In brief

iFriends was one of the early paid live video chat services on the web: the customer pays for minutes of conversation, the presenter (the "host") gets a share of revenue, and the platform takes on the customers, billing, and payouts. Its owner is the Florida company WebPower, Inc.; the service operated under the name Intimate Friends Network since at least November 1998. This is part of the prehistory of the creator economy: a contractor model with a 50% share and prices set by the performer was already working in 2001–2003. The story is also useful as a correction to myths: the "1996" of retellings is the year the Web Power web studio was founded, not the launch of the webcam service, and the documents found contain no per-second billing.

How it started (the founders)

The founder and owner is Allan Hadhazy, a public business figure. According to his own biography, he studied economics and computer science at the University of Illinois, worked at the Institute for Econometric Research from 1990 to 1995, and in 1994 launched Mutual Funds Magazine there; he calls the magazine's site the first major consumer financial service on the internet and says the company was sold to Time Warner a few years later for about $80 million. The amount is a self-description with no independent confirmation estimate. By the end of the 1990s, according to the same biography, he had made minority investments in Netscape, Yahoo!, and Excite estimate.

The archive confirms an indirect link: the webpower.com home page of December 20, 1996 lists among the company's projects "Mutual Funds Online, the pioneering personal finance site from Mutual Funds Magazine." Web Power itself in 1996 was not a video chat but a web studio for membership-based internet services: alongside sites about golf, Florida real estate, and procurement in Broward County, the portfolio includes an adult link directory and Click-Ca$h, described as a network for promoting sites. The application for the WEBPOWER trademark was filed on April 24, 1996. There is no webcam service in the portfolio either in December 1996 or in April 1997.

The first public trace of iFriends is a snapshot from November 11, 1998: "Intimate Friends Network," with a blurb from the Persian Kitty directory calling it the hottest new site of the year. In 2011 the company named 1998 as its founding year, and the register gives February 1, 1998 as the trademark's date of first use. Judging by the portfolio, the first idea was not a webcam service but a general network for dating and socializing, built on top of the traffic machine that was already running (Click-Ca$h) estimate.

Year-by-year timeline

• 1994: Hadhazy launches Mutual Funds Magazine at the Institute for Econometric Research estimate
• 1996-04-24: Web Power files an application for the WEBPOWER trademark (web services); this is the date behind the "1996" of retellings, but not the date of iFriends fact
• 1996-12-20: webpower.com shows the WP Associates web studio and the Click-Ca$h network, with no line about video chat fact
• 1998-02-01: first use of the IFRIENDS trademark estimate
• 1998-11-11: the earliest snapshot of ifriends.net: "Intimate Friends Network" fact
• 1999-02-10 / 2000-10-03: application for and registration of the IFRIENDS trademark (No. 2391018) estimate
• 2001-06: the home page describes the largest online video chat community, paid "expert" rooms, a license to the host's video stream in exchange for 50% of sales, and a claimed tens of thousands of customer sessions a day fact
• 2003-03 / 2003-05: the platform's software ("ifcam96d") is updated after a vulnerability report on Bugtraq estimate
• 2003-08-15: new applications for the IFRIENDS and CLICKCASH trademarks fact
• 2003-09-01: a public description of the billing: host prices of $2–9 a minute, a 50/50 split, and a timer with a 60-second heartbeat estimate
• 2008-05-05: applications for the WEBPOWERFX trademark ("debit card services"); the purpose of the trademark unverified
• 2011-03-08: a press release about the SuperCam software claims an audience in more than 140 countries; at the same time, the host recruitment page promises weekly payouts and 50–100% of revenue
• 2011-05-06: cancellation of the 1999 trademark under Section 8 estimate
• 2015-05-27: the patent firm WAG Acquisition files suit against WebPower, Inc. in New Jersey (a patent on streaming video buffering); WebPower obtains a review of the patent at the patent office, and on August 26, 2019 the Federal Circuit sends some of the claims back for reconsideration; the identity of this WebPower with the owner of iFriends estimate
• 2016–2026: trademark cancellations: WEBPOWERFX in 2016, SUPERCAM on March 16, 2018, WEBPOWER on October 22, 2021, CLICKCASH on April 3, 2026, and IFRIENDS (the 2003 application) on July 31, 2026; all 29 WebPower trademarks are inactive

Lesser-known but significant facts

1. "1996" is not iFriends. The date April 24, 1996 refers to the WEBPOWER trademark for the web studio; the IFRIENDS trademark was filed on February 10, 1999, with a first use date of February 1, 1998.
2. In 2001 the service sold not only flirting but also live experts. The home page has a list of categories covering taxes, programming, tutoring, elder care, and video résumés, plus paid premium expert rooms, with a pitch asking visitors whether they had a webcam and knew everything, and inviting them to earn money from what they know. This is a storefront, not proof of demand: the documents do not show how much the expert rooms brought in estimate.
3. The affiliate network is older than the service itself. Click-Ca$h is already listed in Web Power's portfolio in December 1996; in 2011 ClickCash.com is the iFriends affiliate program, and URLs from 2010–2019 show the RevShare, PPS, and PPFS modes fact for Click-Ca$h in 1996 and ClickCash in 2011; what PPS/PPFS stand for unverified.
4. The payment timer lived in the browser. According to a 2003 public description, time was tracked on the customer's side, with a report to the server every 60 seconds; payment logic tied to a browser window is an architectural weakness to which, according to the author, the company did not respond estimate.
5. A payment circuit of its own grew up around the video chat. The CLICKCASH (affiliate tracking) and WEBPOWERFX (debit cards, 2008) trademarks and ClickCash as a separate brand show an attempt to keep traffic, billing, and possibly payouts within a single group estimate.

