50 years oral History of the Internet five. Towards the masses

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This is the fifth part of the 50-year oral history of the Internet, about the prosperity of the Internet in the 90 's, and the birth of Amazon, EBay, Yahoo, Craigslist, especially the 98 by Drudge Triggered the Clinton impeachment case. Other parts of the 50-year oral history of the Internet see: Part I, part two, Part III, fourth.

Thomas Reardon:

With Netscape and Microsoft's browser battle, the world suddenly realized that the original web hidden huge business opportunities, so the web crazy development.

Of all the old media, no one has captured the power of the Internet as quickly as Barry Diller, turning his TV shopping channel QVC into an interactive Web enterprise. Today, Diller has more than 60 Web companies, including Ticketmaster,match.com and Expedia.

Barry Diller:

I used a PC earlier than most people, which made me aware of something called interactivity, and I started to collect relevant technology three years before the web was born, so I was a pioneer when the Web finally arrived. I didn't like travelling, and I told myself, God, what a great idea it would be to make the Internet a travel business. So we did it and it turns out we're doing well.

Jeffrey P. Bezos founded the online bookstore Amazon.com in Seattle in 1995, and Amazon is now the world's largest online retailer.

Jeff Bezos:

In that year, the Web grew by 2,300%, I've listed 20 types of products that can be sold online, and eventually I've chosen books, and I'm looking for a variety of products, and there are millions of books in the world, and I want to find a product that can only be made bigger on the Web, A bookstore with a huge variety is only available on the Web, there is no way you can print such a large bibliography on a paper catalogue, which may be thicker than dozens of New York phone pages, and when you print this list, they're probably out of date, and it's hard to do that in a traditional bookstore, you know, The world's largest bookstore has 150,000 kinds of books, far less than the size of online bookstores.

When we opened the business, we have released more than 1 million kinds of books, at that time, there are many errors in our system, a friend of mine said, you can fill in the order quantity there is a negative number, estimated that we want to pay your credit card, and then wait for you to send us a shipment, we quickly corrected this error.

In 1995, Pierre Omidyar, an Iranian computer programmer born in France, founded the auction site ebay, which now has 276 million registered users in 39 countries. (on EBay, not everything can be traded, for example, you can't buy and sell lottery tickets, unlock tools, and human organs)

Pierre Omidyar:

By the 94, 95, the technology that enables Web pages to interact is already emerging, I believe in a market theory, which is that if you have an efficient store, the goods can be traded at fair prices, and eventually I think the store is the Web, and I can create a place where people from all over the world can trade, No matter where you come from. So, one weekend in 95, I sat down to write the first online auction program.

I have a feeling that people are good, you open to doubt, but found that everyone is trustworthy, EBay proved that you can trust a stranger.

Jeff Bezos:

When we started our business, working on the cement floor, one of my software engineers said that my knees and my back were breaking, and I said, I just thought of a great way to get a couple of cushions, and the guy looked at me and said, Jeff, we need a few tables. I bought the table the next day, which resulted in a double efficiency.

In 1994, two students at Stanford University, Jerry and David Filo, founded Yahoo, an early portal and search site, which remains one of the most visited sites in the world.

Jerry:

The challenge is always to meet the expectations of the users and figure out what they need. I remember the number of countries we counted on Yahoo in the early days, and it was not long before we had more than 90 countries, and we never even advertised it, all by mouth.

David Filo:

In the early days, we had no income, no definite profit plan, and about 6 months after that, I received the first check of the bill, when our biggest problem was how to feed ourselves.

In 1995, a software engineer named Craig Newmark founded the free online classifieds website craigslist.org, where Craigslist now has 40 million users a month.

Craig Newmark:

I've been alive since I was a child, high school, I wore thick glasses, holding a plastic stationery folder, I am not exaggerating, I have always felt that I was abandoned by The Times, now, I do not forget that feeling, I hope everyone is not left out, this is what we do now.

I worked in the Charles Schwab software company in 1994, I browsed the web and saw a lot of people helping each other, so I built a small mailing list to send out some art and technology fairs to 10 to 20 people.

Then it was suggested that there should be occasional job or business information, and I said that the rental was good, everything was going well until May 1995, my mailing list crashed after having 240 users, and I had to think of a new name, and I started off with the SF Events, But the people around me have already called it craigslist, and eventually Craigslist became a brand that I've been using.

I want to say, our model and jump 瘙 market is similar, people have something want to sell, take to sell, do not have the trouble in the business field. The site is trivial, it's all about everyday things, but sometimes it's true that someone needs to contact someone through it, and our site does it sometimes, and the best example is the New Orleans station in Hurricane Katrina, the survivors through Craigslist. Tell their relatives or friends about their situation and some people looking for them.

The earliest online magazine, Slate magazine, funded by Microsoft, was founded by Michael Kinsley, a famous columnist, a former editor-in-chief of New Republic Magazine and one of the hosts of TV show Crossfire.

