bilet.nn.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod online ticket-booking system for cultural events, operating in the first half of the 2000s. The site allowed users to order, over the internet, tickets to cinemas, concerts, theaters, and clubs in Nizhny Novgorod[1]. Development and support were handled by the "Internet Company '2x2'"; the general partner in the early stage was the "Unified Ticket Distribution Network 'Sozvezdiye'" (Constellation)[1]. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated October 13, 2002[1], and the last one is dated February 12, 2005[4].

How the site was structured

The home page was built as both an instruction manual and a navigator. The top menu consisted of four listing sections — "cinema," "concerts," "theaters," "clubs" — and utility items "about the system," "registration," "forgot password?", and "help"; a "Search the site" field stood apart[1].

The center of the page held a list of five steps. As the home page stated, "in order to book a ticket to a cultural event in Nizhny Novgorod, you need to complete the following steps": register on the site, receive registration confirmation with a login and password, choose an event, sign in, and fill out the order form[1]. This scheme — with mandatory registration required even before choosing an event, and confirmation arriving separately — remained unchanged throughout the years preserved by the web archive: the 2005 snapshot describes the same five steps in the same words[4].

Ticket delivery and commission

Receiving the ticket remained an offline matter, and this is exactly where the site changed noticeably. In 2002, the home page stated that "tickets can be picked up at Sozvezdiye network box offices"; the alternative was delivery, and for orders of more than 10 tickets at once, delivery within the city was announced as free[1]. The commission at the time was flat: ticket price plus 10% for booking services[1].

By July 2003, the Sozvezdiye box offices had disappeared from the instructions, and the service's own office became the pickup point: "at our office, at the address: Varvarskaya St. 32, office 115 (former Inkombank building)"[2]. The flat commission was replaced by a sliding scale: for tickets under 500 rubles — 10% of the price, from 500 to 1000 rubles — 7%, over 1000 rubles — 5%, and for cinema tickets no fee was charged at all — 0%[2]. This scale survived unchanged through the last snapshots[3][4].

That same year, 2003, a contextual advertising block "Find it on Begun" appeared on the page, with categories "Communications," "Sports," "Everything for home and office," "Beauty and health," "Books, music and video," "Leisure and recreation," and the tagline "We sell targeted visitors!"[2]. The ticket service, it turns out, also earned money from its own traffic; the block remained on the home page until 2005[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered the survey of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet from the nn.ru directory, where it was described as a "System for online booking of tickets to cultural events in Nizhny Novgorod." In the preserved samples of Counter.nn.ru, this address does not appear for us, and no traffic figure is recorded for it — meaning the service's place in the city ranking cannot be judged (on the survey methodology, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).

In the published results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, bilet.nn.ru does not appear: neither the address nor the word "ticket" occurs in it[5]. Judging by this, the service was not notable to the voting community — even though by that point it had been operating for its third year.

How it disappeared

The fading is visible in the credits at the bottom of the page. In the 2002 and 2003 snapshots, the home page listed two companies behind the project — the developer "2x2" and the general partner "Sozvezdiye"[1][2]. In the snapshot from June 5, 2004, the line about the general partner was gone, leaving only the developer's credit[3]. After that, the home page did not change at all: the snapshot from February 12, 2005 repeats the June 2004 one verbatim[3][4].

The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated February 12, 2005[4]. By the time of our survey, the bilet.nn.ru domain no longer existed, and where the service moved to — if it moved at all — cannot be established from the available materials.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)