Translated material
Andrey Travin. The effect of presence
F times "free breakfasts" has not turned into the longest abbreviation of American network jargon - Tanstaafl * . However, we know that the least of all it is applicable to the actual network realities in which you can easily find free spiritual food, a virtual house, etc.
It is also known that the saying about the " free cheese " is old as mousetraps , and the problem of free posting pages is not ancient than the GEOCITIES Homesteading program (in literal translation, the construction of a family residential building or farm). And accordingly, the word "Homesteader" in 1995 was invited to call daredevils who wanted to build their virtual house on the STARS server. By the way, then the same Strana.ru, which was not a separate project , consisted of them. Each fraternity (including Russian - Georussians) had an amateur catalog of compatriots, by the will of the case abandoned on a server created by the efforts of non -fabric marketing and computer scientists from several American cities.
Hundreds of epigones realized the idea of the founder of Geocities David Bonte, without going into details. It seems that no one repeated his practice of providing digital names of the user catalogs (letter names on Geocities were provided for a fee) or the allocation of thematic catalogs even when cutting areas for guests.
But now, when in the American network there are several other forms of free digital standing (and David Bonte - among the founders of X: Drive ), in Russia, a real struggle for the homeless creators of the web pages has finally unfolded. I am ready to devote a whole chapter to evidence of the relevance of this topic (intending first to say a little about pioneers; therefore, those who are on the network of a whole five -year plan can proceed directly to part two).
1. In Russian it is calley "halyava"
The formation of the entertainment server of the dash in the mid -1996 and the attracting of interesting personal projects there is certainly related to the declared topic, but only as one of the alternatives and reference points. For “building” 180 current inhabitants of the cakes is incomparably easier than about a hundred thousand current guests Yandex Narod or Boom.ru.
Only 1997 gave Runet approximate clones of geos. The first is Halyava.ru , the second - Chat.ru , the third - I- Connect.ru (now moving to the domain .com). Moreover, all of them ** are still alive, although they did not wait for the "loud" financial injections.
Most network residents know that on the original geosites they gave a disk space, mailbox, visitors and scripts adapted to create a guest book for free. In recent years, a "master of fasting pages" has been added. In all areas of this digital metropolis there are chats.
In the mid -90s, our most active Interneters visited the role of “Homipent Writers on Geosites”, and then in the same role - in the domains of .ru . And by the spring of 1997, among the people who wandered or floating on the Internet , the homeless creators of the web pages had to be searched.
However, it was precisely when the Russian Geosites project was declared a Halyava.ru project (in America itself, by that time, there were already about 70 clones of geos). He eloquently showed how destructive it happens for a web project, when a marketer part-time is a programmer. Communication of the creator of the site with guests Halyava.ru resembled a system administrator dialogue with a disenfranchised corporate user (the news archive on Halyava.ru was preserved, except for the first three months of the server, and you can see for the fairness of my words).
In general, GEOCITIES was proposed to knock on violators of the extensive written rules for the provision of free digital cheese. There is a slightly different mentality in America, which does not imply the shamefulness of cooperation with the authorities. Therefore, on Geocities were definitely “knocking” - for example, in cases of “mirroring” other people's sites (at least the GEOCITIS emblem, the house was chosen, but feeling at home there, it was necessary not to forget that you were visiting).
And a kind of condition for finding www -pages on Halyava.ru was announced the following: the sites are stored two months from the day of the last team given to the server (the original “main hail” Roman Isaev was promised to “shoot such pages in DEV/NULL/” - this is precisely the same junky -dedicated language with hypothetical households, irregularly updating web pages about their favorite cats). Fortunately, the described stupidity was never implemented (for example, my autobiography , which I once posted on a freebie in May or June 1997, still lies there with a gloomy).
If you remember a joke, the final line of which gave the name of this chapter, then there it was invested in the sugar lines of the faded stewardess of international lines. It was not that on the Internet ...
A year later, the creators of Halava.ru “surpassed” the city-Info company, which on the server of peeple.weekend.ru arranged for its guests an effective shooting of all graphic files and archives that there were not a single link from the pages of users (if anyone did not understand, it was the fight against the storage of binary files on the servers of the free posting of the pages, now, now, now, so that, so that This is a separate Internet business , but from other companies). And after the so-called " first claw " was discovered on PEOPLE.WEEKEND.RU, the company-info company considered this a good pretext to close the service that became burdensome after the August default of 1998.
However, in 1999, the Generations also appeared ... About the very days when Mail.ru announced the receipt of the first tranche of almost million investments, Chat.ru quietly put money on the modernization of his hardware base. As many remember, in the first year of its existence, this server was (due to overloads) “rather dead than alive” (and for this reason it was even forbidden to subscribe to most of the newsletter sheets from User@chat.ru addresses). This event, fortunately, almost ended with the development period of Russian free hosting, in which the PR was, as it were, a reduction from the word Programmer. The period of “prohibitive” services ended when, for example, Chat.ru refused to register those who had a mailing address in the .com domain (instead of .ru and .su). Since then, the guests have not beaten their hands (except perhaps the creators of pornographic sites , who were not looking for a wait there ).
The era of marketing thought -out projects began.
The new stage in the development of Russian free hosting marked, perhaps, the emergence of a new mail - the project at the Moscow Provider Orc . Within its framework, the Internet cafe of the same name was opened in the very center of Moscow (in the photo). But the main thing is that all hostile citizens initially received a third -level domain.
