b2b.nnov.ru was one of two addresses of the "Goods and Services Exchange"[2], a Nizhny Novgorod business portal run by the Volga-Vyatka branch of RGUITP[1]. The site operated in the nnov.ru zone and described itself as a "Portal for supporting goods producers"[2]; among the participant listings were distinctly local ones — "Used pipes from a warehouse in Nizhny Novgorod" and "Arranging negotiations in N.Novgorod for foreign firms"[3]. The first archived snapshot of the home page is dated October 5, 2002[1], and the last request to the address in the web archive index is dated February 7, 2007.
What it was
The Exchange was a database of enterprises, their products, services and commercial offers, open for viewing without registration. In the 2002 version the home page consisted of little more than a menu: "Enterprises", "Products and Services", "Commercial Offers", an industry index and an alphabetical index, and a search by city with fields "Name", "City", "Management"[1]. At that time the industry index displayed a terse "List is empty"[1].
By 2003 the site had declared itself "Version 2.1" and had acquired a region selector, a record counter, and a detailed description of its capabilities[2]. As the home page stated, without registration a visitor could "View information about enterprises, products, services and offers/requests", sort the listings, post their own offers and requests, and "Apply a filter to find information only from the regions you are interested in"[2].
A website as a gift for registering
A separate offer of the Exchange was a free corporate website. As the home page stated, upon becoming a member of the Exchange you would "Automatically receive a standard website on the Internet at the addresses http://www.btu.ru/web_name and http://www.b2b.nnov.ru/web_name"; orders from it arrived by email, and the address could be hidden from the sender, while the data was promised to be brought to the attention of search engines — "Yandex, Rambler, etc."[2]. The login and password were sent by mail "within a day"[2].
A separate provision covered the case of an entrepreneur without internet access: "If you have no email, no internet access, and not even your own computer, you can still have a website on the Electronic Exchange" — the site would be assembled by Exchange staff from supplied materials, for a fee, under one of three service packages: "Basic", "Business" and "Exclusive"[2]. The related services also included forwarding mail received at such a site[3].
Database and showcase
A counter on the home page tracked the growth of the database. On November 21, 2003, the system listed 1,176 organizations, 403 product names, 200 services, and 1,038 offers and requests[2]. On April 4, 2005 — 2,897 organizations, 1,208 product names, 358 services, 2,727 offers and requests[3]. No later figures survive in the archived snapshots.
By 2005 the home page showcase had turned into feeds of listings: a list of organizations (OOO "AVTOritetAVTO NN", OOO "Severyanka", SKB RIAP, OOO "Kronos LTD", sole proprietor Usov, ZAO "Nesko", OOO "Eskor", OOO "Boston", OOO "Vizantiya", OOO NPP "Vektor-NGTU"), alongside feeds of products and services[3]. The contents of these feeds show what the participants were trading: "Mufflers for the ZIL 5301 Bychok truck", "P6-59 horn measuring antenna", "Tarpaulin OP, VU, SKPV", "Building ASKUE metering systems", "An equipped conference hall for 100 people for seminars, presentations, conferences"[3].
There was also a visitor poll: "Would you like the Electronic Goods and Services Exchange BTU.RU to be supplemented with an internet auction?" with options ranging from "yes, of course" to "definitely not"[3]. The poll results are not preserved in the surviving snapshots.
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The site belonged to the business layer, not the public layer, of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: in our dossier it is recorded in the nn.ru directory (the /rub/ section), and its rating and vote count are zero — in the surviving Counter.nn.ru samples its traffic was not preserved (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). The footer of the 2003 and 2005 snapshots carried the credit "Design: INNOV.RU", and the copyright line in all three surviving snapshots contained a misspelling in its very first word; in 2005 it read "Copyrigth © 2002-2005, Volga-Vyatka branch of RGUITP"[3].
In the same dossier, this address is also linked to a directory entry for the "Lider Health Center" — computerized express diagnostics, health-recovery products, spine-treatment exercise equipment. How it is connected to the Exchange and to what period it belongs is not shown by our material.
How it closed
The Exchange's development can be traced through the version numbers on the home page: 2.1 in November 2003[2] and 3.11 in April 2005[3]. We have no home page snapshots for later years; the last request to the b2b.nnov.ru address in the web archive index is dated February 7, 2007, the site's lifespan in the dossier is marked as 2002-2006, and after that, according to our check, the address hosted a parking page ("parked since 2007"). In total the web archive index records 32 requests for this address.
The Exchange considered btu.ru its own name: under that address, on a par with b2b.nnov.ru, participants' websites were issued[2], and it used the same name for itself in the 2005 poll — "Electronic Goods and Services Exchange BTU.RU"[3]. What became of that address is not shown by our material.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)