Wow! (online service)

The WOW! logo, at 1997

Wow! (styled WOW!) was an online service run by CompuServe in 1996 and early 1997. Started in March 1996, it was originally thought to be an improved version of CompuServe's software, but it was later announced that it would be a user-friendly stand-alone "family" online service and was widely advertised on TV as such. Wow! was the first Internet service to be offered with a monthly "unlimited" rate ($17.95) and stood out because of its brightly colored, seemingly hand-drawn pages.

The first release of this program was marred by software bugs, with many random shutdowns of the service and loss of email messages. The service developed a small, but very loyal fan base. However, this was not enough, and the service was shut down on January 31, 1997.

This was not the end of Wow!s troubles. Several class-action lawsuits were filed, claiming that WOW! was sold to stockholders with false and misleading information.

The CompuServe model had always been to charge customers based on an hourly usage fee. This model was no longer competitive due to the new unlimited programs provided by AOL and sprouting local ISPs. In addition, CompuServe was unable to offer customized usernames. Customers had lengthy numbers with a comma (or period if it one was sending it to another non-Wow! CompuServe member) in the middle as their e-mail address. Wow! was supposed to fix those issues and make the company competitive with AOL.

The Wow! Information Service was supposed to commence with the release of Microsoft Windows 95 SR2. This version of Windows would be the first to include Internet Explorer. Knowing that bundling their browser would be considered anti-competitive, Microsoft also planned to bundle installers for several major ISPs into Windows. CompuServe realized that this was a huge opportunity to acquire multiple new Wow! users, but the software was not ready for distribution.

The company decided that the only way to be ready was to have a paid beta test. IT Contracting firms were consulted and beta testers were brought to Wow! Headquarters. Each beta tester would get six months of free WOW! service and be paid $100/week, plus $10 per bug they found. The beta tester who found the most bugs would be awarded a "bug bounty" of $2000. In the end, the beta testers were not impressed with the payouts, and very few bugs were actually fixed.

Wow.com domain

AOL retained the wow.com domain name since it acquired CompuServe. It kept it dormant from shutdown of Wow! until 2007.

In mid-2007, AOL considered moving its Digg-style news aggregator (then hosted at Netscape.com) to wow.com,[1] before ultimately moving it to Propeller.com. Toward the end of the year, AOL was reportedly working on using the domain for a social networking service focused on the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft,[2] and to that end began redirecting the domain to an existing AOL-hosted World of Warcraft blog, WoW Insider. The blog, now with various social enhancements, officially moved to WoW.com on May 20, 2009.[3]

Little more than a year after that relaunch, in October 2010, the blog resumed its previous name as WoW Insider and was moved to a subdomain of sister blog Joystiq. The wow.com domain was simultaneously relaunched as a deal of the day site similar to Groupon.[4] However, that site was also short-lived, shutting down in late 2011.[5] Throughout 2012, the domain redirected to another AOL site, Games.com.

Since February 2013, the domain has served as a bare-bones alternate interface to AOL's search engine, itself powered by Google Search. In 2015, a subdomain of wow.com (content.wow.com) began re-posting various articles from other AOL-owned sites, apparently for search engine optimization purposes. As of February 2015 wow.com, redirects to a web portal that is based on America Online's home page www.AOL.com.

References

  1. ↑ Arrington, Michael (2007-08-31). "Update On Netscape.com: It's Done, Possibly Moving To WOW.com. Big AOL Layoffs Coming". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  2. ↑ Arrington, Michael (2007-10-02). "AOL Finds An Obvious Use For WOW.com: A World Of Warcraft Social Network". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  3. ↑ Harper, Elizabeth (2009-05-20). "Welcome to WoW.com!". WoW.com. Weblogs, Inc. (AOL). Archived from the original on 2009-05-21. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  4. ↑ Schonfeld, Erick (2010-10-05). "Wow! AOL Thinks It Can Succeed As The 500th Groupon Clone". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-09-12.
  5. ↑ "Wow FAQs". AOL. Retrieved 2013-09-12. Print off all your Wowchers by Dec. 31, 2011.
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