
Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998 - anateus
http://paulgraham.com/vw.html
======
chops
_Trevor graduated at about the same time the acquisition closed, so in the
course of 4 days he went from impecunious grad student to millionaire PhD._

In 1998, I had made an effort to do the whole "once a day, learn a random new
word from the dictionary". I did that for exactly _one day_. The one word I
learned was "impecunious." Up until now, I've never, ever, seen or heard that
word used.

So in 1998, independent, near simultaneous events (Viaweb being acquired, and
me learning a single word) were set in motion that would culminate 14 years
later in me reading for the first time an actual legitimate use of that word,
resulting in a very self-satisfied grin. Consider my day made.

It means "poor" btw.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Here's another word for you:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity>

~~~
itmag
That's actually quite common in the self-help community.

google _site:stevepavlina.com/blog synchronicity_ for instance.

------
OpenAmazing
"We put cgi-bin in our dynamic urls to fool competitors about how our software
worked."

Love it.

~~~
SkyMarshal
<http://www.viaweb.com/cgi-bin/master/EDITOR/cgi-bin/ownacct>

And I'm sure having randomly nested cgi-bin's in some of the url's really had
their competitors scratching their heads. Funny stuff.

------
metra
I'm interested in rtm's pseudonym: John McArtyem, specifically the 'Artyem'
part. This is actually a Russian name (I know because it's also my name). I
wonder why rtm chose it. Maybe because attempting to pronounce 'rtm' can lead
to 'Artyem'? Sounds like the rest of the pseudonym could have been influenced
by John McCarthy.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artyom>

~~~
benmathes
Probably because "Artyem", out loud, sounds like "R T M".

------
joshuahedlund
_Don't use software that generates your pages dynamically... Currently, all
search engine crawlers ignore dynamically generated pages..._ [1]

Alas, I am too young to remember fascinating parts of Internet history like
this one.

But I do remember the hesitancy to use personal names on the public Internet.
If we could tell our 1998 selves about the modern "personal branding" craze
our old selves would never believe it.

[1]<http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/se.html>

~~~
minimax
> If we could tell our 1998 selves about the modern "personal branding" craze
> our old selves would never believe it.

I think this is a fascinating comment. I was using my real name on the
Internet in 1998, and now I mainly stick to pseudonyms. Occasionally I Google
up what I was talking about on usenet 10+ years ago when I was a geeky
teenager and cringe. Let's hope Google never puts together a comprehensive IRC
log the way they were able to with usenet.

------
tfb
Very nicely done, PG. I'm amazed at how ahead of its time Viaweb was... 3
years before IE6! I agree with the other comments here that it's quite good
even by today's standards. To withstand the test of time (14 years!) of web
design/technologies is seriously impressive.

I do wish the test drive worked though. It'd be great to be able to really
test it out in its original form!

PG, if you don't mind me asking a couple of questions (or point me to the
answers if they are already available elsewhere)... how many man hours do you
think went into the project (MVP and maintenance)? And how did you come to
start developing it? Was it an original idea at the time or were you aware of
other online store builders and decided you could do a better job? When did it
all start?

------
conesus
Favorite quote is from the pricing page,
<http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pric.html>:

    
    
        "The public should always be wondering how 
        it is possible to give so much for the money."
        — Henry Ford
    

I also find it fascinating how so many YC companies have a very similar
footprint of pricing, features, and basic pages right there on the homepage.
It sounds obvious that, yeah, you should be telling your potential customers
what your prices are, but this is not always shown so readily.

~~~
rbanffy
I have a theory: if a company makes it hard for me to get (and compare) their
prices, they are too high.

Actually, it started with another observation: if you have to buy the product
before you can download the documentation, it's probably crap.

~~~
27182818284
Similarly I feel like if it is hard to find out they might be too high in
price or slimey to deal with.

~~~
larrys
Not stating price allows you to get in the ring with a customer and then later
convince them of the value of what you are selling. But depending on the
actual service or deal there could be slimey reasons no question about it.

------
jbenz
From the press release about Trevor Blackwell's graduation (linked in this
article):

 _In addition to his work in randomness, Dr. Blackwell has also developed
pioneering techniques for rapid mass deletion of potentially critical
information. His original work on /usr directories at Harvard has successfully
been applied to IP addresses, and also, with the assistance of his wife
Laurie, to human hair (see illustration).

"It's not a Flowbie!" said Dr. Blackwell. "They're the very same kind of
clippers that actual barbers use."_

I salute your use of inside jokes as press releases. And I identify with it.
In fact, it reminds me of a press release my company launched about a year
ago, in which we promise "mondo shirtage": [http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new-
shirt-website-promises-mon...](http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new-shirt-
website-promises-mondo-shirtage.html)

It's just hard for us to take press releases seriously.

------
larrys
The homepage is timeless and quite good even by today's standards. It gets
across very clearly what you can do, what the product is, pricing and why you
should use. It contains "awards" giving the visitor confidence in using the
service.

"So you can build a store and start taking orders in minutes."

