myVIP
| myVIP | |
| |
 Second most popular Hungarian social network | |
| URL | http://myvip.com[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb] |
| Status | Endangered |
| Archiving status | In progress... |
| Archiving type | Unknown |
| Project source | myvip-grab |
| Project tracker | myvip |
| IRC channel | #byevip (on hackint) |
myVIP is an earlier popular Hungarian social network, it started in 2006 as the second of its kind. Although iWiW was very popular then, myVIP also could collect a lot of users in no time. However, Facebook took over the social network market in Hungary too, and myVIP also got deserted. And, considering that iWiW shut down with a lot more visitors than myVIP in 2014, it's a wonder that myVIP is still up.
On 2016-07-29, someone claiming to be a myVIP employee informed us that the site may close in a month.
History
The site started on April 8, 2006, and grew insanely quickly. Number of users reached 500,000 in just 52 days, no matter that registration was bound to invitation. The 1 millionth member registered after 7 months, the 2 millionth in less than 2 years, and by mid-2009 it had 2.5 million profiles.
It is not easy to find up-to-date information about the number of registered users, but, if we consider the case of iWiW, we can assume that it increased until 2010, when a quick decline started. The highest profile ID is a bit above 4,600,000 but some profiles have been deleted.
In 2014, people report that the once popular myVIP is now deserted, hardly anyone logs in regularly. New users still seem to be registering, even in 2016, but they don't really share content and are probably not too active.
Interesting that Epicenter Market Hungary Kft, that bought myVIP and other stuff from Generál Média, then later Marco Polo Magyarország Kft, that took Epicenter's portfolio, kept/keep running the site, however, it's probably not making much profit. On the one hand, myVIP is a bit more aggressive in showing ads than iWiW. On the other hand, it was never as popular as iWiW. And iWiW was shut down in 2014.
All in all, we should presume that myVIP won't stay for long. And as it used to be a central point of Hungarian internet, it must be preserved.
Status
The site
The site seems to be generally stable. Some bugs appear, but staff is – surprisingly – responsive, and usually fix the bugs.
Since 2015-12-16, according to a support mail, "There is currently ongoing maintenance on our site, therefore unfortunately not all functions are available, also the login may show problems sometimes." The – fortunately – only visible problem is that some comments don't appear properly under the images. As of 2016-01-24, this hasn't been fixed yet.
There is a recurring problem that sometimes users' friend listing doesn't work, shows emply pages of list instead.
UPDATE: Since February 2016, more often and more kinds of problems occur, e.g. certain kinds of pages don't load or return 500 errors, the whole site goes down and returns 502 for days etc. Fortunately, these either don't affect our archiving efforts, or go away after some time – but all these are, at least, worrysome.
UPDATE: It turned out that profiles starting from ID 4,500,000 are currently not accessible, the profile pages of existing users return error 500. It means that users registered after 2013-03-30 12:21 CET are – currently – impossible to archive. (That is approx. 90,000 users, but usually with little content.)
Shutdown?
júl 29 10:25:55 <lazlo> hi guys júl 29 10:26:07 <lazlo> i see you save myvip júl 29 10:26:22 <lazlo> i apreciate it júl 29 10:26:38 <lazlo> if you not finished i wanna warn you júl 29 10:26:57 <lazlo> i heared something bacause i work there júl 29 10:27:25 <lazlo> not 100 % but managament want to kill myvip in 1 month júl 29 10:27:51 <lazlo> boss like "nobody uses myvip, why run it? júl 29 10:32:55 <lazlo> good luck an thank you júl 29 10:32:58 <lazlo> !
Unfortunately the user left before we could get further information from him.
