GNN

First Commercial Web Publishing

Launched in August, 1993, GNN incorporated "The Whole Internet Directory" and a set of small magazines.

Timeline

Fall 1992

O'Reilly publishes "The Whole Internet Catalog & User Guide." We create online version using Viola WWW and demonstrate a kiosk version.

February 1993

Formed four-person "skunkworks" team and began planning for new product based on the demo.

Named the site/product GNN. Internally, we had to advocate for the project and establish a separate identity and eventually a separate team and budget for development.

July 1993

Organized WWW Wizards Workshop in Cambridge, MA. This brought together most Web developers at the time, and meeting was led by Berners-Lee. Andreessen came along with whole NCSA Mosaic team.

August 1993

Launch GNN officially at InterOp tradeshow in SF. WSJ carries article that advertising to be found on Internet.

Spring 1994

Obtain a license to publish NCSA's What's New page, the most heavily trafficed site on the Net. We establish a publishing process for maintaining the resource.

Summer 1994

Twelve person staff including sales and marketing, technical, and editorial.

GNN is perceived to be a "native" Internet brand.

Spring 1995

Offer from AOL to buy GNN. We believe it's necessary to scale up GNN. Staff is up to 23.

Sale for $14 million occurs in summer.

November 1995

AOL repositions GNN as an Internet service provider. Ignores content and directory services.

December 1996

AOL closes down GNN.

Three Stages