9 ms·

Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998

293 points by anateus 15y ago

OpenAmazing 15y ago
"We put cgi-bin in our dynamic urls to fool competitors about how our software worked." Love it.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  http://www.viaweb.com/cgi-bin/master/EDITOR/cgi-bin/ownacct 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.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Though doubt it would made one iota of difference.
larrys 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
- thesash 15y ago
  Great example of constraints driving minimalism through necessity, therefore keeping the focus on what really matters
larrys 15y ago
This is the original trademark application which was approved: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75032133 http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...
jbenz 15y ago
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-mondo-shirtage.html http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new-shirt-website-promises-mon... It's just hard for us to take press releases seriously.
chops 15y ago
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.
- vidar 15y ago
  Thats a great word! I'll be sure to use it from now on.
- notaddicted 15y ago
  Whenever I see the word "pecuniary" I'm reminded of this inspirational quote from David Copperfield: http://books.google.ca/books?id=8GAXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA380&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2UtAmgJkbeHPF-a05hQsbzGRcJCg&ci=66%2C142%2C882%2C307&edge=0 http://books.google.ca/books?id=8GAXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA380&#3...
- gregdetre 15y ago
  Forgive the plug: http://www.memrise.com/item/3190/impecunious/ http://www.memrise.com/item/3190/impecunious/
- vl 15y ago
  How did you manage to remember single unused word for the 14 years? What learning technique did you use?
  - axiak 15y ago
    When studying vocab, some words stick out as words you'll never see, and because of that you may fixate on that single word. For me it's eleemosynary. Still haven't seen it used. Once.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tfb 15y ago
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?
binarymax 15y ago
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 15y ago
  PG discusses both OpenMarket and ViaWeb here - http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
joshuahedlund 15y ago
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 http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/se.html
- minimax 15y ago
  > 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.
metra 15y ago
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artyom
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- benmathes 15y ago
  Probably because "Artyem", out loud, sounds like "R T M".
conesus 15y ago
Favorite quote is from the pricing page, http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pric.html 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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    Similarly I feel like if it is hard to find out they might be too high in price or slimey to deal with.
    - larrys 15y ago
      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.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "makes it hard for me to get (and compare) their prices, they are too high" Agree and have found that to be true in general as well. And any solicitation that doesn't mention price is usually to be able to convince you of the value of which you would initially reject off the top as "to expensive". The other reason is to get you to commit to something and therefore be less likely to pull out of a transaction. Along those lines (hidden pricing) it is a good idea to not assume everyone knows why a service is free and why a user isn't being charged for it. On the other end of the bell curve of course is a price that is advertised and seems to cheap. This normally means there is something hidden or extra that you will encounter.
spindritf 15y ago
I wish I could read "statement on security" but it leads to http://www.viamall.com/security.html http://www.viamall.com/security.html which is, obviously, not working any more.
- icebraining 15y ago
  The Wayback Machine (from Archive.org) has a copy, though: http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com/security.html http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com...
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.viamall.com/security.html http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.viamall.com/secu... eg http://web.archive.org/web/200012060403/http://www.viamall.com/security.html http://web.archive.org/web/200012060403/http://www.viamall.c... : "About Security All online transactions at Yahoo! Stores are handled with industry-standard SSL encryption."
Timothee 15y ago
Actually, the same snapshot is still live under Yahoo!'s domain: http://oldvw.stores.yahoo.net/ http://oldvw.stores.yahoo.net/
profitbaron 15y ago
The "Award Winning" Link redirects to http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/vw/pcmag.html http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/vw/pcmag.html instead of http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pcmag.html http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pcmag.html
cubicle67 15y ago
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 http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/howitwor.html]
- tlb 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    awesome! thanks
Haul4ss 15y ago
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 15y ago
  "Find us on Facebook"
  - Haul4ss 15y ago
    Hash tags, too.
mhartl 15y ago
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 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.
sambeau 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Agreed. (next page) I am (next page) thankful that (next page) this harmful (next page) practice has (next page) been abandoned.
AznHisoka 15y ago
I miss the days of 7 search engines. Get penalized in one, and the world wasn't going to be over.
- pjscott 15y ago
  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.
thesausageking 15y ago
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 ?
- staunch 15y ago
  Doubtful. A small store was $100/mo and probably made up the bulk. Wouldn't be surprising if some of those 1050 weren't paying for whatever reasons. Still, they clearly built a good business.
- pg 15y ago
  Small stores were $100/month and there were more of those. We made $144/store/month on average.
spitfire 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
lifeisstillgood 15y ago
> 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.
dlevine 15y ago
How many employees did Viaweb have when it was acquired?

