love.r52.ru — a Nizhny Novgorod dating site called “Dating in Nizhny Novgorod”[1]. It ran on a third-level domain of the Nizhny Novgorod portal R52.ru: in the early version a note at the bottom of the page read “The site is hosted on the R52.RU server”[2], and the administration’s email address was love@r52.ru[3]. The first snapshot of the home page in the Web Archive is dated 23 February 2001[2], the last one 20 April 2021[4]: the project stayed online for about twenty years, a rare span for a site of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of those years.

What the site was like

The 2001 version looked like a personal project with a long list of sections in the left-hand column: “FAQ”, “Guide”, “Theory”, “Horoscopes”, “Name days”, “ICQ”, “Books”, then the listings themselves — “Guys seeking”, “Girls seeking”, “HE+HE”, “SHE+SHE”, “Couples”, “For everyone”, and at the bottom “Archive”, “Forum”, “Guestbook”, “Friends”, “Feedback”[1]. The news items on that page were dated 2000: 20 May — “The whole site has been completely redone”, 29 May — a separate name-days section, 1 September — “instead of the old forum there is now a new one, and not just one but three”[1]. Design and programming were credited to the WebMix studio[1]. On the “About the project” page the author stated the aim as a project “directed at developing internet communication in our city”, and noted that only the people who posted the listings were responsible for their content; the author’s ICQ number was given there as well — 71312748[3].

By 2003 the site had passed under the portal’s management (“© Copyright 2002 R52.RU”) and had acquired the structure of a profile catalogue[5]. Five large sections — “Girl seeking young man”, “Young man seeking girl”, “HE + HE”, “SHE + SHE”, “Couples” — were divided into subsections by the purpose of the acquaintance: for romantic relationships, for intimate ones, for starting a family, for a virtual acquaintance, for spending leisure time together, by interests; each had its own photo gallery and its own forum[5]. The search filtered profiles by section, age, type of relationship, presence of a photo and of an ICQ number, and even by zodiac sign[5]. The “New profiles” block showed recent entries with a date and an age: “25.3 aleksey, 23 years old”, “22.3 Olga, 27 years old”[5].

The snapshot of 25 September 2004 records a forum section that had grown considerably: “main”, “sexual minorities”, “swingers”, “ICQ forum”, “book of complaints”, “discussion of profiles”, “looking for a travel companion”, “where to go out?”[6]. At the same time a separate adult block named “Flesh” appeared in the menu, made up of five sections with English-language captions[6]. By July 2007 the home page had acquired a poll, “Which profile fields interest you most?”, with options ranging from height and weight to dreams and education — marked “Poll of 25.3.2004”[7]. The footer carried the licence “A 024278 #24678”, a note that legal support was provided by the firm “Kotin i Partnery” (Kotin and Partners), and the Nizhny Novgorod telephone numbers (8312) 77-58-67 and 77-59-50[7].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site’s prominence is confirmed by independent measurement. The home page of the “Nizhny Novgorod Online” server (nn.ru) in the snapshot of 5 December 2000 carried a “TOP 10” block — a digest of the Nizhny Novgorod Counter.nn.ru rating. “Dating in Nizhny Novgorod” held tenth place in it, with a rating of 249.87 and 41 visits over the current day[8]. Its neighbours in the top ten were “Nizhny Novgorod OnLine” (4th place), the “Nizhny Novgorod Telegraph Agency” (6th), the “Nizhny Novgorod postcard server” (7th) and “Studiya Bomond” (Beau Monde Studio, 8th)[8]. The site held its place in the top ten of the city rating even before the Web Archive took the first copy of its own page. A year-by-year analysis of the rating is given in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. At the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day no votes for the site were recorded.

In 2003 the footer of the home page named an information partner — the agency “NTA — Privolzhye” — while the portal itself was called a “regional partner” of R52[5]. By 2007 the site had been woven into the portal’s network of projects: the top and side navigation listed “R52 Portal”, “Business monitoring”, “On tourism”, “Real estate”, “Mobile communications”, as well as a design studio, new housing developments, streetracing.r52, monitoring and a job exchange[7]. There were also two lines there about partnership with Yandex and Rambler[7].

Decline and closure

In its final years the site lived on almost unchanged. The snapshot of 1 March 2021 shows the same layout and the same line “Hosted at R52.RU Copyright 2004” as in the mid-2000s, but the forums had vanished from the menu, and of the navigation only “DATING”, “FOR DATING”, “ABOUT DATING” and two advertising blocks were left[9]. The dates in the new-profiles block are telling: on 1 March 2021 the freshest entries listed there were from 25 and 20 September — “25.9 Ivan, 26”, “20.9 Lyubov, 38”, “20.9 Alexander, 29”, “12.9 Nikolay, 44”[9]. By comparison, in the snapshot of 2 July 2007 the fresh profiles were dated that same day — 2 July[7]. That is, by 2021 the flow of new profiles had practically stopped, although the database remained open: during its crawl in April 2021 the Web Archive saved 158 separate profile pages with identifiers running up to 27396[10].

The Web Archive took the last snapshot of the home page on 20 April 2021[4]; there are no later copies. When the domain was checked in 2026, love.r52.ru did not respond — the site is closed, and its twenty-year database of Nizhny Novgorod profiles and forums has survived only in archived copies. The parent portal R52.ru, meanwhile, is still running.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — First snapshot of the home page, 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — “About the project” page, 2001 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Last snapshot of the home page, 2021 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — nn.ru home page with the TOP 10 block of the counter.nn.ru rating, 2000 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Home page, 2021 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — List of love.r52.ru snapshots in the Web Archive for 2021 (archive)