“It will go the same way as CB radio…”
| February 21, 2010 | Posted by Ross under Random Fillings |
I’ve been using the internet since 1994….that year it was email, monochrome screen forum/chat services and 5 or 6 really slow websites.
I started full time work in a marketing role in 1998, and one of my first tasks was to establish a website for the company, using an agency based in Congleton, Cheshire….who used to dial out every hour to pick up emails because of the time and costs involved in doing so.
I joined a huge financial services company in a department that was set up to investigate new markets and technology and look after the new website in 1999, and remember with some excitement the first time our online life insurance service received an application…and the first time our banner advert campaign got a clickthrough. In 1999 I remember seeing, for my first time, a truck on the motorway with a URL on it; I think it was a Kelloggs truck.
I remember being at a conference in early 2000 where a lady speaker (who I think used to run MarketingNet) told us of the time a few years earlier when she had looked at the BMW website as she was in the market for 2 new company cars (which she bought from BMW a few days later). The website used huge image files that took a very long time to download…so she emailed them to suggest they changed the way images were used…and they emailed back and told her if she was worried about the cost of being online while their images downloaded then she probably wasn’t in the market for BMWs so didn’t need to worry!
I remember looking at the Tesco website in 1999/2000 and getting annoyed that I couldn’t just click from the Books to the DVDs section as there were no links between the two areas. I emailed Tesco and asked them to have a look at it and perhaps change it when they could….but they emailed back and told me that there was no link on the website as the two areas of products were managed from different warehouses in different parts of the country….Okkkaaaay.
I remember loving Original Source shower gels and shaving gels (and still do), and emailing the company to ask them a question and then having a few fascinating regular emails with the lady who responded called Heather Love (great name), only to find out she was the founder and owner and that she read and answered emails personally…because emails to companies through websites were so small in numbers….travel back in time and take note about customer service though Tesco.
I remember applying for an Egg credit card in 1999, and the general fear about internet banking, and the worry about the millenium bug. I remember WAP without a shadow of doubt going to be the ‘game-changer’ that would revolutionise industry and life in 2000 as mobile devices took over….and we’re not quite there in 2010, though a lot closer now.
I remember having to wait for someone to get off the phone before I could go online…I remember the noise of the dial up modem. I remember paying £10k for a 20 second Flash introduction to a company website, because Flash was new and sexy and websites HAD to have it to be taken seriously.
The biggest thing I remember is a very visionary senior manager of that financial services company tell me, as I tried to answer a question he’d asked me about the internet, that “It will go the same way as CB radio”. What a pioneer and soothsayer he was.
Even as recently as 2008 I worked with a client who wasn’t sure whether the ‘internet’ was really important or in any way shape or form here to stay. It dawned on me the other day that I haven’t had one of those skeptical conversations with anyone for over a year, as I don’t remember having one in 2009.
I think, finally, the ‘internet’ is here to stay…well done everybody.
I remember HSBC plumping for the ‘TV Banking’ route over internet banking because they considered the internet to be ‘Betamax’.
Thanks for the comment – the financial services company I was at did spend a lot on TV banking but then realised that ‘sit back’ media such as TV would be too difficult to make a success of…finance works better with ‘sit forward’ technology such as computers because of the frame of mind a user is in. Concentration rather than entertainment.