Ahh, from the era when the entire internet filled a phone book. I bought the internet yellow pages in 95, 96 and 97. You could physically see exponential growth as the yellow pages went from the thickness of a small novel to the thickness of the NYC yellow pages.
The internet yellow pages was much like the current yellow pages, you navigate to a category and then it lists all the domains and a small description that are in that category. Some larger sites would receive a half a page or more describing them.
Yup, there were a couple of these print books back in the day. How else were you supposed to find sites when there was no decent search, no decent directory, and lots of stuff simply wasn't on the web (yet).
When I was at university I used to moan that cocacola.com and levi.com were not registered.
I did discuss registering start.com and setting up an index of websites for brands that had bothered to put a site up - but I was too busy helping on a Fortran compiler to get round to it. Happy days.
interesting, that wired threatened the owners of wire.com (a site to encourage women to go on the net) into giving up their domain in the early 90s.
> Trademark infringement cases are usually settled through a process I've come to think of as Big Footing. The big company with the trademark Big Foots the little one, forcing it to give up the name. Usually, this is achieved with a Big Foot letter from the big company's lawyer, threatening legal action.
> McDonald's does it. So does Wired. Last year, WIRE, a computer network encouraging women to get on the Net, registered the domain name wire.com. This magazine's lawyers sent them a Big Foot letter: "That sounds too much like Wired's online service, wired.com. Give up the name, or else." WIRE became Women's Wire, and retreated to the domain name wwire.com.
So what's the story of mcdonalds.com after the registration? Court case? Anyone knows? This wild 90s had many success stories when companies were paying to get hold of their trademarked domains since legal system was in doubt, but it does not seem that this case would have been hard to win in court.
Sidenote: I love how Wired has archived even the graphic that says "on newsstands now". How quaint. An indication of simpilier times. Daddy, what's a newsstand?
It's interesting how Wired has so frequently been obviously aware of the monumental shifts going on around them, but rarely able to effectively capitalize on them. Heck, they owned one of the better search engines at one time, and several of the best web development and technology destinations on the web...and yet, it feels kinda lost now. Smartest thing they've done in the past couple of years was buy reddit, but they need to be making a lot more acquisitions like that, or internalizing that adventurous spirit.
Kind of like most of the rest of us. I remember watching eBay's IPO and thinking I should get some of that - but not doing it. Then setting out on my own in late 1999 only to get crushed in the bubble. Seems like I've been following the internet for 15 years now, aware of what is going on, able to make a living, but always just a step behind.
Aint that the truth. I started a business in 1999, as well. I didn't really get crushed, but it wasn't particularly easy street either. I just always thought of the people behind Wired as being smarter than me since they've had so many early successes, but I can see how they fail pretty clearly, and it seems like an even harder fail because they moved with such assurance and competence in the beginning. I guess the really smart people left.
Frankly, I'm not sure Wired will make it to the end of the year.
The magazine has lost 50 percent of its ad pages so far this year, ranking among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter. Only Portfolio, which Condé Nast shut down last month, and Power and Motoryacht fared worse.
Because anybody can see what's happening now, but to make money you need to do the next thing -- and by definition, nobody is doing it yet. So you have to take the leap and decide, that of the hundreds of directions the web could go, it's going to go this way.
If it goes your way, then in retrospect, everyone will look at what you did and say "well, all the signs were there, it was obvious this was going to be big". But the 99 other guys who invested in, say, Coldfusion, or Shockwave, or Push screensavers, will be broke or stuck in permanent backwaters.
To be the Next Big Thing, you have to risk the 99% probability of being Yet Another Small Thing.
Wow, was there a point in history when people thought underscores should be used for spaces in domain names? (or for that matter, that it was even possible?)
On mcdonalds.com, if you click the "Ronald McDonald House Charities" link, you will read this: "McDonald's is not responsible for the opinions, policies, statements or practices of any other companies, such as those that may be expressed in the web site you are entering"!
The Ronald McDonald House has nothing to do with McDonald's other than sponsorship in exchange for the name, so this message is totally appropriate.
I know this because my mom was the first manager of the Minneapolis RMH that opened in 1979. In fact I grew up in the house from 1979 to 1989. It no longer exists but you can see the photo at http://www.rmhtwincities.org/history.html
