Metr.ru (Метр.Ру) — a Nizhny Novgorod internet portal about real estate, construction, furniture and interior finishing. Its home page presented it as "Nizhny Novgorod Portal on Real Estate, Construction, Furniture and Finishing Metr.Ru"[1], and the credit line at the bottom read "Copyright © 2001 OOO 'Internet laboratoriya'" (Internet Laboratory Ltd.) with the address erdn@ilab.ru[3]. The portal was tied entirely to Nizhny Novgorod and the region: it maintained a database of listings for city apartments, a directory of local realtor and construction organizations, a news feed on the regional market and weekly reviews of prices for Nizhny Novgorod housing[1][3]. Snapshots of the home page in the web archive span the years 2001–2016[1][4].

What the site looked like

In 2001 the top menu consisted of the sections "News", "Housing", "Commercial Real Estate", "Construction", "Finishing", "Services" and "Miscellaneous"[1]; by September 2002 the section "about the project" had been added to them, and the page acquired the links "english version" and "make metr your home page"[2]. The news feed was divided into the rubrics "Nizhny Novgorod", "Federal", "World", "Realtor", "Developer", "Construction", "Utilities and Municipal Services", "Cultural" and "Miscellaneous"[1].

A separate block, "to help the realtor", included the subsections "Laws", "Taxes", "The Profession", "Grim Apartments", "Realtor's Dictionary", "Software", "Moving Wizard" and "Fraudsters", as well as step-by-step "Tips" in five points: choosing the method of exchange, choosing a real estate agency, choosing an agent, choosing an apartment, the transaction[1]. Consultations were offered in four kinds — legal, realtor's, builder's and psychologist's[1]. A mailing list ran through subscribe.ru, "Apartments and Prices. Nizhny Novgorod", with a choice of format (HTML, TEXT, SMS, PALM) and encoding (KOI-8, Latin, windows)[1]. In 2003 the home page listed three forums — a general one, one for realtors and one for private individuals — and the services "online appraiser", "valuation map" and "price forecast"[3].

The portal's holdings were shown by a counter in the header. In April 2001: "Articles: 514 Links: 43 Organizations: 804"[1]. In September 2002: "Users: 241 Listings: 168 Articles: 1667 Links: 358 Organizations: 957"[2]. In June 2003 — 369 users, 332 listings, 1805 articles, 358 links, 1040 organizations[3].

Listings, the directory and price analytics

The listings database allowed the user to choose the type of property (apartment, house, office) and the action (selling, buying, renting out, renting) and provided for registration, entry of a listing and search — general, by date, by district, by firm and "search via Tsoris"[2]. As the home page reported in 2001, the data was updated "daily" through "the regional realtor system Tsoris"; the same page named the real estate agencies "Vybor" (Choice), "Monolit" (Monolith), "Adveks" (Advex), "Triumf Realty" (Triumph Realty), "Pyatdesyat na pyatdesyat" (Fifty-Fifty), "Uspekh" (Success), "KLYUCH NN" (Key NN), "Sfera Esteyt" (Sphere Estate), "Megapolis" and "Zhemchuzhina Rossii" (Pearl of Russia), and promised "the entire newspaper Real Estate of Nizhny Novgorod on the Internet" and "free access to the paging system 'RIELT-PAGING'"[1]. The directory of organizations consisted of cards with an address, a contact person and a telephone number — for example, the homeowners' association "Sever" (North), Kanavinsky district, Kuzbasskaya Street[3].

The portal's own analytics was arranged as weekly measurements of the weighted average price of a square meter of total floor area in US dollars. The review of 10 February 2003, covering December 2002, gives the average values: one-room apartments — 361.7, two-room — 383.2, three-room — 363.7, four-room — 378.8, five-room — 383, on average 374.1 dollars per square meter; the sample in the month's four measurements ranged from 1389 to 1618 apartments. The review is signed: "real estate market analyst certified by the RGR (Russian Guild of Realtors) in the housing profile, D. N. Ermolaev"[3].

The news and articles dealt with Nizhny Novgorod subjects. In March 2001 — an inspection of the city's realtor firms by the consumer rights protection committee together with the police department (UVD), the licensing commission and the tax inspectorate; a loan of 15 million dollars at nine percent per annum from the German "Interbank" for a hotel and business complex with 220 rooms at VAO "Nizhegorodskaya Yarmarka" (Nizhny Novgorod Fair); the 7th specialized exhibition "Furniture of Russia" on 22–26 March 2001 at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair; a targeted furniture loan at the bank "Garantiya" (Guarantee) with the company "Mebel Plyus" (Furniture Plus) as its partner (at least 30 percent of the borrower's own funds, a rate of 30–32 percent per annum, a term of up to a year)[1]. In 2002 the portal published a detailed interview with the leasing department of OOO "Monolit-Servis" (Monolith Service) about the shopping center then under construction at the intersection of Belinsky and Izhorskaya streets: six floors plus a basement level, an atrium with six escalators and two elevators, a "main square" of about 2500 square meters, the fifth and sixth floors of 1000 square meters each, an average ceiling height of 3.4 meters, 200 parking spaces, 400 meters to Svoboda (Freedom) Square and 200 meters to the A. S. Pushkin Opera Theatre[2]. In 2003 — reports on the keeping of the register of municipal property (a presentation by Alexei Lyapin), on the intention of Governor Gennady Khodyrev to reject the draft laws "On the Price of Land" and "On the Exercise of the Right of State Ownership of the Nizhny Novgorod Region", and on a statement by the head of the administration of the Sormovsky district, Andrei Kovba[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

Metr.ru was included in the nn.ru directory, where it was described as "an encyclopedia of construction, finishing, design and real estate in Nizhny Novgorod and Russia". In the summary of the Counter.nn.ru rating, on whose data the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based, the site corresponds to a figure of 1235. At the same time, no votes for metr.ru were recorded in the voting results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day competition[5] — by that time, judging by the snapshots, substantive updating of the portal had already ceased.

How it closed

The last web archive snapshot with living content is dated 7 June 2003: the home page still carried an announcement of 22 July 2003 stating that the portal "invites realtors, builders and everyone who works with real estate", while the advertising block "hot offers" was empty — "Space available!"[3]. The snapshot of 30 December 2016 shows not the portal but a service stub of a hosting control panel: "Site default.domain16 just created. Сайт default.domain16 только что создан. Real content coming soon. ISPsystem"[4]. There is no separate dossier on the fate of the domain; in our overview of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, metr.ru is listed as dead.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)