293 points by anateus 15y ago

OpenAmazing 15y ago

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

SkyMarshal 15y ago
http://www.viaweb.com/cgi-bin/master/EDITOR/cgi-bin/ownacct 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.
dextorious 15y ago
Though doubt it would made one iota of difference.

larrys 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
thesash 15y ago
Great example of constraints driving minimalism through necessity, therefore keeping the focus on what really matters

larrys 15y ago

This is the original trademark application which was approved: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75032133 http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...

jbenz 15y ago

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-mondo-shirtage.html http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new-shirt-website-promises-mon... It's just hard for us to take press releases seriously.

chops 15y ago

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.

vidar 15y ago
Thats a great word! I'll be sure to use it from now on.
notaddicted 15y ago
Whenever I see the word "pecuniary" I'm reminded of this inspirational quote from David Copperfield: http://books.google.ca/books?id=8GAXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA380&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2UtAmgJkbeHPF-a05hQsbzGRcJCg&ci=66%2C142%2C882%2C307&edge=0 http://books.google.ca/books?id=8GAXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA380&#3...
gregdetre 15y ago
Forgive the plug: http://www.memrise.com/item/3190/impecunious/ http://www.memrise.com/item/3190/impecunious/
vl 15y ago
How did you manage to remember single unused word for the 14 years? What learning technique did you use?
- axiak 15y ago
  When studying vocab, some words stick out as words you'll never see, and because of that you may fixate on that single word. For me it's eleemosynary. Still haven't seen it used. Once.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

tfb 15y ago

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?

binarymax 15y ago

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 15y ago
PG discusses both OpenMarket and ViaWeb here - http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html

joshuahedlund 15y ago

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 http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/se.html

minimax 15y ago
> 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.

metra 15y ago

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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artyom

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
benmathes 15y ago
Probably because "Artyem", out loud, sounds like "R T M".

conesus 15y ago

Favorite quote is from the pricing page, http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pric.html 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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Similarly I feel like if it is hard to find out they might be too high in price or slimey to deal with.
  - larrys 15y ago
    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.
- larrys 15y ago
  "makes it hard for me to get (and compare) their prices, they are too high" Agree and have found that to be true in general as well. And any solicitation that doesn't mention price is usually to be able to convince you of the value of which you would initially reject off the top as "to expensive". The other reason is to get you to commit to something and therefore be less likely to pull out of a transaction. Along those lines (hidden pricing) it is a good idea to not assume everyone knows why a service is free and why a user isn't being charged for it. On the other end of the bell curve of course is a price that is advertised and seems to cheap. This normally means there is something hidden or extra that you will encounter.

spindritf 15y ago

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

icebraining 15y ago
The Wayback Machine (from Archive.org) has a copy, though: http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com/security.html http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com...
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.viamall.com/security.html http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.viamall.com/secu... eg http://web.archive.org/web/200012060403/http://www.viamall.com/security.html http://web.archive.org/web/200012060403/http://www.viamall.c... : "About Security All online transactions at Yahoo! Stores are handled with industry-standard SSL encryption."

Timothee 15y ago

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

profitbaron 15y ago

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

cubicle67 15y ago

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 http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/howitwor.html]

tlb 15y ago
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 15y ago
  awesome! thanks

Haul4ss 15y ago

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 15y ago
"Find us on Facebook"
- Haul4ss 15y ago
  Hash tags, too.

mhartl 15y ago

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 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.

sambeau 15y ago

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 15y ago
Agreed. (next page) I am (next page) thankful that (next page) this harmful (next page) practice has (next page) been abandoned.

AznHisoka 15y ago

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

pjscott 15y ago
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.

thesausageking 15y ago

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 ?

staunch 15y ago
Doubtful. A small store was $100/mo and probably made up the bulk. Wouldn't be surprising if some of those 1050 weren't paying for whatever reasons. Still, they clearly built a good business.
pg 15y ago
Small stores were $100/month and there were more of those. We made $144/store/month on average.

spitfire 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

lifeisstillgood 15y ago

> 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.

dlevine 15y ago

How many employees did Viaweb have when it was acquired?