Ten years ago today, Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack while in a rehab center, and Netscape went public at $28/share, shooting up past $70 before the closing bell.
The combination of these two events produced what's arguably the biggest day in internet history that there ever was.
Internet community essentially started with a private bulletin board system called the WELL. Founded by a bunch of Deadheads in the mid-Eighties, the WELL was a place where you could go to exchange ideas, tapes, and gossip with people, regardless of their location. A decade later, the hippie ethos was still the core of internet culture, sharing space only with the academics and a very nascent group of entrepreneurs.
In December of '94, Hotwired became the first website to sell advertising (a Zima banner, I think). For the next nine months, the promise of commercialization hung over the internet, whipping folks like me into a minor frenzy. Then, Netscape finally delivered and we went bonkers.
I remember August 9, 1995. I was working at Tribune Company as their token young internet guy. We all crowded around the VP of Investor Relations’ Bloomberg terminal and watched the info roll in on Netscape’s IPO. I split for my computer (the only one in Corporate Relations with internet access) and exchanged emails with friends who knew friends who knew people who managed to get their hands on a few shares. All morning, my email buddies and I monitored the few news sites (Nando, anyone?) out there and reported to each other Netscape tidbits we’d heard on the radio. It was the most exciting thing EVER for a young internet professional. The (commercial) realization of the medium was at hand.
Then, I broke for lunch. When I got back to the office, the VP’s secretary said to me, “I’m sorry about Jerry Garcia” (she knew I was a fan). I was like, “what?!”
“I thought you knew. I just heard on the radio that he died,” she said.
And the already teeming internet community went completely berserk. Tribute sites sprung up by the dozen. My friend at Hotwired asked me if I wanted to do some “emergency reporting” in AOL chat rooms, MOOs (text-based communities), and the like. People set up special FTP sites to distribute .WAV files of the band’s last show a month earlier at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
Between Jerry’s death and the Netscape IPO, you could lay your hands on the keyboard and almost feel the internet come alive.
The combination of these two events produced what's arguably the biggest day in internet history that there ever was.
Internet community essentially started with a private bulletin board system called the WELL. Founded by a bunch of Deadheads in the mid-Eighties, the WELL was a place where you could go to exchange ideas, tapes, and gossip with people, regardless of their location. A decade later, the hippie ethos was still the core of internet culture, sharing space only with the academics and a very nascent group of entrepreneurs.
In December of '94, Hotwired became the first website to sell advertising (a Zima banner, I think). For the next nine months, the promise of commercialization hung over the internet, whipping folks like me into a minor frenzy. Then, Netscape finally delivered and we went bonkers.
I remember August 9, 1995. I was working at Tribune Company as their token young internet guy. We all crowded around the VP of Investor Relations’ Bloomberg terminal and watched the info roll in on Netscape’s IPO. I split for my computer (the only one in Corporate Relations with internet access) and exchanged emails with friends who knew friends who knew people who managed to get their hands on a few shares. All morning, my email buddies and I monitored the few news sites (Nando, anyone?) out there and reported to each other Netscape tidbits we’d heard on the radio. It was the most exciting thing EVER for a young internet professional. The (commercial) realization of the medium was at hand.
Then, I broke for lunch. When I got back to the office, the VP’s secretary said to me, “I’m sorry about Jerry Garcia” (she knew I was a fan). I was like, “what?!”
“I thought you knew. I just heard on the radio that he died,” she said.
And the already teeming internet community went completely berserk. Tribute sites sprung up by the dozen. My friend at Hotwired asked me if I wanted to do some “emergency reporting” in AOL chat rooms, MOOs (text-based communities), and the like. People set up special FTP sites to distribute .WAV files of the band’s last show a month earlier at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
Between Jerry’s death and the Netscape IPO, you could lay your hands on the keyboard and almost feel the internet come alive.
posted by isaacjosephson at 10:13 PM
1 Comments:
isn't it ironic dead heads started WELL and Hess (an anti-head) loves it...
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