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On a serious side though - they had quite solid dataset of the population across the entire Anglosphere and of their associations with POIs like schools, univer
by undebuggable 7y ago
On a serious side though - they had quite solid dataset of the population across the entire Anglosphere and of their associations with POIs like schools, universities (early Facebook anyone?), and workplaces (LinkedIn anyone?). They reached the peak of their popularity while charging 7.5 GBP per month to use their website (imagine!). The ASP .NET + AJAX Control Toolkit might had not been the most fortunate tech stack to create engaging and snappy social network experience. A complex case study, overall.
Disclaimer - I worked there.
- goatinaboat 7y agoI don’t remember ever paying for it but that’s quite a lot of money, comparable to some dating sites. I suppose some people did use it for that.
- mprev 7y agoYou only paid if you wanted to contact people. ITV bought it and, even at the time it was obvious, had no idea what to do with it. It seemed like a lot of those early 2000s British tech businesses, like Jungle.com, where there could’ve been something really huge but the lack of investment culture meant they got outpaced by better funded rivals from overseas.
- rusk 7y agoRemember that one for “uniformed” people (soldiers, police, nurses etc.) or those that are interested in them? Now that was a chin scratcher
- goatinaboat 7y agoThat one actually was a dating site wasn’t it? Makes sense I guess, if you wanted a partner who also worked shifts.
- rusk 7y agoOr if you wanted a database of people who wear uniforms ...
- goatinaboat 7y agoIndeed. It’s obvious now, of course, but all these companies start from the database they want to sell and work backwards from there to build a product to gather it.
- rusk 7y agoI think knowing what we know now about various rogue states it’s fair to imagine this may have been something yet more insidious ... if you had called it at the time you would have been handed a tinfoil hat!
- ansible 7y agoThe early 2000s Brit tech scene seemed like such an interesting place, but that was based mostly on what I was reading from Need to Know (ntk.net).