IWiW

Article summary

iWiW (abbreviation for International Who is Who) was a Hungarian social networking 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 may be sold to telemarketers or used for other purposes potentially hurting their privacy. 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.…

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.