Grono-Masters & Euro-Sponges: The Archaeology of Polish Social Media

kawiarenka_internetowa_metro_centrum_fot_grzegorz_jakubowski_pap_20090909_0ny-s.jpg, default, Internet café, Metro Centrum station, Warsaw, 2009, photo: Grzegorz Jakubowski / PAP

#digital culture

#heritage

A journey to the graveyard of Polish social media – before Meta products took over the world.

It didn’t matter at all that someone was in Sydney, someone else in Dublin and yet another was almost around the corner – in Kraków or Gdańsk. I think that was the most iconic thing about the Internet. Everything seemed to be just around the corner.

This is how Janusz L. Wiśniewski explained the digital world to his female readers in the bestselling romance S@motność w sieci (Loneliness on the Net, 2001). The first Polish social media, however, were not that ‘global’ and did not look too far beyond their own backyard: a peer group or school class.

Dowdy & Sharp

Before the word ‘selfie’ became established in the Polish language, the Fotka.pl service was launched (the portal was inaugurated on Valentine’s Day – 14 February 2001). According to the INNPoland portal, the beginnings of the website were entirely analogue – its creator, Rafał Agnieszczak, had to register the domain by sending an appropriate application to the Research and Academic Computer Network by regular mail and paying a 200zł fee. The inspiration was an American website, Am I Hot or Not? We can learn about the beginnings of Fotka from Bartek Świderski’s review of the website, ‘Żylety i pasztety (Bombs and Hags; the website sexy.onet.pl was also rated), which he published in Machina in 2001.

[...] The website is more social than erotic: we judge not sex appeal but the overall appearance of the portrayed person, because the extreme ratings on a 10-point scale are called ‘wiocha’ [dowdy] and ‘fajocha’ [‘sharp’]. The sender’s comment is displayed below the photo (the most common one is: ‘Only tens, please!’), sometimes also their Gadu-Gadu contact number. As on the Am I Hot or Not portal, we can browse all photos or just photos of the preferred sex. In my opinion, displaying the current rating statistics is a mistake on the authors’ part, as it may prompt further responses and trigger chain reactions – condemnation or delight – as happens in real life.

The development of these types of portals was coupled with the dynamic development of the digital camera market – in 2005 alone, 900,000 such devices were sold in Poland. Meanwhile, the number of people using the Internet in Poland between 2001 and 2005 doubled thanks, among other things, to the Neostrada service offered by Telekomunikacja Polska.

On the other hand, the massification of the Internet sparked a response from the network elitists (this is when the term ‘Neo kids’ was coined), and photos from Fotka (as well as from NK or Grono, which will be discussed below) became fodder for mocking blogs, such as ‘Białe Kozaczki’ (White Boots) – with women’s outfits considered ‘embarrassing’ or ‘Pobożni Chłopcy’ (Pious Boys), where photos of young men flexing their muscles were displayed against the background of first communion pictures, images of St Mary’s girls and portraits of the Pope.

Incidentally, Fotka – the only dinosaur of Polish social media – is still alive and well (albeit under the more global domain .com). However, it has changed its profile a bit: today, it functions primarily as a dating site.

Insiders

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Grono.net, photo: screenshot / Web Archive

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In the article ‘Świat jest mały, czyli Grono.net’ (The World Is Small, or Grono.net) by Agata Krzewińska, published in Życie (Life) in 2004, we read:

The fact that the world is small was proved by an American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in his experiment. In a simple way, the scientist demonstrated that two random people living in two distant locations are connected by a chain of only about six people. This means that only these six people (and not several hundred, as was initially expected) would have to shake hands for each of us to be able to shake hands with the Pope or the president of the United States. The Milgram experiment from the late 1960s has once again become popular thanks to experimental internet websites, such as ‘Social Networking’ […]. Grono.net is the first website of its kind in Poland.

