Women.com: ASHES OF OLD LOVES
Women.com started as Women’s Wire in the mid-90s and grew into one of the first major social-focused communities on the web. Unlike gURL.com, which emerged out of an art+technology graduate program and later sustained itself through corporate partnerships, Women.com started off backed by venture capital. Their advertising page proclaims that they are “THE No. 1 place to reach affluent, savvy women.” It’s also a transparent peek into the path to monetization through advertising in 1996 leading up to the initial IPO frenzy and the modern advertisement-driven web as we know it today.
Their homepages portal was particularly meant for women (obviously), although it didn’t stop men from building their own sites too.
For a deeper knowledge from the perspective of business and the perspective of women’s internet history, I recommend digging into the Internet History Podcast interview with Claire Evans on her book, Broad Band, and exploring both of these works separately as well!
Bonus: I’m obsessed with this image roundup of all the people involved with Women.com, here.
Here’s some prose sent out into the great world wide web, like a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean.
ASHES OF OLD LOVES
i.
75’S Traffic was bumper to bumper. The rain insisted on coming down in a steady stream. Lelah drove faster then the conditions allowed, faster then someone in her situation should. She knew that her life could not afford not to have her in it. Her parents and even her job depended on her being there, she had become as essential as air to their existence. She pressed scan on the radion and the stations jumped from R & B to light rock to a famale preacher barking out the penalties of sin. She stopped the music on a light rock station and allowed the old songs to take her back th her high school days when her life was less complicated. The popular music of the people to often was filled with lust and lonliness, and she couldn’t handle the pain of the masses now. She had rushed out of her home in Albany so that she could be in Macon by noon. “What’s my rush? I’m just dreaming again.” He nver made promises, always the same line of responses from him. “I’ll try to be there”, “ I might stop by”, “Don’t wait fom me.” He always said it like her life could possibly rotate on its own axis. A decade of revolving in his orbit guaranteed that she would rush if he even mentioned the possibility. “How did I get here from there?” Lelah tried not to ask that question too often. But the rain slowed the pace of her speeking, and the fog and wind viewed before her like a curtain on a stage showing her the road from then to now.
THANK YOU WOMEN.COM FOR A CHANCE TO PUT MY THOUGHTS IN PRINT. IF ANYONE READS MY PAGE PLEASE E-MAIL ME WITH YOUR COMMENTS AND OTHER CHAPTERS WILL FOLLOW.
A. D. REDD
ALBANY, GEORGIA
USA