However, the “New Mail” was extremely unlucky, because only a few months after its opening, Narod.ru appeared (a joint project by Netbridge and Comptek), which not only had a more convenient engine, but simply swept all competitors to his advertising pressure (known to RZH readers Alexander Gagin on the sidelines of the awarding of the Internet Premium told me about NAROD, that the project, the project, had a project, advertising on such a scale, even he was forced to go beyond the initial page).
GEOSITES began in 1995 with a quota of 1 MB and in five years they split up to 15 MB, NAROD and BOOM started immediately from 50 MB and so far stopped at an unlimited quota.
29 interest communities (Themed Communities), originally declared on Geocites, are approximately indicated in the same volume on Yandex Narod (narod.ru).
Well, as you know, Narod and Boom *** did not lag behind the "New Mail" in the provision of third -level domains to all guests.
The creators of the Leon's GG service (better known as LGG.ru) in February 2000 realized that in the prevailing layout it was time to close the bench. Thus, in this niche there were four players worthy of mention (and already named) - Chat.ru, Narod, Boom.ru, New Mail. At the same time, Narod and Boom compete as if only with each other, believing that in the end the victory will be behind them, and not paying attention to the rest. By their example, we will consider the problem of the sufficient popularity of private pages as a necessary condition for the survival of the servers who had sheltered them.
2. Narod is silent
It is also said by Protagor that "man is the measure of all things." By correlating this statement with the development of WWW, you do not meet the contradictions of a speculative sense. But alas, measuring such a "thing" as the Internet, in the second month you find that you are literally "not enough" for its coverage ...
So on January 1, 1997, Complex for computers Bob Arrington from New York went on a trip, during which he wanted to go around all the sites on the same Geocities server until January 1 of the two thousandth year. However, in six months he would have “passed” only 20 thousand sites, although at the beginning of his journey on Geocities was registered ten times more separate web representatives. As a result, Arrington managed to get only on the web pages of several American news tapes as confirmation of an average American Aphorism, which is not embraced by the average American.
The more sites, the higher the entropy and the degree of dirty information. Therefore, any project aimed at reducing both on the Internet has a chance of demand and prosperity in the near future (all kinds of information-cleaners, etc.).
And on the contrary, we observe the unprecedented activity of projects that make everything depending on them to increase entropy on the network, contributing to the fact that in the amount of tens of thousands of thousands, the sites made are easily (and often), about which, as a rule, only four know: a port, Yandex, Rambler and the creator of the page. It is surprising that, unlike the vast majority of foreign analogues, on the home pages of users Chat.ru, Narod, Boom.ru, there are no forced banners, there are rarely voluntary (and, as a rule, advertising pictures do not interfere with other more interesting ones).
Then I will allow myself a small lyrical digression.
What do you think, how are the death sentences signed ? Ink, mascara , in the worst case - with blood , but not with a pencil .
And what is the life of home pages now? Frontopezh, with his left foot, but not “vi” (it now goes at the pencil level). Homeless users who make pages using the VI editor are no longer left. And with the help of Boom or Narod templates, beautiful web pages can even be made by one who is difficult - in Frontpage.
And now the competition is not about the lightness of the first step on the Internet. And the reason for the one who will give a more “loud voice” to the authors of the pages (the level of acceptable volume I evaluate at 40-400 daily hosts per weekly updated home page - without the monetary investments of its creator in advertising).
And NAROD (producing the " People’s Gazeta " and the Yandex searches on the server) and Boom.ru (from March to September 2000, awarded the best sites with links, prizes and shows and establishing the release of Bumov resources reviews ), the task of providing the indicated volume has not yet been solved.
Meanwhile, a good balance between work for a common idea and popularity and the possibility of obtaining free disk space and their own promotion for many years are damn stumps . At the beginning of the development of this project, the Kuliki News tape was created, in which all their inhabitants can place information about each update of their section on the main page of the server. The regular (every week) presence of own announcements on the main page of the site with a vision of 5-10 thousand hosts per day for guests is more important than the volume of disk space. (For the first time, I explained this in 1999 by V. Rudnikov when he conceived My.km.ru , although he himself was Visionary to follow other people's advice).
That is, you need to focus on at least two groups of users with completely different preparations. One needs the notorious site " a la V. Pupkin ", and the other is an original design, a normal site and hundreds of visitors per day. If the owners of the second category are units of percent of the total number of guests, then they can give them the stand in the form of an announcement of their news on the main page.
Thus, within the framework of free hosting, one can and should be combined the benefits of freedom of expression, the ability to convey its fruits to a reasonable number of people and material interest. NAROD seems to have finally chose the path of the most literal cloning of Geocites. Therefore (for various reasons), I am most hoped in this sense on Boom.
* - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (tanstaafl) is a phrase said by Heinlin in his book "Moon Is a Harsh Mistress".
** - Since the GEOSITES Charter is prohibited from the placement of commercial software on it, in the same 1997, Russian programmers also proposed an alternative model of free hosting - the free placement of Russian conventional and salary programs Brainriver.com (in the girlishness of StrongSoftware.net).
*** - The appearance of Boom.ru shortly after the "divorce" Netbridge and Comptek gave rise to quite a few crooked pins. At least in the footnote should be made minimal clarity to this question. As far as I know, when dividing projects, any condition for non-competing resources was rejected at the initiative of Comptek. The software part of the Boom.ru project from scratch was executed by Netbridge by IBS (which, by the way, has always been open information, but people sometimes prefer "gossip in the form of versions").