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IWiW
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is iWiW. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
iWiW (abbreviation for International Who is Who) is a Hungarian social networking web service started on April 14, 2002 as WiW. It currently has over 1.5 million registered users with real names. The site is invite-only. Every user can provide personal information such as the place they live in, date of birth, schools and universities they attended, workplaces, interests and pets. One can find friends by a search tool or looking through one's acquaintances' acquaintances.
On October 26, 2005 the system was rebuilt from scratch and got a new name (iWiW). The most important changes are the multilingual interface (currently 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, has purchased iWiW for almost one billion HUF (about 4.7 million USD). Users expressed concerns that their personal data may be sold to telemarketers or used for other purposes potentially hurting their privacy. Because of fears for abuse by the Hungarian telco giant, several iWiW clones and unrelated Hungarian social networking websites appeared or gained in popularity since the take-over.
Since the T-Online acquisitation, the site is available only in Hungarian.
On July 18, 2006 the iWiW had 1 million users and on December 18 it reached 1.5 million.
- iWiW
- (Hungarian) Article in Magyar Narancs
- (Hungarian) The Hungarian Radio's article about iWiW
- (Hungarian) Várady Zsolt got Hungarian State Honours for developing iWiW