 10, 2022. As noted, the company "Committee," which owns TJ, "has run out of funds to develop and support the project."

After the start of the special operation of Russia in Ukraine, the company lost a significant part of advertising revenue, the blocking of the project led to a fivefold drop in the audience and continues to fall smoothly from month to month.

The "Committee" also owns VC.ru and DTF. Due to a sharp drop in revenue, the publisher will be forced to cut costs by another 30-40%, so the board of directors decided to close the project.

In 2022, DTF significantly reduced its staff. Many editors were fired, including Deputy Editor Oleg Chimde, and permanent authors.

2019: Platform Spark.ru sold to MTT

On April 17, 2019, MTT Group LLC announced the acquisition of a blog platform for Spark.ru entrepreneurs (previously part of the media network of the Committee Publishing House together with VC.ru, TJournal, DTF.ru, etc.). Read more here.

2017: December DTF.ru attendance tops one million

Initially, the DTF.ru website published primarily editorial materials, but since 2017, the publication of user materials, blogging and their rating were allowed. This led to an increase in the number of publications, but also to a large number of short publications, like pictures and memes. In December 2017, the site's traffic exceeded a million people.

2016: Purchase of a publication about computer games DTF.ru

In 2016, the DTF.ru domain was bought by the Committee publishing house - the co-founder of the Committee, Vlad Tsyplukhin, so wanted to turn the Game Market section on the VC.ru into a separate publication. The new owners repurposed DTF, turning it into an information and news publication about computer games, including their development, as well as other types of entertainment. Vadim Elistratov, who previously worked at TJournal, became the editor-in-chief. The editorial board was based on former employees of the Igromania magazine (in particular, the ex-editor of the Igromania website Oleg Chimde became deputy editor-in-chief), as well as employees of other publications of the Committee. The old version of the site was saved at dailytelefrag.ru.

Also at the end of 2016, the Committee acquired the largest unofficial group of Steam users on the VKontakte social network and transformed it into a DTF group. As Vladislav Tsyplukhin, who at that time worked as the head of the Committee publishing house, said, this caused a sharply negative reaction from the group's subscribers and a massive unsubscribe, but a significant part still remained in the group.

2014

Loss of 14 million rubles

In April 2016, the Yury Sinodov cited the following figures:

The total loss of Vc.ru and TJournal in 2014 is 14 million rubles. Expenses for two - like ten Roems (well, almost).

"Committee" brings together "Zuckerberg will call" and TJournal

Since April 17, 2014, the Zuckerberg Call and TJournal projects have been merged into one publishing house called the Committee. The merger is a natural step for projects with a common investor^[1].

The co-owner of both publications is the same fund - Vaizra Capital, which invested in them by decision of the co-founder and former co-owner of VKontakte Lev Leviyev.

A few months ago, Zuckerberg will call and TJournal, having exceeded 5.5 million views per month, have already joined forces in selling ads, now they have decided to exchange technologies and optimize duplicate workflows.

"Zuckerberg Will Call" concentrates on news coverage about internet business, startups and marketing. The editors will return to their origins and will pay more attention to Russian projects: news, interviews, reviews and opinions. In addition to editorial content, a community of entrepreneurs and specialists will develop on the site - the first step towards this was the appearance of profiles indicating the place of work and verified badges in the comments.

TJournal will continue to experiment in the development of technologies for information aggregation. In the next iteration, the project will have a full-fledged application for iOS 7 and a section in which the readers themselves will create content. The TJ editors will narrow the list of topics covered to a number understandable to readers and advertisers, while delving into the development of formats for news coverage around social networks, blogs, legislation, gadgets and other phenomena related to Internet users.

The former press secretary of VKontakte Vladislav Tsyplukhin will be engaged in the development of the platform of both projects - he now works in our team as product director. Together with technical director Ilya Chekalsky, they will continue to create a platform on the basis of which the company plans to open other niche media.

Andrey Zagoruiko (also known as Sasha Peganov) will be engaged in monetizing projects, building sales departments and special projects. His team will have to study project audiences, interact with advertisers and develop formats that will allow us to live and develop.

The editor-in-chief of Zuckerberg will call - Konstantin Panfilov. Philip Kontsarenko was appointed chief editor of the publication.

The editor-in-chief of TJournal is Nikita Likhachev. Chief Editor - Sultan Suleimanov.

We have different projects, but now we are one team.

See also

• Media about IT and telecom (Russian market)

Notes