ivan-kopylov.narod.ru (later, at a second address, www.kopylov.tk) was the personal page of Nizhny Novgorod resident Ivan Kopylov, running from January 31, 2003[1]. The site occupied a third-level address in the narod.ru zone, was twice entered in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day contest in the "Best Author's Site" category[3], and was known chiefly for its free gateway for sending SMS to subscribers of cellular operators in Nizhny Novgorod and the Nizhny Novgorod region[2]. The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated February 12, 2008[3].

The first year: poems, drawings, and a section about the city

The earliest surviving snapshot was taken on February 17, 2003, and consists entirely of a news feed about the site itself, covering its first two weeks of existence[1]. The timeline ran as follows: January 31, 2003 — "Opening of my site"; February 2 — the "Poems" and "Drawings" sections added; February 4 — the "RU-CD-RW" and "Nizhny Novgorod" sections; February 6 — "measures taken to improve the site's indexing by search engines"; February 9 — the design was refined and an ICQ number was posted on the page[1].

The page carried two contacts — a "My e-mail" link and ICQ number 331946596[1]; later the mail address was given in plain text as pod-vodoy@mail.ru[2]. Alongside it stood a search form with three scope toggles — "on ivan-kopylov.narod.ru," "on Narod.Ru," "on Yandex"[1]. At the bottom of the page the owner posted a reprint condition: copying materials was permitted "only on condition that the copyright and a link to Ivan Kopylov's official site are preserved"[1].

An SMS gateway for the Nizhny Novgorod region

On December 18, 2003, the site gained what became its main content: sending SMS to GSM-standard phones within the Nizhny Novgorod region. The author explained the advantage this way: "Unlike other gateways, mine offers the maximum guarantee that your SMS will reach the subscriber, since delivery is handled by the cellular operators' own service departments, without intermediaries and completely free of charge"[2]. In the same entry he reported that "after some fervent dancing with a tambourine" he had sped up the site's loading by more than 30%[2].

By 2004, half of the home page was taken up by a table of Nizhny Novgorod Internet codes, from which the visitor selected an operator: MTS — +7 910 (10-xx-xx, 24-7x-xx); Beeline — +7 903, +7 905 (14-xx-xx); MegaFon — +7 920 (13-xx-xx); NSS — +7 831 (15-xx-xx, 37-xxx); Siti — +7 902, +7 904 78, +7 904 30, +7 904 68; Tele2 — +7 904 39[2]. The list was updated as the market changed: on February 28, 2004, the new operator Tele2 was added with the same 904 code as NSS and "Siti," and on November 23, 2004, Beeline's new code +7 906 was added[3]. Next to the gateway, the page also ran an English-Russian and Russian-English dictionary with an input field[2].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered the "Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day" contest twice. On December 27, 2003, the owner wrote that the site "took part in the 'Day of Nizhny Novgorod Internet 2003' contest, held as part of the cultural program 'Volga Region,' in the 'Best Author's Site' category," linking to internet.nn.ru[3]. Almost a year later, on November 24, 2004, an entry appeared: "My site again took part in the 'Day of Nizhny Novgorod Internet 2004' contest" — in the same category[3].

This brought no measurable visibility: in the compiled voting results for the 2004 contest, the site is recorded as having received not a single vote[4], and in the Counter.nn.ru rankings it does not appear at all, as far as our data shows — the site's record was assembled from contest lists. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, this is a typical case: a personal page with a useful service, hosted for free and known to the author's circle of acquaintances.

Decline and closure

After 2004, news items appeared ever less often and had ever less to do with the site itself: May 31, 2005 — a note about a third-party service for trading items in online games; August 14, 2005 — an account of a paid mailing-list system, "Let the Internet Pay for Itself"; November 22, 2005 — "another 25 new pictures" in the "Jokes" section[3]. Even earlier, on August 17, 2004, the author arranged a 1% discount at the online stores porta.ru and digita.ru for anyone who visited them via links from his page, adding the caveat: "This is not an advertisement at all"[3].

The last news item is dated August 22, 2006: a "Photo" section opened, and the hardest shot to get, in the owner's words, was a photograph of the lead singer of the band Splean at a concert "in a terrible crush"[3]. A year and a half later, on February 12, 2008, the web archive captured the home page for the last time — it still showed the same news feed, the same table of operator codes, and the 2003 copyright notice[3]. There are no later snapshots; in our register the site is listed as dead, with years of activity 2003-2008.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results, Day of Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)