The operators
According to myvip.com/impresszum.html, the site is operated by Epicenter Market Hungary Kft. (on behalf of UK-based but apparently Hungarian company Epicenter Market Limited) and World Web Data Kft. However, it seems that myVIP was passed from Epicenter Market Hungary Kft. to Marco Polo Magyarország Kft. This is suspected for three reasons:
- the impresszum has been updated so on other websites formerly run by Epicenter,
- Marco Polo claims it has those websites, including myVIP, in its portfolio since 2015-05-12,
- epicenter.hu is down since like that time (last Wayback capture).
Epicenter made good profit, but probably beacuse its other, successful websites. Marco Polo hasn't sent in its first balance sheet yet (as it's a newly founded company).
World Web Data, which is assigned to replying user requests (besides the built-in support system on ugyfelkapu.myvip.com whose recipients are unknown), is a company offering hosting, development and marketing services. It seems to be responsible for technical aspects of running myVIP and other Epicenter Marco Polo websites. In 2015, it changed its name and website to SAS. It's been in a bad financial situation and it seems to become even worse.
Archiving
- User range 1 – 108,000: done by user:bzc6p (archives: here and here)
- User range 108,001 – 4,627,000: in progress (ArchiveTeam DPoS)
- Clubs: done by user:bzc6p (archive)
- User range 4,627,001 – : Upcoming by user:bzc6p
Also, a searchable index of users has been built by user:bzc6p, although users above ID 4,500,000 (~90,000 users) could not be included due to technical problems on myVIP's side.
The index will be made available in some form when necessary, until that please use myVIP's search.
How can I help?
Everyone who wants to help must register an own myVIP account. Then clone and start up the given script, as with other ArchiveTeam projects. Details follow. Note:
- This is a script-only project. The Warrior is not supported.
- With one account, you can run only 1 instance of the script! (However, it seems that multiple instances each with different accounts can run on one computer without problems.)
Registering an account
- Create some email account. It can be a disposable one like 20minutemail or whatever. You're not likely to need it after activating your account. (However, you are likely to receive a mail there if you get banned.)
- Go to myvip.com. (Don't change the interface language to English, leave it in Hungarian!)
- Click on the "Regisztráció" button. The form on the right changes to a registration form.
- Fill in the form. The fields are for the following: last name, first name, email address, password, sex, birthdate, I've-read-the-terms. Please note:
- – Be at least 18.
- – You should choose a realistic name – otherwise you may get banned. For extra safety, you may choose a Hungarian name.
- – Your name and location (see below) will be visible on the top-right on every page you save. Also, your profile will also be saved (consider this when filling in the following other form too).
- Click "Regisztráció".
- Fill in the next form. Only the "lakhely" (permanent address) and "tartózkodási hely" (temporary address, or place of residence) fields are mandatory. Choose a country for each. If you want to look less suspicious, you should choose "Magyarország" (Hungary), in this case you must then choose a county in the same drop-down menu, and finally a settlement (or, if you chose Budapest instead of a county, then a district). Then click "Mentés".
- You'll see the same form with a notice on top. Don't worry. Check your email account. Find the mail with subject "E-mail cím jóváhagyása". In that, click on the "Tovább a MyVIP-ra" text. Then you're redirected to the form you filled in before.
- If there is no warning on the top with red letters, you're done. If there is, either the countries aren't give properly, or the activation wasn't successful. Try again. (Unlikely that this happens.)
Running the script
- Clone the git repository https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/myvip-grab.
- Put a file named
accountin this folder, whose first line must be the email address of your myVIP account and the second line the password. - Run the script as usual. (For details, see the README of the code repository linked above.)
- Note: Run only 1 instance of the script!! Otherwise tasks will fail! Fear not, that's enough. If you really want to run several instances, you need to create that many myVIP accounts, clone the repository that many times (to different places) and run each script instance with different myVIP accounts. It should work, but is not officially preferred.
- In normal circumstances, the script should not abort. However, myVIP tends to produce a specific recurring error with friends lists. All in all, if you see your script constantly failing, inform us in the #byevip IRC channel, so that the grab can be paused if necessary. (This implies that sometimes the grab will be paused due to this error.)
Sources
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