In line with this assumption, anyone visiting the portal could check how many handshakes away they were from another Grono (Group) user. The creators of the website – Piotr Bronowicz (Bronek), Tomasz Lis (Czarodzic) and Wojciech Sobczuk (Sopel) – came from the community centred around the Radiostacja (Radiostation) discussion forum. The people who gathered on Grono were initially ‘alternative warsawites [warszawka]’. That’s what they were called by Piotr Cichocki’s interlocutor in his book Sieć przyjaciół. Serwis społecznościowy oczami etnografa (Network of Friends: A Social Networking Site Through the Eyes of an Ethnographer), which was the result of several years of research into the portal’s community. At that time, the website was semi-closed (only people who received an invitation from someone they knew could join), which fuelled interest – at one point, invitations to join Grono even became the subject of auctions on Allegro. In an article in Przekrój (Cross-Section) from 2004, Izabela Szymańska explained:

The fact that only ‘friends of our friends’ become part of Grono makes you feel that no one unwanted will get in, that you’re among your own. […] Grono’s popularity is based on being part of something which cannot be joined by everyone. As a chosen one, you can show your graciousness to those who are not in Grono but would like to be.

Over time, the elitism of the portal began to decline (and invitations were no longer required). At the end of its life, when the ‘the young and the creative from big centres’ had already moved on to Facebook, it was considered a totally uncool service for gimbusy – unsavvy young teens.

Let us return, however, to the time of its prosperity. Discussions took place in a grono (group) – a thematic forum (to create and moderate your own grono, you had to buy the status of a grono-master via text message). Membership in a grono was displayed on the user’s profile, so the right choice of groups was an important element of self-creation. When creating a profile, the user had to answer the question ‘What am I looking for?’ – they could select: a partner, friends, an adventure or nothing (in which case the profile was not visible in the search engine). Compared to today’s social media, the service was characterised by greater transparency of activities; for example, you received a notification informing you who viewed your profile or removed you from their friends list.

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Grono.net, photo: screenshot / Web Archive

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Over time, new functionalities were added: the option to add an mp3 to your profile or change its background; a git button, which is the equivalent of the Facebook ‘like’ button (the most popular photos were added to the Grono greatest hits list, i.e. the ‘top gits’ category visible on the homepage); and, after some time, a kit button to express disapproval.

In 2006, Grono won the Nocne Marki (Night Owl) award from the magazine Aktivist in the category ‘Zajawka 2006: Najlepszy serwis Web 2.0’ (Clip 2006: Best Web 2.0 Service). Other nominees were Moblog (a service for blogging from mobile devices, sponsored by Nokia), Smog (a website for presenting ‘funny stuff’) and Wrzuta.pl (a service for sharing mp3 files).

As recently as 2008, Grono.net was the most popular social media platform in Poland. At that time, all of Central and Eastern Europe was a colourful mosaic of local social media: in the Czech Republic, the most popular service of this type was Lide.cz; in Lithuania, One.lt; in Latvia, Draugiem.lv; in Hungary, Wiw.hu (which, as the founders of Grono said in interviews, was an inspiration for them when creating the website). Parenthetically, Grono made an attempt at foreign expansion – English and Spanish language portals Grapeo.co.uk and Bago.es were created – but failed.

As early as 2009, the website began to lose the competition for the hearts and minds of users to Facebook, which was also due to changes made to the website, such as the introduction of a new layout and additional paid services. The popularity of the thematic group called ŻĄDAMY STAREGO GRONA!!! (WE DEMAND THE OLD GRONO!!!) was skyrocketing, and the profile pictures showed graphics made by the users in Paint with slogans such as ‘Grono has sold itself’ or ‘The new Grono is shitty’ (see illustrations from the abovementioned book by Piotr Cichocki). The portal was closed in 2012.

The Pulsik of Tri-City

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nowy epuls spot

According to the Megapanel/PBI Gemius study Dzieci aktywne online 2007 (Children Active Online 2007), young people in the 15-24 age group constituted the largest group among Internet users (33.76%). Of these, 85% were active users of social media. At that time, 42% of Poles had access to the Internet.

Epuls, which existed from 2002 to 2017, was a social-media platform tailored to young people. The website’s creators touted their product on the homepage, saying,

With EPULS, you will experience love, tears, sadness and the joy of life. We avoid artificiality, and that is one of the reasons we are a user-friendly service […] The web is pulsing with our pulse. Don’t be a ‘mule’. JOIN US.

The website’s graphic design, as assured, was also supposed to reflect its ‘dynamic character and sharp, youthful style’.

The website was modelled on the LunarStorm platform, which was very popular in Sweden. At the peak of its popularity, the platform had 3 million registered accounts. Interestingly, just as Grono was considered to be Warsaw based, Epuls was particularly popular in the Tri-City (Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia) – it was estimated that as many as 40% of users came from the coastal metropolis. Epuls even got a song in its honour, created by YouTuber Jonathan Mann.

