red herring (pt.1)

i did even more digging through iple a while back, and found a totally new (well, not really, but you know what i mean) site connected to it. 

i've been putting together an entire document of the things i've found out about iple, especially as i want to see if i can reach out to some old kpop fan communities and see if anyone remembers details i've missed or misinterpreted. this time around, i was able to access the official pages and fan groups, but i'm only more confused than before...

see. remember how last post, i said that iple was owned by sm, and was meant for sm artists? but idols from other labels were on there, too. son dambi, lee hyori, and a few other soloists... and actors, and sports players! i don't get it. were the other artists under sm sub-labels? did they sign special contracts? or am i misinterpreting things again, and those were just folks who were popular / most talked about on iple? this is where i wish more images were archived from this site, because those were the headers... at least give me a hint ㅠㅠ

oh, also, before we move on from iple. one of the links on the idols' official pages was to register for an iple account. AND ALL OF THAT WAS ARCHIVED... what do you MEAN the only fully accurate surviving page of this service is the REGISTRATION PAGE?????? goodnight.

anyway! enough of that. onto the actually exciting thing: the discovery! while there's literally nothing left in terms of appearance or images on the idol pages, i was still able to mess with a few links. and one of them on the snsd page brought me to a site called ufotown. 

AND IT'S SO CUTE?????? and way more thorough in archival. like, you guys. look at this! (yes i'm showing u the dbsk page. but here's the home page too.) they're animated!!! they've got the flash files!!! sucks that the banner is over yunho's face, tho. poor yunho...

so... i guess, we have a new question: what was ufotown?

to my surprise, this one actually has a namu wiki page. it doesn't detail much about the service though, only stating that users could pay 300 won to send their idol(s) of choice virtual fan letters, which could be replied to. but, as you can see, there appears to be much more... i might even wager more than iple, in terms of the content that the service provides in contrast to what the users provide. so, let's dive in! (if this part ends up too long for my liking, i'll make a part 2.)

of course, we shall start with the home page! first impressions are important~ and the one i've gotten from this is that ufotown was a celebrity gossip and interaction site. most of the sections are dedicated to forums and article links to celebrity gossip. the most interesting version of this i see here are the "issue feedbacks" in the middle of the page, which use flash animations and functions to change to different topics such as "nebula", "planet", and "comet". and, again, all of these are based on various celebrity things. how cute / cool idols are, new releases, and so forth. or at least, that's what i think it is. i'm assuming from titles, which aren't definite... i tried clicking on some of these feedback posts to see what they were all about / how they functioned, but the pages were blank.

the lower half of the home page is dedicated to the more personal aspects of the site. highlighted fan letters of the day and fan letter responses, top profiles, and audio messages from idols. yeah-- alongside fan letters, another big piece of ufo town appears to be voice messages and recordings that idols shared to their profiles. but more on that later.

from here on out, i'll be moving from right to left on the main bar. so, we're moving onto circle (or 서클). for some reason, the starcall section can't be clicked on. perhaps the flash file is working incorrectly? or that page just wasn't archived. and the music section ends up leading to an archived page from the web archive itself? it's a shame.

as it appears, circles are fandom hubs. there's a section dedicated to circles that the user is a member of, a supporter of, and a manager of. though, when i ran it through a translator, they (supporters and managers) were in separate circles. not sure. but anyway, below that were sections for groups that were searching for supporters and managers, and a section where folks showed off their "resume". i'm assuming that those in manager or supporter groups would then look at those resumes, and invite people to the groups. 

in the sidebar, there's a section for the most popular star circles at the time. star circles are the official profiles, i guess. at the time i visited and went through most of the site (late 2009), most of the popular groups were sm groups. but as time went on (i somehow got to 2011 when i first clicked on the page), the amount of sm groups in the popular ranking lessened, and mid-tier label groups were more popular. 

you're able to look at star circles-- i checked out infinite's. there's no content there, though. i think it worked through iframes that the archive didn't get, so the middle / content section is quite literally empty. but it has sections for post categories, popular tags, popular posts, fan letters, etc. (also... it appears that they always use the same names for their images. infinite's banner remained with their be mine appearance into 2017, though it would've surely changed. and dbsk's banner was ot2 even in 2009. so the archival is also incomplete in that regard. unless...)

back to the main page, the sidebar also includes sections for announcements, events, and something called premium links. a lot of them talk about something called 유타 (not the nct member) and "the warmest letters to a star". but clicking on them leads you nowhere. but, the link reads from a domain called realclick. might just be ads.

agh... this is getting seriously long. and we're only on the first section you can look through! this series might be longer than i anticipated. stay tuned!!!

sotd: vaguer transmissions by ttng