4 Internet Firsts That Changed Everything

 

1. First Banner Ad firstbannerad

They may be the misery of your online life, but banner advertising are important in keeping the Internet humming along, providing money streams for all of those free websites you scurry to remove from your browser history.

The genesis of this core component of the Internet and e-commerce goes back to October 27, 1994. Joe McCambley, who managed a tiny digital advertising business, designed the first banner ad for AT&T. The all-text ad – which stated “Have you ever clicked your mouse here?” – debuted on Hotwired.com, the first digital magazine. When the user clicked on it, the link directed them to a site where they could conduct a virtual tour of seven of the world’s best museums. The objective was to illustrate that AT&T could carry you anywhere on the Internet.

It’s hard to imagine today, but people truly adored it. Amazingly, 44 percent of Hotwired’s visitors clicked the ad, and some even shared it with friends. Compare that to today, when just approximately 0.0004 percent of website visitors click on banner advertising, and sending one to your friends is a good way to lose those friends. McCambley says his commercial was effective because it was part of a marketing plan, it was enjoyable, and it wasn’t produced with evil motives. Unlike those “discreet

2. First Downloadable Music IUMA

It’s impossible to say clearly what the first song on the Internet was, as no one really realised what connection the web would have with music in the early 1990s. However, it’s commonly thought that the first persons to publish a music online were two men called Jeff Patterson and Rob Lord. Sometime in early 1993, they posted some .MP2 audio files from a punk band that Lord performed in called The Ugly Mugs to a file transfer protocol (FTP) gateway.

The Ugly Mugs usually performed around Santa Cruz, but sought to gain a larger audience. Soon after putting their own music online, they began uploading other local bands, thereby founding the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA). Eventually, they had over 25,000 bands and artists, and over 680,000 tracks.

The first Internet single issued by a major label came a bit later in 1993, when Geffen Records released the single “Head First” by Aerosmith over the Internet in .WAV format.

3. First Book Sold on Amazon amazon

Amazon.com had its start in 1995 when founder Jeff Bezos resigned his job as a vice president of a Wall Street business. He relocated to Seattle and started working on his website, which he initially dubbed Cadabra. Bezos subsequently changed it to Amazon in part because Cadabra sounded too much like corpse, but more significantly because it began with an A, suggesting it would be high up on listings organised alphabetically.

Amazon initially debuted as an online book shop, and the first book sold in July of 1995 was Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought, by Douglas Hofstadter. A computer scientist called John Wainwright bought the book, and to honour him for his business, Amazon dedicated a building on their campus after him. Man, all they ever do for us is make awful suggestions on horrible movies.

4. First Item Sold on eBay laserpointer

The “story” of eBay has become legendary, with its genesis purportedly starting from a programmer called Pierre Omidyar wishing to provide his wife a platform to sell her Pez dispensers. Naturally, the mythology is more intriguing than the real story.

In 1995, Omidyar was thinking that the web may provide for a terrific marketplace, notably leveraging an auction model for fair pricing on products. He established the website AuctionWeb on September 3, 1995. The first thing to sell was a damaged laser pointer, which got for $14.83. Confused by someone paying for so much for a damaged device, Omidyar learned the customer collected broken laser pointers.

Where Pez comes into the tale is that, at the time Omidyar created AuctionWeb, his future wife was huge into Pez and traded a lot on AuctionWeb. Omidyar felt it was amusing that collectors were so enthusiastic about simple goods, certainly not thinking he was going to construct a billion dollar company on that exact premise.