People with similar interests joined so-called clubs – the equivalent of discussion forums, which also had their own galleries and guestbooks. The online newsletter Pulsik was an original idea – an information portal created by Epuls users for Epuls users. There was also a scoring system for active users of the platform. A feature that originated from Fotka was the ‘Epuls mascots’ tab, which displays users whose profile pictures received the highest ratings from other users.

The platform’s internal currency were called pulsars. They could be used to buy additional emoticons, virtual gifts for friends, features such as quizzes for friends or access to a premium account, a so-called Divine Puls. Another lesson in capitalism was the internal sales platform, where the more entrepreneurial and talented Epuls users, in exchange for pulsars, sold their graphics, which were used as profile photos. The website also collaborated with mBank; Epuls was connected to the electronic banking service called izzyBank – ‘the first virtual bank for young people ages 13 to 18’.

Predatory monetisation, user dissatisfaction with the new website layout and changes to the portal, and of course the expansion of Facebook contributed to a slump in Epuls’s popularity – the portal lost more than 700,000 users within a few months in 2010. A slow decline then began, and the site was finally shut down in 2017.

Cursed-out Śledzik

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Śledzik Nk.pl, photo: screenshot / Web Archive

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We have already mentioned portals with a distinctly youthful profile, so it’s time for an intergenerational service, which for many older users was something like a ‘gateway to the Internet’ – a place where they gained their digital skills and took their first steps in building online relationships.

It was founded in 2006 by Maciej Popowicz, then an IT student at the University of Wrocław, together with Michał Bartoszkiewicz, Paweł Olchawa and Łukasz Adziński. Nasza Klasa (Our Class), because that is what we are talking about, was modelled on the American website Classmates.com, and the name of the portal was taken from a song by Jacek Kaczmarski. The idea was simple – to create a platform that would enable people to find their school friends after many years, and it hit the spot. You could escape from school memories to an imagery faraway space, Neverland, where fictional schools could be created. Hogwarts, of course, attracted the largest group of people.

Over time, the original function of the portal began to be expanded with other services and tools. Nasza Klasa offered a whole range of browser games, including something for those seeking something bucolic (‘Wiejskie życie’ [Rural Life] or ‘PGR’ [Agro-Commune]) or thrills (‘Miejskie gangi’ [Urban Gangs]), and fishing fanatics (‘Na ryby’ [Gone Fishin’]) were not forgotten. In 2009, the website introduced its own internal currency – the euro-sponge. You could use it to buy new emoticons (referred to as ‘super faces’), virtual gifts for your friends, an extra transfer for photos in your gallery or – just after the Smolensk disaster – a black ribbon for your profile photo. The currency was named after the website’s mascot – Pan Gąbka (Mr Sponge).

Since there were also many young users on the portal, Nasza Klasa initiated an educational campaign for children that taught the rules of online safety. Its faces were a pair of superheroes – Sekurion and Protekta.

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nk.pl - Przykładowe wpisy

In 2010, over 11 million people had accounts on this website – more than half of all internet users in Poland at that time. Soon after, however, the portal underwent rebranding and began to lose its character in competing with foreign social-media giants. Many of the new changes were met with resistance from users – this was the case, for example, with the introduction of śledzik, i.e. the equivalent of Facebook’s newsfeed. People unfamiliar with internet slang – much to the amusement of jokesters – spread a chain letter saying that, to get rid of the hated function, you should enter the code 5P13RD4L4J 5L3D21U (can be read as ‘f**k off śledzik, ed.). However, the real outcry was caused by the new website regulations (operating under the abbreviated name nk.pl since 2010). The main issue was that all content added by users was the property of the portal and could be used, for example, for marketing purposes. Ironically, users generally moved to Facebook, a service that, as we know, does not care much about user privacy and has similar provisions in its terms and conditions. The website only had about one million users in 2020, and it was closed on 27 July 2021 at 11:59pm.