Legend vs. the record

• Legend: webcams were invented in the 2010s, together with creator platforms. Retellings tie the model in which a performer runs their own broadcast and gets a share to the era of OnlyFans and tube sites. The record: according to Wikipedia, Flirt4Free started in 1996 under the name VideoSecrets, with paid private shows and virtual credits estimate; iFriends was operating in 1998; in 2001 hosts were offered 50% of sales, and in 2003 they set their own prices of $2–9 a minute. Verdict: false; what changed in the 2010s was the scale and the brands, not the model itself, since a revenue share and a price set by the performer were already working by 2001–2003 estimate.
• Legend: the first platforms paid models pennies. The record: according to the company's own advertising, the video stream license gave 50% of sales, and some hosts were earning more than $4,000 a week; an independent author in 2003 also writes of a 50/50 split; in 2011 the company promised 50–100% and weekly payouts. Verdict: the payout formula was not a matter of pennies; the documents found do not show actual earnings or the median, and the $4,000 refers to some hosts in advertising estimate. Anonymous complaints about non-payment exist but cannot be verified rumor.
• Legend: iFriends launched in 1996 and billed by the second. That was the episode's original hypothesis; the year 1996 also appears in retellings. The record: 1996 is the year of the trademark application for the web studio, and the service is visible from 1998; the only technical description of the billing speaks of a per-minute price and a timer heartbeat every 60 seconds. Verdict: the year is corrected to 1998; per-second billing is not confirmed, so we go with per-minute billing in 60-second steps estimate.
• Legend: there were patent wars around video chat involving Web Power. The record: Google Patents shows no patents in WebPower's name before 2006, but in 2015–2019 WebPower, Inc. was a defendant in a suit by WAG Acquisition (patent No. 8,122,141 on streaming video buffering; suit filed on May 27, 2015, case No. 15-3581) and itself obtained a review of the patent at the patent office; on August 26, 2019 the Federal Circuit overturned part of the office's decision and sent claims 10–18 back for reconsideration. Other defendants in the same dispute included FriendFinder Networks, Streamray, and DuoDecad IT Services Luxembourg, then the operator of LiveJasmin. Verdict: "patent wars" is wrong for the 1990s and 2000s: the dispute came late and from a patent holding company, not from market rivals; the documents do not directly say that the defendant is the same Florida company that owned iFriends estimate.

The first growth lever

The lever was the offer to the host (the platform brings in the customers, handles the billing, and pays out every week) plus its own affiliate network that brought in traffic: the host brings the broadcast and gets 50% of sales, while the platform takes on everything a performer would find hard to do alone. The offer was backed by figures from the advertising: a claimed tens of thousands of customer sessions a day, some hosts earning over $4,000 a week part-time, and host prices of $2–9 a minute. The arithmetic, assuming a 20-minute session: at $2–9 a minute that is $40–180 in revenue, and with a 50% share the platform keeps $20–90 estimate.

The "$300 million a year" figure is not company data but an estimate by the author of a 2003 mailing list post, built on his own assumptions (200–300 simultaneous paid sessions, $2–4 a minute, a 50% share), so it cannot be taken as turnover rumor. For a sense of scale: 20,000–50,000 sessions a day at $10–40 of average revenue give from $73 million to $730 million a year, a range too wide to confirm or refute the figure estimate. The second component is traffic: since 1996 Web Power had its own site promotion network, Click-Ca$h, which in the 2010s sold iFriends on RevShare and PPS terms.

The paired story

The pair is LiveJasmin (Docler Holding). The shared plot: a webcam model in which the customer pays for time and the performer gets a share.

• Years: iFriends has been visible online since November 11, 1998, and LiveJasmin since no later than April 4, 2001, so LiveJasmin is about two and a half years younger.
• Founders: the owner of iFriends is Allan Hadhazy, and the owner of LiveJasmin is György Gattyán; the sources found show no people in common between the companies.
• Pricing: for iFriends, a per-minute price set by the host ($2–9) and a 50% share are documented; per-second billing is not confirmed for either iFriends or LiveJasmin, and the episode should not attribute it to either company without a document.
• Commercial fate: iFriends belongs to the Florida company WebPower, Inc.; all 29 trademarks are inactive (the last were canceled in 2026), and the status of the business is not confirmed unverified. LiveJasmin is alive, private, and has moved to Luxembourg. The contrast: one company is visible mainly through advertising pages and the trademark register, the other through the filings of individual companies in its group.
• Point of intersection: in the WAG Acquisition patent case of 2015–2019, DuoDecad IT Services Luxembourg, then the operator of LiveJasmin, stood among the defendants alongside WebPower, Inc. This is the only link found between the pair; that WebPower is the owner of iFriends remains an estimate.
• Growth lever: for iFriends, its own Click-Ca$h affiliate network; for LiveJasmin, the documents do not establish the first lever, and TV advertising came only in 2014; the levers are different.

