Spymac was an online Macintosh community and rumour site launched at the end of 2001 by Holger Ehlis and Kevin April, [1] which grew to be the largest Macintosh community at the time, having around 600,000 users and 25 employees as of 2004. [1] [2] Spymac was known for innovative marketing and technology that led to its growth, such as the first-to-market 1GB email service, which launched even before Google's Gmail, causing an influx of new users, [3] [4] [5] and Wheel, a suite of online services that competed with Apple's .Mac, which included the aforementioned email service, backups, and website hosting. [6]
However, outcry over the site's "Leapfrog" redesign, which followed Web 2.0 principles, lead to many long-time users leaving. [7] The redesign marked a transition for the site, which switched away from being a Mac forum to a video upload site that paid users a portion of advertising revenue. [8] [9] By March 2007, the site had over one million users. [9]