~~~
grantlmiller
yeah, i was thinking the same thing... includes the one sentence headline,
some social proof (1000 users :), press icons, though seems to lack the big
call to action button that we all use today.

------
mhartl
I'm impressed (though not particularly surprised) at how well the Viaweb home
page has aged. It's a good example of an observation from pg's "Taste for
Makers" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html>):

 _Good design is timeless._

Indeed. Well done.

N.B. The press release for tlb's graduation propagates one of the John Harvard
Statue's famous Three Lies: Harvard was founded in 1636 and not, as reported
on the statue and in the release, in 1638. Minor error, or sly joke? We may
never know for sure.

------
cubicle67

        3. You can have orders forwarded by fax.
    

Not much to comment on regarding this, other than it jumped out at me. Wonder
how popular this feature was and if it was automated at all

[edit: quote from <http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/howitwor.html>]

~~~
tlb
It was very popular. Fully automated. We needed a bank of 6 fax modems to keep
up. Most of the merchants had existing paper catalog businesses and most of
those orders arrived by fax, so it was easiest for them to handle it the same
way. They needed a paper copy anyway to walk around the warehouse with.

~~~
cubicle67
awesome! thanks

------
lifeisstillgood
> His office was nicknamed the Hot Tub on account of the heat they generated.
> Most days his stack of window air conditioners could keep up.

I ran the servers for a whole company like that, everyday thinking that's
totally unprofessional but it is effective.

After we went to our own raised floor cold room, I still never felt it was
that much more reliable. Cleaner, more polished yes. But 80% of the effect for
20% of cost is usually a good deal.

Fitting out your server room from the local hardware store felt like a
successful hack.

------
Timothee
Actually, the same snapshot is still live under Yahoo!'s domain:
<http://oldvw.stores.yahoo.net/>

------
sambeau
I'm amused to see mention of "hits".

 _Viamall as a whole is currently getting over 9.9 million page views per
month. That corresponds to over 72 million "hits", or http requests._

Once upon a time these were the currency of the internet :)

Of course now, even page views is seen as archaic and a little _cough_
exaggeratory. I remember campaigning at my place-of-work (in early 2000) to
have this term banished in favour of unique visitors.

~~~
mseebach
Agreed. (next page) I am (next page) thankful that (next page) this harmful
(next page) practice has (next page) been abandoned.

------
Haul4ss
In June of 1998 I was working at IBM, and wondering if I should buy myself
some Apple stock since it was only about $25/share. I didn't, and I kick
myself now.

I remember the web in 1998. It stunk. And every TV commercial said "visit us
at blah.com, or America Online keyword 'blah'".

Ah, the good ol' days.

~~~
rmc
"Find us on Facebook"

~~~
Haul4ss
Hash tags, too.

------
spitfire
It's funny, I actually like the design of the site. It holds up well to the
test of time. A lot of newer sites could learn from this. Aside from the
640x480 site design it's perfectly modern.

As they say, Simplicity is the height of sophistication.

~~~
sopooneo
I'll give you all that, but the color palette is not great. Even using "web
safe" colors, I think it could have been significantly improved.

------
thesausageking
_We charged a flat fee of $300/month for big stores._

Elsewhere it says Viaweb had 1050 customers. So does this mean Viaweb had <
$3.8m / yr in revenue when it was sold ?

~~~
pg
Small stores were $100/month and there were more of those. We made
$144/store/month on average.

------
AznHisoka
I miss the days of 7 search engines. Get penalized in one, and the world
wasn't going to be over.

~~~
pjscott
From the standpoint of someone using those search engines, it's a lot easier
now to find things. And there are more things to find. I don't remember the
likes of Altavista and Ask Jeeves with much fondness.

------
binarymax
My first client project was through an internship for a small firm that leant
me out to a company called OpenMarket, in 1997 - located in Cambridge. Was
this Viawebs only competitor? Were they competitors at all?

~~~
profitbaron
PG discusses both OpenMarket and ViaWeb here -
<http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

------
spindritf
I wish I could read "statement on security" but it leads to
<http://www.viamall.com/security.html> which is, obviously, not working any
more.

~~~
icebraining
The Wayback Machine (from Archive.org) has a copy, though:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com/security.html)

------
larrys
This is the original trademark application which was approved:

[http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75032133)

------
dlevine
How many employees did Viaweb have when it was acquired?

------
profitbaron
The "Award Winning" Link redirects to
<http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/vw/pcmag.html> instead of
<http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pcmag.html>

