LunarStorm
Type of site | Virtual community |
---|---|
Available in | Swedish |
Owner | Wyatt Media Group |
URL | LunarStorm.se |
Commercial | Yes |
Launched | 2000 |
Current status | Abandoned |
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LunarStorm, in
History
The predecessor to Lunarstorm was called "StajlPlejs" (i.e. "Style Place" transcribed to Swedish spelling), which started around 1996. It was created by Rickard Eriksson as Europe's first digital online community. Lunarstorm officially opened on 1 January 2000, after Lunarworks had taken over StajlPlejs and decided to rename it after the username used at the website by Rickard Erikssons girlfriend.
In 2001, LunarStorm had grown to over 600,000 members but still experienced economic hardships. After the beginning, LunarStorm was financed by banners and other advertising on the website, but this soon evolved to include more of pay-by-SMS services. An early example was LunarStorm's own pre-paid card "Vrål" ("Roar"). In 2002, "Kolla" ("Look" or "Check this out") was introduced which allowed users to visit LunarStorm from their mobile phones. In the same year, members were able to upgrade their membership to "pro" status and get unlimited access to a range of services for a fee. LunarStorm Pro was extremely popular among the member base and it improved the website's economic situation greatly.
Another great source of revenue was LunarStorm's cooperation with other companies. An early business partner was
.In September 2006, the website style was changed. The change had already been introduced at the British sister site a few months earlier (May - June).
In February 2007, LunarWorks bought 40 percent of the shares in
Both the Danish and British branches of the website were closed down on 13 July 2007.
On 13 December 2007, LunarStorm removed "Pro" from the website and made all the content free. Focus was instead put on a new function called "Club Lunar" where members got access to "exclusive offers" and "cool competitions". Lately, the popularity of LunarStorm has dramatically decreased which the owners explain with an increased competition from other social networking sites for young people in Sweden such as Bilddagboken. For example, the daily question that used to be answered by about 150 000 members per day and was used by polling institutes to study opinions of Swedish youth has now shrunk to about 10,000 - 12,000 daily answers, as of summer 2009. The number of users concurrently online went from about 100,000 to only 1,500 as of 2009.
References
- ^ "Lunarstorm". Nationalencyklopedin (in Swedish). Retrieved 31 July 2010. (subscription required)
- ^ "Statistik" (PDF) (in Swedish). Lunarstorm. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2010. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
External links
- LunarStorm at the Wayback Machine (archive index)
- LS8.se, an attempt to revive LunarStorm