[ih] Chat room and forum archives

[John Labovitz]

I worked for O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator (GNN) as technical director from 1993–1995, when it was sold to AOL. GNN was the first commercial website. By 1995, GNN had a section (a ‘metacenter’)  on personal finance & investment that was edited by folks who’d had experience in the pre-web finance community; it published original information and also linked to many other investment communities. GNN was quite well known, and was often mentioned in articles from the mainstream press like the NYT and WSJ, which your character likely would have followed.

By that time, O’Reilly had also released the 'Internet in a Box’ product, which was literally a boxed Windows software product (can’t remember if CD-ROM or floppy) that included a TCP/IP stack (including PPP for modem use), FTP client, browser, etc., plus default bookmarks to places like the GNN finance center.

So given that your character wasn’t a total newb, I’d reckon that by 1995 they’d likely be fully on the web, via something like Internet in a Box on a PC. CompuServe and the like was pretty much dead by that time for many people.

—John


> On Sep 3, 2022, at 00:06, Bob Purvy via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Good idea, but Len's retired, plus he was in Chrysler finance when he was
> working. I don't know if those
> people had Bloombergs or not.
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 2:53 PM Leo Vegoda <leo at vegoda.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Aug 31, 2022 at 3:53 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Something you wouldn't think would be a problem:
>>> 
>>> I'm planning out my next novel, and I want to have a character haunting
>> the
>>> chat rooms and forums on investing, around 1995 and on. I don't want to
>> 
>> If your character is a professional, they might have had access to a
>> Bloomberg terminal by 1995. Of course, they have always been very
>> expensive and niche.
>> 
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