Airliners.net

Airliners.net
Web address airliners.net
Slogan The wings of the web
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Aircraft photo database and aviation forum
Owner Demand Media
Created by Johan Lundgren, Jr.
Launched May 23, 1997 (1997-05-23)[1]
Revenue Forum memberships, advertising
Alexa rank
 Decrease 7,232 (March 2016)[2]
Current status Active

Airliners.net is an aviation website that includes an extensive photo database of aircraft and airports, as well as a forum catering to aviation enthusiasts. Created by Johan Lundgren, Jr., the site originated in 1996 as Pictures of Modern Airliners. It was handed over to Demand Media in 2007.

History

Johan Lundgren, Jr., an IT student and aviation enthusiast attending Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, created the site Pictures of Modern Airliners in 1996.[3][4][5] Lundgren had been working on the site during his military service. It initially hosted only his own aircraft photos before a new section was created for other photographers to upload their photos.[3][6]

In 1997, Lundgren transitioned to a new site entitled Airliners.net and established a web server in his dormitory room. Three more servers were added, and eventually all servers were relocated to the computer rooms at the university. Lundgren started investing all of his time into the site, although he received help from a growing number of volunteers.[3]

On 27 July 2007, Lundgren announced the site would be acquired by Demand Media. It was sold to the company for USD $8.2 million.[7] Reasons behind the decision included the difficulty of managing the rapidly growing site, which was by that point supported by 25 servers.[8]

As you probably know, Airliners.net keeps growing year after year with more photos, more forum posts, more visitors, more users and more photographers. This is fantastic. I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined this success when I started the site ten years ago.

And what comes with success?? Managing it. And I know you have felt some of the growing pains. There are infrastructure issues – like trying to stay on top of the hardware needs of this site but complexities and the site’s growth have caused outages. What started in my dorm room on one computer is now supported by 25 – and that’s not including all the network gear.

And there are administrative issues. Growing the site, supporting the community and keeping things running takes a big toll on me – All Crew groups have long lists of bugs I need to fix and administrative features I need to add.

— Johan Lundgren, Jr., "Big News On The Future Of Airliners.net"[8]

The site will be redeveloped sometime in 2016.[9]

Membership

Three types of accounts could originally be created on the site:[10]

As of September 2015, upgrades to the paid memberships were disabled indefinitely, meaning new users are only able to post in the Aviation Photography forum.

Features

Photo database

As of early 2016, the photo database contains over 2.6 million photos with over 8.5 billion total views.[11] All photos undergo screening prior to being admitted to the database. The database can be searched by aircraft type, airline, airport, and other information.

Forum

The forum is divided into ten subforums: Civil Aviation; Military Aviation and Space; Technical/Operations; Aviation Photography; Photography Feedback; Travel, Polls & Prefs; Trip Reports; Aviation Hobby; Non-Aviation; and Site Related.

Other

In addition, Airliners.net has an automated aviation news service, accepts aviation articles for publishing, maintains an information database of aircraft types, and has a live chat service for members.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Airliners.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. 2016. Retrieved 2016-02-22.
  2. ↑ "airliners.net Site Overview". Alexa. 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Rothfischer, Brigitte (February 2005). "Best of Airliners.net" (in German). Aero International: 6–13. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  4. ↑ Haugen, Petter (10 September 2000). "Nettstedet for deg med flydilla" (in Norwegian). DinSide Reise. Archived at the Wayback Machine on 7 July 2001. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  5. ↑ Lundgren, Johan (1 September 1997). "Pictures of Modern Airliners". Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  6. ↑ Lundgren, Johan (21 January 1997). "Your Aviation Photos". Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  7. ↑ Grosz, Denis. "Highlights and Analysis of Demand Media’s IPO Filing". Denis Grosz. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  8. 1 2 Lundgren, Johan (27 July 2007). "Big News On The Future Of Airliners.net". Airliners.net. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  9. ↑ "Subscription Cancelled?". Airliners.net. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  10. ↑ "Airliners.net Membership". Airliners.net. Archived at the Wayback Machine on 15 August 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  11. ↑ "Airliners.net Photo Stats". Airliners.net. 2 January 2016. Retrieved 3 January 2016.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, March 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.