riann.r52.ru was the site of the Nizhny Novgorod company "Rian" (Риан), which sold photo goods, digital photographic equipment, observation optics and office equipment, and ran a chain of photo centers in the city. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 31 October 2001: it lists an office at Poltavskaya Street, 22, third floor, the phone numbers 31-73-43, 35-44-22, 35-97-94, 35-98-02, the address riann@sinn.ru, and the signature "2001 Rian N.Novgorod"[1]. By the mid-2000s the site was run in the name of OOO "Rian-Nizhny"[2]. Substantive snapshots stop in the summer of 2007.

What the site looked like

The 2001 version was a single-screen business card: a single "Home" section, the office address, four phone numbers, an email address, and a "Directions" link. The footer carried the line "Coding Info-online Hosting r52.ru," naming the contractor and the host[1].

By 2007 the site had become a showcase for the retail chain. The top menu consisted of the sections "Contacts," "Digital photographic equipment," "Photo services," "Office equipment," and "Credit"[2]. The exchange rate used for pricing was displayed prominently: "Today 1 c.u. = 27 rubles when purchasing photo goods," as the home page reported in March 2007[2]; in July of the same year it stood at 26.4 rubles[3]. Alongside were a sign-up form for the price-list mailing and a "Download the photographic equipment price list" link with a last-updated timestamp of 17:14 on 15 March 2007 and 12:59 on 6 July 2007, respectively[2][3].

The template, meanwhile, was left unfinished: the left-hand column in both 2007 snapshots is filled with the placeholder items "Left menu 1" through "Left menu 6," and the promotions block still had the dummy filler line "this is an example of completely arbitrary text that could go here" instead of real text[2][3]. The substantive part of the home page was the store's news feed — stock arrivals, price cuts, and deals of the day.

The photo-center chain and product range

In March 2007 the news feed listed five locations: Belinskogo, 83 (phone 11-19-57), Smirnova, 13 (576-260), Lenina, 26 (45-46-45), the "MEGA" shopping center (622-572), and the town of Bor, Lenina Street, 131 (8(259)9-95-16)[2]. Anyone buying a digital camera, or making a single purchase over 3,000 rubles, was issued an "unlimited personal discount card"[2]. The discount size changed from day to day: on 15 March it was 7% on memory cards and 5% on flashes and lenses; on 6 July it was 10% on photo accessories[2][3]. At the store in the "Mega" mall, "across from the IKEA entrance," Wednesdays brought 3% off photographic equipment and 10% off other photo goods[3].

The news items also reveal what was on the shelves. Besides cameras, the company carried studio lighting — flashes, stands, umbrellas, backdrops, reflectors, product tables, Manfrotto tripods — and professional Kodak film[2]. A separate group was observation optics: Sturman telescopes and binoculars, microscopes, magnifiers, spyglasses, a Viking night-vision binocular, and Webbers digital microscopes[2]. The site listed retail prices openly: the Olympus MJU-780 for 10,269 rubles, the Panasonic FX-10 for 7,998 rubles, the FX-30 for 11,617 rubles, the LZ-7 for 8,445 rubles, the Nikon SB-800 flash for 15,890 rubles, the Canon Speedlite 580 EX for 15,880 rubles, and a Tamrac photo vest for 2,799 rubles[3].

Summer 2007: two new locations

The last surviving snapshot caught the company on the rise. On 15 July 2007 the "Rian Photo Center" was opening on the ground floor of the new "Gagarinsky" shopping center on Gagarina Avenue, in the Shcherbinki-II district, with the chain's usual lineup: photo goods, digital equipment, accessories, observation optics, ID photos, photos on ceramics and fabric, video digitization, and copying services[3]. For 1 August 2007 a photo center opening was scheduled at Lenina Avenue, 49В — "across from the Leninsky district administration, next to the famous 'Pelmennaya'"; it was to include a photo studio, a framing workshop, and a copying and wide-format printing department[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet and the fate of the address

The site was hosted on a Nizhny Novgorod host in the r52.ru zone[1], and in our survey of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet it appears with the catalog description "wholesale and retail sale of photo goods, observation optics, office and copying equipment." In the surviving cross-section of the Counter.nn.ru ranking, on which the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based, the address corresponds to a score of 130 — the middle of the list, not the top. In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote of 2004 the site was listed among the participants but received not a single vote[4]. This is a typical profile for a mid-2000s corporate storefront: its audience came not from the network, but from the shop counter, and the site functioned as a directory of prices and addresses.

There are no substantive snapshots in the web archive after July 2007. The last snapshot of the address is dated 11 January 2012; according to our survey, from 2012 the address served a placeholder page, and today the domain riann.r52.ru is not working.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2007 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, July 2007 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)