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How Old Is E-Commerce?
from the how-do-you-define-when-it-started dept
According to News.com, we're officially at the 10-year anniversary of electronic commerce, as defined by the first secure transaction on NetMarket, on August 11, 1994. The folks at the Internet Shopping Network disagree, claiming they started a few months earlier. Of course, it all depends on how you define "e-commerce." This article seems to define it as a secure, web-based transaction. However, even before these started showing up, I remember purchasing CDs from CDNow and CDConnection using telnet in either 1993 or early 1994, and I'm sure plenty of others could make claims to earlier "online" purchases. It certainly wasn't secure, but who was worried about security back then? Of course, it doesn't really matter when e-commerce really started, but it is amusing that no one seems to remember those pre-web offerings.
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How 'bout CompuServe, back in 1983/4??
I remember back when CompuServe had special arrangements with merchants, and let you make purchases that showed up on your monthly C'Serve bill. Of course, after a couple of months of $350 online bills for crappy cassette tapes and a book or two, I had to kick the habit.
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credit cards
Jeez, I was taking emails with credit card information in 1994, and at the time I thought I was late to the dance. There were tons of businesses already online at my ISP, and it was just one of countless small ISPs around back then.
Just because you can't find proof to the contrary on Google doesn't make you first....
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the archives of Netscape's "What's New" give an idea of when different types of sites started popping up http://wp.netscape.com/home/whatsnew/
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I have a credit card receipt from a Books.com order I placed in 1992 (via Telnet, of course).
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