iWiW (abbreviation for International Who is Who) was a Hungarian
social networking
A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...
web service which started on 14 April 2002 as WiW (Who Is Who). , it had 2.6 million registered users with real names. Every user could provide personal information such as the place they live, date of birth, schools and universities they attended, workplaces, interests and pets. One could find friends by a search tool or looking through one's acquaintances' acquaintances.
On 26 October 2005 the system was rebuilt from scratch and got a new name (iWiW). The most important changes were the multilingual interface (reverted to Hungarian-only as of July 2006), listings, photo upload and a special Java
applet to visualize the connections.
On 28 April 2006, T-Online, the net branch of
Magyar Telekom, purchased iWiW for almost one billion
HUF (about US$4.7 million) from
Virgo Systems Informatikai Kft. Users expressed concerns that their
personal data
Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person.
The abbreviation PII is widely used in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has fou ...
may be sold to telemarketers or used for other purposes potentially hurting their
privacy
Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
. Because of fears of abuse by the Hungarian telco giant, several iWiW clones and unrelated Hungarian social networking websites appeared or gained popularity after the take-over.
After the T-Online acquisition, the site was available only in Hungarian.
On 18 July 2006, iWiW had 1 million users and on 18 December it reached 1.5 million.
On 24 December 2008, the number of registered users on iWiW was 4 million, covering almost all internet users in Hungary.
On 22 April 2009, 26 applications became available on iwiw.hu. By mid-2009, users could choose from 65 applications.
In April 2010, iWiW introduced a service similar to
Facebook connect. This allowed users to
log in to external websites using their iWiW credentials.
In July 2010, iWiW introduced its mobile application for
iPhone
The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...
and
Android.
On May 15, 2014 Origo Zrt. announced it would close down iWiW permanently on June 30, 2014.
iWiW closes down
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See also
* List of social networking websites
References
External links
iWiW
*
Article in Magyar Narancs
*
The Hungarian Radio's article about iWiW
*
Várady Zsolt got Hungarian State Honours for developing iWiW
*
Szatmári Péter's article in BIT university magazine
{{Online social networking
Hungarian social networking websites
Internet properties established in 2002
Internet properties disestablished in 2014
2002 establishments in Hungary
2014 disestablishments in Hungary
Defunct websites
Defunct social networking services