The book retailer failed, the auction site did not set the world on fire and Russia already had a Yahoo equivalent in Yandex. So Mr Milner joined forces with the latter to take control of e-mail site Mail.ru. On his first day, he fired 80 per cent of the staff. “It was free and based on advertising – but there was no advertising, so it was just free,” Mr Milner recalls. He ran the company for two years until it broke even.

Mr Milner says he was convinced of Facebook’s value because he had seen his eastern European companies charge successfully for upgraded service. At one, users pay not to be bothered by a constant stream of updates. At another, Odnoklassniki.ru, 30m users agreed to pay a fee of under $5 to block spam sent by those who registered for free. One way or another, “Once people are inside, you can charge,” Mr Milner says.