triumf.nn.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod real estate agency "Triumf-Realty" (Триумф-Риэлти), which by 2003 called itself the "Triumf" Group of Companies holding (Группа компаний "Триумф")[1][2]. The firm's head office was located in Nizhny Novgorod at Volodarsky Street, and branch offices operated on Entuziastov, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya and Surikova streets[1]. The archival study collection contains four snapshots of the home page, from 2001 to 2006[1][4].

Phone directory on the home page (2001)

The earliest surviving snapshot was taken on 8 July 2001. The site was called "AN 'TRIUMF-REALTY', N.Novgorod" and opened with a ten-item menu: "Home", "About the company", "News", "Databases", "Services", "Consultations", "Vacancies", "For advertisers", "Links", "Feedback"[1].

In this snapshot the home page was essentially a directory of addresses and phone numbers. At the head office at Volodarsky Street, 49, it listed the primary housing market and shared-construction department (78-44-00), secondary housing market departments (78-45-00, 78-45-01), the residential rental department (78-45-02), and the commercial real estate department and the appraisal and analytics department, sharing the numbers 78-44-88 and 78-44-99[1]. Three offices specializing in secondary housing were listed separately: Entuziastov Street, 10 building 1 — "behind the 'Zarechny' market" (42-22-75, 42-22-50, 42-22-39), Bolshaya Pokrovskaya, 12 (30-19-50, 33-48-88), and Surikova, 14a, office 3 (34-68-02, 39-65-40); at two of them the home page promised a lawyer's consultation[1].

From agency to group of companies (2003-2006)

By the 3 August 2003 snapshot the site had changed its title to "Triumf Group of Companies, Nizhny Novgorod". At the top of the page stood three offers — sale of apartments in new developments, sale of commercial real estate, and rental of commercial real estate — and the menu consisted of the sections "Home", "Our addresses", "Databases", "Information for realtors", "Free consultations", "Press on real estate", "Jobs", "Write to us"[2]. About itself, the firm stated that the agency "has been successfully operating in the real estate market for 10 years and ranks among the top five agencies in Nizhny Novgorod" — as it was phrased on the home page[2].

According to the site's description, the holding's membership in 2003 included the real estate agency "Triumf" (real estate for business and construction investment), the real estate center "Vashe Pravo" (Your Right; purchase, sale and lease of housing), the company "Otsenochny Standart" (Appraisal Standard; appraisal of movable and immovable property, including sea and river vessels, intellectual property and securities), and the business technology center "Olimp" (Olympus; recruiting, consulting, training)[2]. The group described itself as a member of the Nizhny Novgorod Guild of Realtors and the Russian Guild of Realtors[2]. The "Our news" section at that time consisted of three entries: on 29 April 2003 "Vashe Pravo" received a quality-of-service compliance certificate under the National Standard, on 22 May 2003 "Olimp" was accredited by the Russian Guild of Realtors as an educational institution for certification purposes, and on 31 May 2003 the group of companies "held a children's day"[2].

The 27 January 2005 snapshot shows an already-established site structure: "Home", "Our addresses", "Databases", "Analytics", "Consultations", "Directory", "Publications"[3]. The agency's stated years in business on the home page had grown to eleven, and the description now included registration details: compliance certificate No. ROSS ru GK os 52.003 dated 29 April 2003 and a professional liability insurance policy with OJSC "Rosno" No. G14-15719103-V15[3]. By this time the group's membership had narrowed to three companies: "Triumf", "Vashe Pravo" (whose services now also included work with mortgage and housing loans), and "Otsenochny Standart"[3].

