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hello! today i'd like to share a brief overview of the various ways fans (and idols, on occasion) would connect on the old web ^^.
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1. cyworld
cyworld, while still active, looks quite different than it did years ago. somewhat similar to myspace (or spacehey~), users would have a minihomepy, a space to themselves they'd decorate and share things through. alongside general profile items (such as backgrounds, profiles pics, blogs, and bulletin posts) to decorate, users could also decorate a miniroom, with their own avatar within. most of the time, this would be through acorns (or dotori), a virtual currency that was used to buy avatar items, virtual furniture, and background music. people could also share photos with friends or strangers through their minihomepy, which are where a lot of candid or casual idol photos of the era come from!
the minihomepy service was ended in 2015, though recently there have been efforts to bring them back in light of various 2000s trends returning. there's even an official cyworld playlist on spotify!
2. blogs
if you've ever scrounged the internet for pictures of first, second, and occasionally third generation artists, you'll find a lot of them were added to fans' personal blogs or sites. content such as songs and variety show episodes were also able to be found there, either uploaded through youtube or a download link, as such content was hard to access at times overseas. common services for such, at least over here in the west, were wordpress and livejournal, though you'd occasionally find fans who had domains of their own. having a unique domain was also common for fansites, where most of the uploaded and shared pictures would come from (you would often see their urls as watermarks), though most of said domains are no longer functional today.
3. forums
another common way for fans to connect was through forums. similar to blogs above, people would often share images, videos, or songs in the forums for others, and people would connect over what they loved in those specific spaces. many groups had their own dedicated forum, sometimes even specific members! it's interesting to go through them at times, though at the same time a little sad that so many images that people uploaded long ago were lost to the internet void. the same goes for videos as well, as companies cracked down on claiming their content.
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this is all i know off the top of my head, but if you'd like me to add any other method or service that wasn't mentioned above, please let me know! i'm very glad to add what you know, and do research too ^^
which one do you think you'd use the most often? personally, i think i'd just end up with a blog. i really like blogging, hehe~
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