Amazon - blast from the blast

[didymus]

This is what Amazon’s homepage looked like when it launched 21 years ago this month

Long before it became the world’s go-to, online source for virtually anything, Amazon.com was strictly a bookseller. And before the arrival of its slick, obsessively considered menus, navigation bars, and search algorithms, the $250 billion operation’s homepage was much more basic. A screen capture from a month after its July 1995 launch is a relic from the early days of web design and branding history

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/screen-shot-2016-07-18-at-10-05-33-am.png?w=640

 

[Zerg]

Wow, I can’t believe the site is older than me. It was originally called “Cadabra” but was changed to Amazon for search engine optimisation (closer to the start of the alphabet).

If you go to waybackmachine.org you can see how other sites looks 10-20 years ago.

 

[Padres1969]

Man that brings me back. I sometimes miss how simple the web was in the early days.

Piece of random trivia, what was the first major motion picture to have a website that accompanied it? And I’ll give you a hint, it’s a franchise still producing films today.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I just checked and I’ve been an Amazon customer since '99. I thought it was a little longer.

 

[Potter]

When I started shopping from Amazon in 2005, it looked roughly similar to how it does now – albeit with far fewer things to go to. Back then the main reason I used it was to check and see when a given book was coming out!

 

[MrZoom]

Piece of random trivia, what was the first major motion picture to have a website that accompanied it? And I’ll give you a hint, it’s a franchise still producing films today.

Star Trek: Generations.

 

[didymus]

Anybody remember when AOL used to send install CDs, sometimes twice a month one for every family member? You could build up quite a collection.

 

[Padres1969]

Anybody remember when AOL used to send install CDs, sometimes twice a month one for every family member? You could build up quite a collection.

Heck I remember when they used to send 3.5 floppy disks with their service on it. I believe the first one I ever installed was AOL 2.8 for the old Mac OS 7 I believe.

 

[Lindsay777]

Good site

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Anybody remember when AOL used to send install CDs, sometimes twice a month one for every family member? You could build up quite a collection.

I once decorated my son’s wall with AOL CD’s (shiny side out). It wasn’t an original idea, but it looked pretty cool while it lasted. My wife wasn’t as fond of my decorating abilities.

 

[anon67074017]

That was before Amazon became very liberal.

 

[Potter]

Anybody remember when AOL used to send install CDs, sometimes twice a month one for every family member? You could build up quite a collection.

So much so that they became a joke – AOL sending people ‘free coasters’!

 

[Padres1969]

That was before Amazon became very liberal.

Amazon became liberal? In what way?

 

[didymus]

I once decorated my son’s wall with AOL CD’s (shiny side out). It wasn’t an original idea, but it looked pretty cool while it lasted. My wife wasn’t as fond of my decorating abilities.

I remember that! There were actually sites where people posted their AOL disk wall art.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I remember that! There were actually sites where people posted their AOL disk wall art.

I never posted any pics. I only used 30 or so CD’s so it wasn’t that impressive, although my son loved it. I know my friend posted pictures to several sites. This was back before he was a privacy nut. He’s always been into computers and at the time was into a bunch of freebie schemes so he had stuff coming to him under multiple different names. As a result, he had hundreds of AOL floppies and CD’s. When he started his decorating project, lots of friends gave him their extras. He had part of one wall covered in floppies arranged in order of release, then the rest of that wall covered in CD’s, also in order of release. The other wall was covered in shiny-side-out CD’s, plus he had CD’s and CD-mobiles hanging from the ceiling. It was something else.