In the last surviving snapshot, from 14 November 2006, the stated years in business is twelve, and the group's composition had been restructured: LLC "Triumf-Nedvizhimost" (Triumf-Realty; real estate for business, legal services and consulting), the realty company "Triumf" (transactions in the market for housing under construction and completed housing, work with mortgage and housing loans), "Otsenochny Standart", and a legal service[4]. The company's own 2006 news mixed business and educational items: on 11 May "Otsenochny Standart" received accreditation following a tender by CJSC ACB "Rus-Bank" — citing a letter from the manager of the bank's Nizhny Novgorod branch, Mr. Shagalov; on 24 April a group of 4th- and 5th-year students from Nizhny Novgorod universities completed training under the "Fundamentals of Realtor Activity" program, a group that, as the site put it, was recruited "only once a year, in spring" on preferential terms; on 21 April a three-week work placement began for third-year students of the Nizhny Novgorod College of Economics, Statistics and Law; and in April "Otsenochny Standart" was assigned rating index B11 in the sixth federal integrated rating of appraisal firms of the Russian Federation for 2005[4]. The reply address in the footer was not on the company's own domain: triumf@sandy.ru, with copyright "(c) 2001-2006"[4].

Databases, calculators and market feed

Over time the site stopped being merely a corporate business card. The "Site news" feed in the 2005 snapshot lists what had appeared on it over 2004: mortgage materials (24 March), materials from the 1st Volga Federal District regional conference "Problems and prospects of real estate market development. Investment" (29 March), a database of apartment rentals (7 April), mortgage calculators (14 April), new formats for presenting information in the new-construction database (19 April), a review of the commercial real estate market for May (3 June), the study "Nizhny Novgorod: state and development of the office real estate market" (18 October), and an express-appraisal calculator for apartment value on the finished-housing market (22 November)[3]. On 10 March 2006 three reviews were published at once — the market for housing under construction and commercial real estate for January, and the finished-housing market for February[4].

A separate column, "News of the Nizhny Novgorod real estate market", turned the home page into a short industry digest for the city and region. In the 27 January 2005 snapshot it held five items, from 23 December 2004 to 17 January 2005: about two large shopping centers announced by the production group "Zemlyane" and the Stolitsa Nizhniy (development company) (17 January); about 407 million rubles the region planned to allocate in 2005 for the second stage of the Nizhny Novgorod bypass road (24 December); about a "Park House" retail and entertainment complex of about 65,000 sq. m that the Samara-based "Vremya" group of companies planned to build in Nizhny Novgorod (23 December)[3]. Alongside it hung a special offer — an office space of 1,100 sq. m, an entire floor of an administrative building in the Nizhegorodsky district[3]. In January 2006 the feed reported on public discussion of development on the Grebnoy Canal, quoting Mayor Vadim Bulavinov, about $20 million that Nizhny Novgorod's "Sistemma" planned to invest in reconstructing the "Vodnik" stadium, and about a protest by defrauded shareholders in a housing project in the second microdistrict of Verkhniye Pechory on Minin Square[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory — a catalog of Nizhny Novgorod websites where every participant carried a Counter.nn.ru rating — the site was listed in the "Firms (Enterprises): Real Estate" category. In the 23 June 2002 snapshot, "Triumf-Realty Real Estate Agency" is shown with a rating of 341, ranking third in a category of 22 sites, though a rating was posted for only eleven of them: above it were the "Metr.Ru" portal with a rating of 1,203 and the Interagency Regional Realtor Information Server with a rating of 385[5]. In the directory's general "Most Popular" section, where sites were ranked by number of visits over the preceding 30 days, in the 27 August 2002 snapshot "Triumf-Realty" stood at line 47 with 232 visits and a rating of 221[6]. On how this slice is constructed, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In 2004 "Triumf" Group of Companies took part in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting in the "Best Corporate Website" category. In the final table of the closed vote, the site had 3 votes by email and none by SMS — line 45 out of 97 entrants in the category, with exactly the same email vote count shared by ten other sites; by comparison, the table's top line, "Aprel Servis", had 159 email votes and 28 SMS votes[7]. Thus, in the industry category of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet directory the site held a place in the top three, while in the public vote it drew almost no support.

How it closed

The last archival snapshot of the working site is dated 14 November 2006; it also carries the last year shown in the copyright notice, "(c) 2001-2006"[4]. According to the note in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, after that the domain moved to "parking" — a placeholder page was served at the address instead of the site; at the time of checking, the domain triumf.nn.ru is registered as non-existent, and there is no group of companies' site at that address.

Links

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category «Firms (Enterprises): Real Estate», 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, section «Most Popular», 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)