3 ms·

The Minitel service was rolled out 1978-1982, about a dozen years before widespread commercial adoption of Internet connections for consumers in any country. So

The Minitel service was rolled out 1978-1982, about a dozen years before widespread commercial adoption of Internet connections for consumers in any country. So the Internet penetration is not really relevant here. Yes, existing legacy technology sometimes works so well that newer things have a hard time replacing it.

nolok 9y ago
It should be added that it wasn't made technically irrelevant the minute internet appeared either, Minitel had a few things figured out (thanks to its centralized monolithic ways) that took internet a while to achieve. Most important of those due to centralisation, the service-tied-to-a-paying-number and several numbers for different price point; payment and authenticity were the norm. Selling stuff to every days common users was a normality, it was done without any security risk, and an impersonator pretending to be your bank or whatever would be much taken out by France Telecom. Meanwhile we were still trying to convince people they could buy on the internet by the late 90's, and how to recognize which site is their official bank and which one is a scam. PS: Xavier Niel (the CEO/founder of Free/Illiad) is well known for having made his money on paid minitel adult services. We suffered late internet adoption because of the minitel, yes, but that's because the minitel had been so good for so long that it had become part of our normal life by then.
- masklinn 9y ago
  > Most important of those due to centralisation, the service-tied-to-a-paying-number and several numbers for different price point; payment and authenticity were the norm. And service providers could do both IAP-style (pay-for-bundle) and ongoing-style (pay-for-stay), the latter being a great model for news services or story providers (serials and the like).

3 ms·

The Minitel service was rolled out 1978-1982, about a dozen years before widespread commercial adoption of Internet connections for consumers in any country. So

by ptaipale 9y ago

nolok 9y ago
It should be added that it wasn't made technically irrelevant the minute internet appeared either, Minitel had a few things figured out (thanks to its centralized monolithic ways) that took internet a while to achieve. Most important of those due to centralisation, the service-tied-to-a-paying-number and several numbers for different price point; payment and authenticity were the norm. Selling stuff to every days common users was a normality, it was done without any security risk, and an impersonator pretending to be your bank or whatever would be much taken out by France Telecom. Meanwhile we were still trying to convince people they could buy on the internet by the late 90's, and how to recognize which site is their official bank and which one is a scam. PS: Xavier Niel (the CEO/founder of Free/Illiad) is well known for having made his money on paid minitel adult services. We suffered late internet adoption because of the minitel, yes, but that's because the minitel had been so good for so long that it had become part of our normal life by then.
- masklinn 9y ago
  > Most important of those due to centralisation, the service-tied-to-a-paying-number and several numbers for different price point; payment and authenticity were the norm. And service providers could do both IAP-style (pay-for-bundle) and ongoing-style (pay-for-stay), the latter being a great model for news services or story providers (serials and the like).