wykop.pl is a Polish
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
internet service, founded on December 28, 2005. It is modeled after the American website
digg.com
Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...
(''wykop'' in the
Polish language
Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...
means ''dig out''). The basic idea behind wykop.pl is the collection of potentially interesting internet-based information and making them available to users.
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWrite (originally ReadWriteWeb or RWW) is a Web technology blog launched in 2003. RW covers Web 2.0 and Web technology in general, and provides industry news, reviews, and analysis. Founded by Richard MacManus, Technorati ranked ReadWriteWe ...
described wykop as a "clone" of
Digg
Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...
. As of 2006, Sebastian Kwiecień, owner of the blog web20.pl, said that it was probably Poland's most popular
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...
website.
Other part of service is a microblog based on
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
system, which can be subscribed.
Nicknames of users have different colors. After registration user's nick has green color, which after 30 days changes into orange color. Special colors are: claret for 1,000 users from the top of user ranking, blue for the sponsored users, black for the admins and silver for the banned users and users, which deleted their accounts.
Statistics
According to data from April 2008 the service was getting 650,000 users monthly, of which around 30,000 were registered users. By September 2008 the number of visitors rose to 900,000, of which 60,000 were registered users, and there were 13 million views. Currently Wykop.pl has more than 110,000 registered users, 3.1 million unique visitors and around 58 million views.
Trivia
* Wykop's
microblogging
Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...
service attracted notable people, e.g.
Lech Wałęsa
Lech Wałęsa (; ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratica ...
,
Hanna Zdanowska
Hanna Elżbieta Zdanowska (born 29 March 1959) is a Polish politician. Zdanowska is a member of the Civic Platform and the current city mayor of Łódź since 13 December 2010.
Education
Hanna Zdanowska graduated from Lodz University of Techn ...
,
Przemysław Wipler
Przemysław Janusz Wipler (born 15 July 1978 in Piekary Śląskie) is a Polish politician and activist. He is a former vice-president of the Polish party Wolność. He describes himself as a Classical liberal / Korwinist Republican, in favour of ...
. Wykop.pl is also often used to promote enterprises and media such as
RMF24.pl,
Radio Zet
Radio Zet () is a Polish commercial radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcast ...
.
* Wykop.pl often organizes AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions with famous people, e.g.
Cezary Pazura
Cezary Andrzej Pazura (born 13 June 1962 in Tomaszów Mazowiecki) is a Polish actor known for his comedy roles in movies such as ''Kiler'', ''Chłopaki nie płaczą'', ''Kariera Nikosia Dyzmy'' and the sitcom '' 13 posterunek''. In addition to h ...
,
Jerzy Owsiak
Jerzy Zbigniew Owsiak (Polish pronunciation: ; born 6 October 1953) is a Polish journalist and social work, social campaigner. He is the founder of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP / Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy), one of ...
,
Bohdan Smoleń,
Krzysztof Hołowczyc
Krzysztof Wiesław Hołowczyc (; born 4 June 1962 in Olsztyn, Poland) is a Polish rally driver. He won the Polish Rally Championship in 1995, 1996 and 1999 and the European Rally Championship in 1997. He was also member of European Parliament (20 ...
,
Tadeusz Sznuk
** Before
2015 Polish presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Poland on 10 and 24 May 2015. In the first round of voting Law and Justice (PiS) candidate, lawyer and Member of the European Parliament, Andrzej Duda received the greatest number of votes with a share of 34.7 ...
some candidates participated in AMA events:
Andrzej Duda
Andrzej Sebastian Duda (; born 16 May 1972) is a Polish lawyer and politician who has served as president of Poland since 6 August 2015. Before becoming president, Andrzej Duda was a member of Polish Lower House (Sejm) from 2011 to 2014 and the ...
,
Janusz Korwin-Mikke
Janusz Ryszard Korwin-Mikke (; born 27 October 1942), also known by his initials JKM or simply as Korwin, is a Polish far-right politician, paleolibertarian and author. He was a member of the European Parliament from 2014 until 2018. He was the ...
,
Adam Jarubas
Adam Sebastian Jarubas (born 27 December 1974 in Busko-Zdrój) is a Polish politician and former Marshal of Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship (2006-2018). He became vice-president of Polish People's Party in December 2012. He was the official candida ...
,
Paweł Tanajno
Paweł Jan Tanajno (born December 19, 1975) is a Polish entrepreneur and politician.
He studied law at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and holds a degree in marketing. From 1995 to 2004 he ran a computer company Sferis. He was also a me ...
,
Marian Kowalski and
Janusz Palikot
Janusz Marian Palikot (; born 26 October 1964) is a Polish politician, activist and businessman. Palikot studied philosophy and became wealthy as a businessman who dealt with crates and distilled beverages (dealt with international trade with ta ...
.
* Community of Wykop.pl organized real life meetings ''Wykop Party'' (8 editions) in large Polish cities.
* The most popular entry on Wykop was about 2021 polish independent media blackout protest, which has 19,048 votes (February 11, 2021).
* Service has also own Web radio station, Radio Wolne Mirko with auditions led by users. In the past there were also other Web radio stations related to the service, such as Mirko FM and WykopFM.
* In June 2015, users of Wykop took part in an action against the ''
Polish death camps'' term, designing posters and billboards, reminding that
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
during World War II were not Polish, but German. Users wanted to set them in major Polish and European cities.
Controversies
* In September 2009 database containing nicknames and hashed passwords of around 100,000 users was leaked.
* In early 2010s dozens of short movies claiming that
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
is a
child molester
Child sexual abuse (CSA), also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whether ...
were uploaded to
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
. Some of those clips were described as originating from Wykop.pl. In early 2011, Łódź Voivodeship website was defaced with offensive and pornographic pictures of Pope. Attackers claimed to be from Wykop. Shortly after this incident users from Wykop discovered, that movies and pictures containing anti-papal content might be created on local mutation of
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
,
Karachan. Michał Białek, chairman of Wykop.pl notified prosecutors about the hate campaign targeting Pope and Wykop.pl.
* In May 2013, some users of Wykop found and uploaded naked photos of a female administrator, nicknamed ''Elfik32''. Pictures were taken in a field of wheat. Moderators of Wykop banned users posting said photos. In response users started uploading and upvoting articles connected to grain, eventually flooding the main page. The incident was named ''grain scandal'' (''afera zbożowa''). A few days later, ''Elfik32'' withdrew bans and apologized banned users.
* A similar scandal happened in January 2015. Moderators removed heavily upvoted article about plans of privatization of National Forests by President of Poland,
Bronisław Komorowski
Bronisław Maria Komorowski (; born 4 June 1952) is a Polish politician and historian who served as President of Poland from 2010 to 2015.
Komorowski served as Minister of Defence from 2000 to 2001. As Marshal of the Sejm, Komorowski exercised ...
. Users reacted and for some time main page consisted of nothing but articles connected to forests. The protest was named ''forest scandal'' (''afera leśna'').
* In December 2018, ''PurePC.pl'' reported that anonymous users added child sexual abuse material to the website; Wykop.pl reported the content to authorities.
* The problem related to child sexual abuse materials has not been resolved for the next 3 years and users reporting it were either banned or ignored.
References
External links
Wykop{{in lang, pl
Online companies of Poland
Polish social networking websites
Internet properties established in 2005