slovo.nn.ru was the site of the advertising agency "Slovo" (in the page's footer — "RA Slovo"). The address was a subdomain of the Nizhny Novgorod portal nn.ru. The home page has come down to us in two Web Archive snapshots — from 23 July 2007[1] and 23 November 2012[2] — and the text in them matches word for word. The site's Web Archive snapshots span the period from 2 April 2002 to 28 March 2017[3]. In the directory of the same nn.ru portal the agency was listed among advertising agencies with the description: "'SLOVO' is a full-service advertising agency that has been active on the advertising services market since 1994"[4].

Ten years frozen on the front page

The only news item to appear in the surviving snapshots of the home page was an anniversary one, headlined "Advertising agency 'SLOVO' turns 10". "On 8 December the advertising agency 'Slovo' celebrated its first jubilee," the home page reported[1]. At the bottom stood the copyright notice "© 2004 RA Slovo"[1], and the nn.ru directory had already noted back in 2002 that the agency had been operating since 1994[4] — meaning the item referred to 8 December 2004. The same home page stated that over ten years the agency had "managed to grow from a small team of specialists into a notable advertising holding," and that "Slovo" was "a contemporary of Russian advertising," having grown and developed alongside the advertising market[1].

The fate of this item says more about the site than its content does. In the snapshot from 23 July 2007[1] and in the snapshot from 23 November 2012[2] the text of the home page matches word for word, down to the copyright notice: the anniversary item stayed on the front page for almost eight years, even though a "News" section remained in the menu the whole time.

What the site looked like and what it offered

The layout was simple. A menu of six items — "News," "About the Company," "Prices," "Placing an Order," "Contacts," "Home Page" — was repeated at the bottom of the page, minus the "Home Page" item[1]. Next to the label "www.slovo.nn.ru" was a link reading "add to favorites"[1]. The contact email was not on the site's own domain: slovo@sinn.ru[1]. Neither an address nor a phone number was given on the home page — contacts were routed to a separate page, of which we have no snapshots[1]. The "Prices" and "Placing an Order" pages have not survived either, although they were present in the menu[1].

Below the text was a block headed "Among our clients:," but in the text layer of both snapshots this line is immediately followed by the bottom menu[1][2]. The clients' names apparently were not rendered as text, and cannot be recovered from the surviving material.

The home page listed the range of services directly: outdoor advertising, media advertising placement, production of promotional items, design, and printing. The agency had started out, as the home page reported, "with simple advertisement placement in the press"[1].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, "Slovo" remained a second-tier site. In the snapshot of the nn.ru directory from 26 July 2002, the entry for the agency shows "Rating: 43," linking to the Counter.nn.ru counter (number 2838); the directory entry itself carried a 468×30 banner[4]. The leaders of the same directory had counter figures in the thousands and tens of thousands (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).

In the final vote tally of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004 — which happens to be the agency's anniversary year — neither the domain slovo.nn.ru nor the name "Slovo" appears[5] — no votes for it are recorded in our data.

How it closed

The last snapshot of the site in the Web Archive is dated 28 March 2017[3]; by the time our survey was compiled, the domain slovo.nn.ru no longer existed. There are no signs of a move — a redirect, an announcement of a new address, a link to another site — in the surviving snapshots[1][2], so this material cannot tell us anything about the agency's further fate: the site disappeared, not necessarily the company.

One thing stands out: content-wise, the site had frozen long before the domain disappeared. The page with the 2004 news item and copyright notice survived unedited for at least until the end of 2012[1][2], while the Web Archive snapshots continue for several more years, up to 2017[3]. The site was not shut down — it simply stopped changing.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Calendar of slovo.nn.ru snapshots in the Web Archive (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, advertising agencies section, 26 July 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)