Well porn has always been credited with inventing the popup ad by some folks.
Robin Nixon has been the name I have most often heard as the inventor of the popup but back in 2005, on Oprano, he clarified that he was not actually the inventor but indicated that he first saw it being used by microsoft in 1994.
This is a post he made on Oprano regarding that:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin
Sadly I can't lay claim to inventing pop-ups...
What happened was that in 1994 I got involved with Microsoft in the UK because I was running the UK's first Internet radio station Cyberville Radio. BBC2 came and did a big piece on us and so Microsoft contacted me because they wanted to push their Explorer browser they said "would I like to come and see some cool new stuff you could do with IE" - so off I went to MS HQ in the UK and they showed me a load of stuff without NDA!
One of these was a way to make a radio station pop-up off the page so that the audio remained playing when you changed web pages. They had only just come up with this but it was part of the spec for html and worked with Netscape too - MS just happened to be the first to use this facility.
So - off I went and created ABC-web - Active Banner Consoles - hence the name Consoles as now used. My 'invention' was to tie the pop-up in with traffic sharing programs. And Consoles were cool then - they just became so over-used it was horrible - we stopped using Consoles as soon as we saw this and moved onto the Eureka newsletter (but that's another story).
And I believe it *was* Timon that did the one thing I wish I had thought of - he beat me to the concept of the Exit Console. That was a brilliant development of the Console and we actually copied him by giving all our webmasters the option to make their ABC-web Consoles Entrance or Exit and about 80% went to Exit.
So, if Jim did that pop-up of his before 1994 then he was first - otherwise I reckon it was Microsoft & me  |
The Jim he is referring to is Jim from greenguyandjim. He claimed to invent the popup in 1996
This is a post from him:
Quote:
Originally Posted by JimB
Too Late
Back in early 96, when I wanted to learn how to do everything, I wrote a little script that when you clicked on a button, a picture would pop up. My partner then, Doug from Dougsden...decided to take my script and use it for a Cybererotica ad when you entered one of their sites. Hence, the advent of the popup |
I don't know who Etan Zuckerman is, I had not heard of him before you posted that.
I worked for a company in 1999 that laid claim to (and I cannot remember what they called it) inventing the endless chain of popups where you closed one and it opened another and on and on. Only way out of it was to click into the join page and then you could usually close from there.
Also, interestingly, the first popups i remember encountering were actually for a non adult product, some spycam thingie. They were popping that from mainstream sites all over the place.
Lastly, Klen, were you aware that:
For advertising inquiries you can email marketing at gfy.com
I read that somewhere, thought I would pass it on.