dzrcity.ru ("Delovoy Dzerzhinsk", Business Dzerzhinsk) was a city information-and-reference website for Dzerzhinsk in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, traces of which survive from 2003. In the service description of its home page the project described itself thus: "The Delovoy Dzerzhinsk server, the first and most complete business portal containing varied information about the city of Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1]. The publisher was a local taxi dispatch service: at the bottom of every screenshot is the caption "© 2003 Dispatch Service 057, 074. All rights reserved"[1]. The site was listed in the directory of the Nizhny Novgorod portal nn.ru and had its own counter in the Counter.nn.ru rating[4].

What the site looked like

The home page was built around a vertical menu of five blocks. "News. Articles" led to the sections "City News," "Cultural Life," "Politics," "Auto News," and "Announcements"; the "Dzerzhinsk" block led to "City History," "Memorable Dates," "Photo Album," and "City Newspapers"; "Business City" combined "Firms of Dzerzhinsk," "Classifieds," and "Phone Numbers"; "Reference" offered a commuter-train timetable, weather, exchange rates, an astrological forecast, and a TV schedule; "Miscellaneous" held a forum, a guestbook, the page of taxi service 057, 074, and advertising[1]. The set of keywords in the page code shows what queries the site was aiming for: alongside the words "Dzerzhinsk," "Rastyapino," "phone directory," and "pager gate" it lists the city's factories — Orgsteklo, Kaprolaktam, Sintez, Khimmash, Tosol, Korund[1].

The first screen was occupied not by an editorial item but by an announcement of the owner's own development. As the home page put it, "Taxi dispatch service 057, 074 presents a new software development — the 'Automated Dispatch Service' (hereafter ADS)," described as "a dispatch system using artificial intelligence technology for transport services"[1]. A separate block was devoted to "our advertising sponsor and business partner" — the car dealership Nizhegorodavto, of which it was said that its brand "enjoys well-deserved popularity and standing among motorists of the Volga-Vyatka region," and among the brands sold were named Skoda and Hyundai[1]. The "Auto News" feed was likewise given over to the sponsor's brands: headlines about the Skoda Octavia and the Hyundai Santa Fe stood on the home page on a par with city news[2].

The city news feed was short and factory-centered: "A spontaneous surge of workers is possible at Korund" (April 23, 2003), "Over the past five days the water level of the Oka at Dzerzhinsk has risen by 1.5 meters" (April 22, 2003), "Steam supply at Korund will be shut off from May 1" (April 21, 2003)[1].

Phone directory and classifieds

The site's main "product" was search through its phone database: the directory block promised "Over 100,000 subscribers!" and offered a surname-entry form with advanced search, while nearby it honestly stated the cutoff date — "Current as of: May 2003"[1]. The nn.ru directory described the site in the same words: "The business world of Dzerzhinsk, over 100,000 up-to-date phone numbers, enterprises, and other information"[4].

The second active section was free classifieds. In the June 2003 snapshot the counters showed 81 postings in the "Dating" category and 47 in "Job Offers," with the texts displayed directly on the home page. The contact details in them are relics of the pre-internet era: post-office boxes ("606007, P.O. Box 153," "606015, P.O. Box 5," "606034, P.O. Box 2") and six-digit city phone numbers without an area code ("28-15-30," "21-91-52," "22-71-05," fax "25-95-95")[1]. The job postings called for staff at the cosmetics company Faberlic and for a construction crew heading to Moscow[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the "Portals and general-purpose servers" category of the nn.ru directory. In the snapshot of that category from November 29, 2003, sorted by rating, "Delovoy Dzerzhinsk," with a score of 148, stood eleventh out of fifteen entries. Above it were, among others, Nizhny Novgorod On-Line itself (21,835), the business portal r52.ru (7,715), the "Nizhny.ru Information Service (nizhny.ru) Information Service" (1,472), the Dzerzhinsk server "Ves Dzerzhinsk" (824), and the "Site of the City of Bor" (192); below it were the "Dzerzhinsk Information Portal" (126) and "Cellular Communications and Paging in Nizhny Novgorod" (90)[4]. Of the three Dzerzhinsk sites in this category, "Delovoy Dzerzhinsk" ranked second, trailing "Ves Dzerzhinsk" by roughly a factor of five and a half, and against the regional portals it remained a small project. For more on how these numbers work, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating and the overview of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

In the published results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, "Delovoy Dzerzhinsk" does not appear[5].

How it closed

The decline is visible in the snapshots themselves. The city news feed in every surviving copy — from June through December 2003 — consists of the same three items from April 21-23, 2003, and the most recent entry on the home page, an automotive one, is dated August 20, 2003[3]. The phone database remained stuck at the "May 2003" cutoff[3]. By the November snapshot the classifieds had emptied too: where in June there had been 81 and 47 entries, the counters for both categories now show zero[2].

The last home-page snapshot in the web archive is dated December 14, 2003[3]. There are no later copies in our sample, and by our check today the domain name dzrcity.ru is unregistered. No announcement of closure or of a move to another address survives in the saved snapshots.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (June) (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (November) (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (December) (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category "Portals and general-purpose servers," November 29, 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)