anc.nm.ru was the site of the Nizhny Novgorod "Central Real Estate Agency" ("TsAN"), a firm that dealt with apartments, private houses, land plots, and commercial real estate in Nizhny Novgorod. The site sat on a third-level domain in the nm.ru zone, and can be traced in the web archive from October 2003 to October 2013. Already in the first saved snapshot of the home page, two city offices are listed: the Zarechnaya (across-the-river) one — 603076, Nizhny Novgorod, Lenina Ave., 54a, phones 58-13-00 and 50-39-49, tel./fax 58-00-37; the Nagornaya (upland) one — 603000, B. Pokrovskaya St., 80b, phones 34-22-83 and 39-22-59[1].

What the home page looked like

The page title stayed the same throughout — "Real Estate Agency Central. Full range of services," with a typo in the word "range" that survived every redesign of the site[1][3]. The top menu consisted of six items: "Photo archive," "Directions," "From the agency's history," "'TsAN' today," "'TsAN' offers," "Vacancies." Below it was a side list, where business sections stood next to "Hymn to 'TsAN'," "Postulates," "We work," "We relax," "Structure," and "Newspaper," as well as separate pages for the Zarechnaya and Nagornaya offices[1]. Listings were divided into the sections "Commercial real estate," "Suburban real estate," "Land plots," "New developments," "Apartments," "Rooms," "Houses," and the personnel block gathered the pages "About staff," "Questionnaire," and "Vacancies"[1]. At the bottom stood the credit "Site design and development" with a link to the email zwetta@nm.ru and a manually inserted update date — "Updated: 09.10.2003"[1].

By August 2004, "Postulates" had turned into "Our mission," "Newspaper" into "'TsAN' news," and instead of the office addresses real009@sandy.ru and real008@sandy.ru, the home page was left with a single shared mailbox, anc@nm.ru[2].

What the agency offered

In the 2003 version, the home page listed, as the page itself put it, "drawing up contracts of sale, exchange, and gift without notarial certification," the sale and purchase of private residential houses, cottages, and land plots, any transactions with commercial real estate, full transaction support, gathering documents for housing privatization, legalizing redevelopments, exchanges of any complexity, rental and lease of housing, and resettlement[1].

A year later the list was rewritten to match the changed market: privatization and gift contracts dropped out of it, while "work with certificates," "consulting services on mortgage lending, selection and processing of apartments purchased with a mortgage loan," conversion of premises from residential to non-residential status, and real estate appraisal appeared[1][2]. This second list remained on the home page unchanged as late as 2006[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

TsAN was a typical "business card" company site, of which most in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s were: contacts, a list of services, listing sections, and a bit of corporate life such as a photo archive and a hymn. In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote for 2004, the address anc.nm.ru does not appear[5]. No Counter.nn.ru counter data on it is recorded in our samples either — the site entered the census through the nn.ru catalog's directory, where its card was included with an almost word-for-word retelling of the 2003 service list (on the collection methodology, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).

Fading and relocation

The June 2006 snapshot shows a page that had not changed since December 2005: the caption at the bottom still read "Updated: 12.12.2005"[3]. By that time the contact block had shrunk from "Our offices" to "Our office" — only the address on Lenina Avenue, 54a, remained, although the menu links to the Zarechnaya and Nagornaya office pages were still there; the "Questionnaire" item had also disappeared from the menu[1][3].

The last snapshot in the web archive is dated October 6, 2013, and by then it is no longer a site but a redirect page from OOO "Central Real Estate Agency": "Please note that our site is now located at: www.anc-nnov.ru," with an automatic redirect after 20 seconds[4]. Next to the farewell message stood a hosting ad block — offers for photo hosting, term papers for students, and a screenshot service[4]. There are no later snapshots of the address in the web archive, and in our data the domain anc.nm.ru is listed as no longer existing.

Links

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)