Five More Internet Firsts

Computer-to-computer email started when Bolt Beranek and Newman was hired by the United States Defense Department to work on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.  Employee Ray Tomlinson started working on an experimental file transfer protocol that could send a message from one computer to another. He also came up with the “@” symbol to connect the user and network, simply because it made the most sense to him. It would include the user’s name and the host where it should be sent. In July of 1971 Tomlinson sent the first email to the computer next to his, which read, “QWERTYIOP”.

Pierre Omidyar was thinking that the web might make for a great marketplace, specifically utilizing an auction format for fair pricing on items. He launched the website AuctionWeb (which became eBay) on September 3, 1995. The first item to sell was a broken laser pointer, which went for $14.83. He was confused by someone paying for that much for a defective item and discovered the buyer collected broken laser pointers. He thought it was interesting that collectors were so passionate about ordinary items.

The first book sold on Amazon in July of 1995 was Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought, by Douglas Hofstadter.

The first Internet single released by a major label happened during 1993, when Geffen Records released the single “Head First” by Aerosmith.

During October 27, 1994, Joe McCambley, who ran a small digital advertising company, created the first banner ad for AT&T. The all-text ad, which said “Have you ever clicked your mouse here?” appeared on Hotwired.com, the first digital magazine. Forty four percent of Hotwired’s visitors clicked the ad, and some even shared it with friends. Today, only about 0.0004 percent of website visitors click on banner ads.

What's in a Name, eBay

When it was first created, eBay was called AuctionWeb. The original look for the site was very similar to Craigslist. AuctionWeb was one of four sites Pierre Omidyar ran under his eBay Internet, a domain he purchased before coming up with AuctionWeb. He originally wanted to call this “EchoBay,” but the domain was already taken by a Canadian mining company, so he shortened it. The other things you could find under the eBay umbrella were a page on the Ebola virus, a small travel agent site, and a personal shopper site. Within seven months of launching AuctionWeb, revenues coming in were out earning Omidyar’s day job at General Magic, so he quit to devote himself full time to his side project. About a year and a half later, general users and many in the press had been calling it “eBay,” instead of AuctionWeb, so he switched the name. In September of 1997, he also switched the look of the site to be much more graphically based.

When eBay went public with a suggested price of $18 per share (but surged to $53.50 on the first day), the 30 employees of the company at the time did a conga line around the office. The biggest recipients of that public offering were Omidyar, who today is worth about $8.7 billion, and the first CEO of the company, Meg Whitman, who has a net worth of just under $2 billion today.

The section eBay 'Deals' is a part of eBay where it highlights the best deals at a given time on eBay, saving you the effort of sifting through to look for them. It also breaks up the deals in various categories, such as Technology Deals, Fashion Deals, Home Deals, etc.

Fatfingers

Smaller and smaller keyboards have caused many to mistype words. This is commonly called fat fingering the keyboard. Now there is a site that can help, Fatfingers. The main purpose of Fatfingers is to help people find items on Ebay that have not sold, because the owner mistyped the word. Fun to try. I typed in bicycle and found 1,643 results. LINK

Five Famous Name Origins

Wendy’s: The first “Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers” was opened on November 15, 1969; the restaurant being named after the fourth child, Melinda Lou Thomas, of founder Dave Thomas (who incidentally was a high school dropout and before founding Wendy’s helped stop Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) from going out of business.) You might be asking yourself, “How do you get ‘Wendy’ out of Melinda Lou Thomas?” This was a nickname given to her as she couldn’t pronounce her own name when she was young, instead she would say “Wenda”, which is how she got the nickname “Wendy”.

Arby’s: Although some people believe that the enunciation of Arby’s stands for “roast beef”, this isn’t true. It actually comes from the initials of its founders, the Raffel Brothers (R.B.’s). They originally planned to name their company “Big Tex”, but someone already owned the rights to that name.

eBay: The company was originally supposed to be “Echo Bay Technology Group”, but the domain “EchoBay.com” was already taken, so they shortened it and got eBay.com, which was available.

Starbucks: Not many companies dive into the world of fiction literature to find inspiration for their brand, but Starbucks is not just any company. Its name comes from a character in the story of Moby Dick.

Nintendo: This famous company name comes from the Japanese name “Nintendou”. Roughly translated “Nin” means “entrusted” and “ten-dou” means “heaven”, so basically “leave luck to heaven”. If this seems a strange name/slogan for a company, perhaps it’s important to note it started out as a playing card making company in 1889.

How 7 Companies Chose Their Name

Pepsi is derived from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Starbucks is named after Starbuck from the book Moby Dick.
Amazon is named after the Amazon, because Bezos wanted a name that began with A and the Amazon is the largest river in the world.
eBay was named because the original name Echo Bay was already taken as a dot com name.
Nike is named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Verizon is named after veritas (truth) and horizon.
Reebock is named after an African Antelope, Rhebok.

Did You Know

GM sold only about 25% of its vehicles in the United States during the first quarter of 2009 and it just signed a new partnership with eBay that will allow buyers in California to bid on vehicles, the way they do for other vehicles. With the government owning over 60% of GM, maybe we are seeing the beginning of something - like selling healthcare services on eBay.