The BLIP generation

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Informing users of Blip.pl shutdown, photo: screenshot / Web Archive

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The Polish response to Twitter was BLIP – the name of the service is an acronym of the slogan ‘Bardzo Lubię Informować Przyjaciół’ (I so like keeping my friends informed). Its launch caused controversy in the Polish blogosphere, although it was not actually to blame. The problem was that shortly before this, Grono had started promoting its service with an almost identical name (Blimp) and functionality (although the launch of Blip had been announced earlier), preceded by an aggressive marketing campaign which involved spamming the most popular Polish blogs with comments such as:

Hey, I’ve just discovered a new option. Great stuff. I recommend it to everyone. Check it out – Blimp!

Grono.net has blimp – an extraordinary service that changes the way social networking sites are used. What is blimping? It’s a quick (and usually short) message that appears as a blue cloud on the Grono user’s profile. What is revolutionary is the way the post is placed – it can be made not only on Grono.net but also via a text message. From any place (even at a piss-up, far away from the computer), you can instantly inform your friends (or rather, everyone interested) about your current state of mind and body: your mood, your upcoming plans and what you’re currently doing.

The blimp only appears to resemble an instantaneous blog – in reality, the blimp is a way to forge even stronger relationships with friends. Because in blimp it’s not about writing but about keeping in constant touch with friends.

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co to jest blip

Blip users could share short messages of up to 160 characters and attach photos, links or voice messages. ‘Blip weighs nothing, Blip is everywhere’ – a woman’s voice assured us in an advertising spot. On 22 October 2009, the website proudly announced on its blog that 10 million messages had already been sent via Blip. Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych (the Social Insurance Institution, ZUS) had a Blip account, as did the editorial offices of national media (Radio Zet, TVN24, Przekrój), football clubs (Legia Warszawa, Widzew Łódź) and city offices (Radom, Kraków). All the same, it remained a niche service, as the number of Blip users that year was just over 300,000. In 2013, the service was closed, and users were encouraged to migrate to Wykop.pl, which is still in existence today. Other platforms, such as Flaker.pl, Pinger.pl and Spinacz.pl also tried their hand in the microblogging market.

The most popular Polish messenger of the time, Gadu-Gadu (Chit-Chat) (which became the owner of Blip at one point), also tried to promote its social-media platform. The MojaGeneracja.pl portal, which was launched in February 2007, offered the possibility of creating a profile, rating other profiles or running a blog. An original feature was the option to leave voice comments. In addition to the typical set of tools, other branches of MojaGeneracja (MyGeneration) were developed over time, such as the educational portal EduNacja or Muzango, where artists could create their profiles and share mp3 files. The latter was probably an attempt to respond to MySpace.

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Dodawanie informacji do Wydarzen w serwisie MojaGeneracja.pl

Official blogs on the portal were also kept by public figures: the band Łzy, Tede, Gosia Andrzejewicz, Doda, Joanna Senyszyn and Lech Wałęsa (at mojageneracja.pl/1980; the former president also received a special number in the Gadu-Gadu messenger – 1980). The Technonews portal reported:

Lech Wałęsa received an LG KM900 Arena phone from the company GG Network (the producer of Gadu-Gadu) and a GaduAIR phone number assigned to it, from which he can instantly send photos and texts to the Internet and use the network. This configuration allows him to publish materials directly from his mobile phone on the Blip.pl and MojaGeneracja.pl websites.

Moja Generacja is a prime example of rapid growth and equally abrupt decline in user numbers. In 2008, there were 5 million registered accounts on the platform, but by 2012, this number had dropped to less than half a million. Despite protests from people attached to the portal, the decision to shut it down was made in November 2012.

***

In the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, domestic social media were already basically an endangered species – and those that survived were a mere shadow of their former popularity. This is how Michał R. Wiśniewski wrote about this phenomenon in an article-epitaph for Nasza Klasa published in Polityka. To some extent, what he wrote also applies to other players:

Nasza Klasa first ended itself in 2010 when it became nk.pl, a portal with ambitions of chasing Facebook. It was a doomed endeavour; very few local companies won the battle against global giants. The flagship product that managed to succeed is Allegro. It was established before eBay became interested in our market. However, Allegro offers a very simple service; it is a specific tool for buying and selling.

Facebook or Nasza Klasa, on the other hand, operate in completely virtual areas. They deal with memories, nostalgia and interpersonal relationships. They organise a space where you can spend time pleasantly. Facebook is constantly evolving so as to keep its users and provide them with more and more endorphins – an arms race in which smaller players without the support of a market that’s global (or local but huge, such as Russia or China) do not stand a chance.

Translated from polish by Agnieszka Mistur

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