Parallels today (projects from the catalog)

• Spencer Patterson — paywall platform for creators (spencer-patterson-paywall-platform): rev-share billing, where the platform earns only when the performer earns; the same logic of bringing in the customer and taking a percentage as at iFriends with its 50% share. The difference of eras: on Patterson's platform the payer is a community subscriber, not a customer paying by the minute. view this project's dossier →
• paster.so (paster-so-simple-saas): the author gets a share of reader payments and advertising, and the cash-out threshold and payouts are the main point of friction for the performer; at iFriends, weekly payouts played the same role. The difference: people pay for a pass to skip the wait, not for time spent talking. view this project's dossier →
• OmegleWeb (omegleweb): a random video chat that lived on advertising and donations for two years and then added a paid subscription; at iFriends in 2001, paid rooms likewise stood alongside the general ones. The difference: the viewer pays for features, not for the host's minutes. view this project's dossier →

What a builder can take from this in 2026

1. Payouts to the performer are part of the product. On top of the broadcast itself, the iFriends platform sold the host customers, billing, and a weekly payout. If you run a contractor marketplace, make the payout schedule and the cash-out threshold public from day one.
2. Count time on the server. Payment logic tied to a client-side timer leaks revenue. Today, for any metered product (minutes, tokens, seconds of calls), the counter should be on the server, with a signed heartbeat.
3. The performer sets the price; the share is fixed. The performer's own prices plus a 50% share is a simple scheme that is easy to explain; test it on your market by checking what the platform will keep at a real average session.
4. An affiliate network is a separate asset. Click-Ca$h existed before the service and ran alongside it into the 2010s: if you buy traffic, consider whether your tracking could become a separate product.
5. Do not name your launch date after the first document you come across. A trademark application and a launch can be years apart: in your public company history, rely on what the customer can see.

Discrepancies and what we could not verify

• Launch year: 1996 (retellings) versus 1998 (the company, the register, the archive); we go with 1998, with February 1, 1998 as the exact date estimate.
• Billing: per-second versus per-minute with a 60-second heartbeat; we go with the latter estimate.
• Host share: 50% (2001, 2003) versus 50–100% (2011); the terms for 100% are not disclosed unverified.
• Host earnings ($4,000 a week) are only an advertising claim; turnover ($300 million a year) is a calculation by the author of a mailing list post based on assumptions; there is no independent confirmation rumor.
• Patent disputes: no patents or cases were found before 2006; in 2015–2019 there is the WAG v. WebPower, Inc. case; whether the defendant is the owner of iFriends is an estimate.
• The terms of the host agreement (percentage, duration, version date): only an abstract is available unverified.
• The purpose of the WEBPOWERFX trademark and the current status of WebPower, Inc. unverified; the trademarks were canceled in 2016–2026.
• The 2018 cancellations of the 2010–2011 IFRIENDS trademarks and the February 1, 1998 date rest on a single pointer to the register; the USPTO records were not opened estimate.
• Complaints from users and affiliates are anonymous and were not checked rumor.

Sources (primary first)

• https://web.archive.org/web/19961220032623/http://www.webpower.com:80/ — webpower.com, 1996-12-20
• https://web.archive.org/web/19970414080151/http://www.webpower.com:80/ — webpower.com, 1997-04-14
• Wayback Machine, snapshot of ifriends.net from 1998-11-11 (timestamp 19981111185811) — ifriends.net, 1998-11-11
• Wayback Machine, snapshot of ifriends.net from 2001-06-25 (timestamp 20010625103044) — the iFriends home page, 2001-06-25
• Wayback Machine, snapshot of the ifriends.net host recruitment page from 2011-03-23 (timestamp 20110323031432) — host recruitment, 2011-03-23
• https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ifriendsnet-launches-high-definition-video-conferencing-software-117594623.html — SuperCam press release, 2011-03-08
• https://www.scribd.com/document/2670696/iFRIENDS-VIDEO-CHATHOST-USAGE-AND-DISTRIBUTION-SERVICES-AGREEMENT — host agreement template (abstract)
• https://www.mahfoundation.com/Hadhazy.html — the owner's biography (self-description)
• https://trademarks.justia.com/756/37/ifriends-75637780.html and https://www.trademarkia.com/owners/webpower-inc — the USPTO trademark register (via aggregators)
• https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2003/Sep/32 and https://seclists.org/bugtraq/2003/May/38 — public 2003 mailing lists
• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca13-18-01617/pdf/USCOURTS-ca13-18-01617-0.pdf — Federal Circuit decision, WAG Acquisition v. WebPower, 2019-08-26
• https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-njd-2_14-cv-01661/pdf/USCOURTS-njd-2_14-cv-01661-0.pdf — decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (suit against WebPower, 2015-05-27)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flirt4Free, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webcam_model, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_Check — used only as pointers