Michael Kinsley:

I read in the paper that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is looking for a senior media writer to manage their online magazines, that was the summer of 1995, I had a casual acquaintance with Ballmer, and sent him an email saying, I was the one you were looking for, and then I went to Microsoft.

People thought I was too bold, and I remember a man named David Gergen, who stared at his famous big-eyed bead, and said he could not believe anyone would give up television and print magazines to the Internet.

The only opponent we met was Salon magazine, but working with Microsoft is really ..., Microsoft does not say to pay compensation, but ask writers to sign a pile of contracts with them, Microsoft asked each writer to sign three contracts, they asked the writer clearly know Microsoft's request, and even asked those candidates to sign a compensation contract.

Because the person who interviewed me later became my wife, so I forgave Microsoft everything.

Vinod Khosla and his Stanford classmate Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Bill Joy founded SUN, who later joined Silicon Valley's most famous venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ...

Vinod Khosla:

Those in the press were still not thinking about the importance of the Internet, and in 1996, I convened 9 to 10 CEOs of famous media to explore the creation of something called New Century receptacle. The people from the Washington Post, The New York Times, Times and other famous media, they can not believe that Google, Yahoo and ebay will become a great company, nor that ebay will replace the traditional classified ads.

Pierre Omidyar:

I remember clearly that there was a Barbie doll collection community, they suddenly know about eBay, and I'll never forget that we had a party at the end of 96, a truck driver came in, he drove a truck across the country, and when people introduced themselves, he said, "I'm a truck driver and I collect Barbie dolls."

Later, out of a Beanie Barbie doll we listed in our public statements, Beanie Barbie accounted for 8% of our business.

Cindy Margolis, who played a former model in the movie The Price's right, also played a female robot in Mike Myers's film Austin powers:international man Mystery. , the Internet can make people very easy to become famous, Margolis later in the world Guinness record is called "the most downloaded woman."

Cindy Margolis:

Age hero, 1996, everyone is talking about the Internet. I devote myself to it, I'm just a small part of Internet history, who do you think created the word "net friend"? Before MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, even Yahoo and Google became household names, Extra (TV) I used to post some swimsuit photos to AOL, and my little head thought, "if people like to watch, why don't I post it, and then I'll post it."

Smoking Gun is a website that regularly publishes criminal records, such as arrest records, and the head of a suspect, the Sanlitun Voice's former journalist William Bastone with his wife, along with editor Daniel Green, founded the site.

Bill Bastone:

When you get some police records, or an FBI memo or a confession, as a journalist, you can only use a small portion of it, and the rest is still wonderful, just because it contains some potentially profane content that cannot be published in the home newspaper.

I always feel that the network will be the right place for these materials, if I personally put these materials out, online, there will be a lot of people interested, many people want to see something ordinary people can not get.

The site was founded on April 17, 1997, and I didn't have an e-mail address, and I remember sending a fax to about 40 media outlets to tell them about the opening of our website.

The Internet, the source of the news and grapevine food chain, was vividly reflected in the Clinton impeachment. After Clinton had a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Drudge reported on the matter before all the media. Newsweek, the first to get the news, refused to report the case, and Mike McCurry was acting as press secretary for the White House.

Mike McCurry:

I remember the news on the Drudge is usually for a week, the first time I heard about it was in the morning of Monday, when the White House news department collected some White House news, Ann Compton asked, have you heard that some of the news resources we get will cause the president to be impeached, which is a problem, I stared at her and said, is that ABC? She said, No.

It was not a good thing for White House journalists to quote the news from Drudge, when we were fearful of the Drudge News media in the world. We were talking about it in January 1998, when the Internet wasn't as developed as it is now, and we hardly had a White House website.

After the incident, I was told that it was Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and I said, "You mean the big intern?" They said, "Yes, I remember laughing.

The impeachment led to a number of online websites, most notably Joan Blades and MoveOn.org, founded by Wes Boyd.

Joan Blades:

Wes and I were at a Chinese restaurant in a discussion about how the Government should behave in a scandal, and we drafted a only one-sentence petition in which the Parliament must immediately pursue the President's conduct and make it public.

We sent the petition to less than 100 friends or family, please sign them and send them to more people, and we'll get 100,000 signatures in less than one weeks, it was 98, and before that, it never happened on the internet and we received 1 million signatures in a very short time.

Wes Boyd:

The thing that makes us most inspired is not to say that the big shots are at last afraid to underestimate us, but that there is no big man at all, and it's terrible when you know how many vacuums there are in politics.

The other parts of the 50-year oral history of the Internet

The first part of the 50-year oral history of the Internet

The second part of the 50-year oral history of the Internet

The third part of the 50-year oral history of the Internet

50 years oral History of the Internet fourth part

This article International Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/internet200807?currentPage=6

Chinese translation Source: Comsharp CMS official website