Happy 25th anniversary E-commerce (?)

[jsinger]

Pick your own date but this article suggests ecommerce started 25 years ago.

[ecommercetimes.com...]

"Almost nobody outside of universities had computers," Randall told the E-Commerce Times. "But we could see it coming. It's like Bill Gates' story of having a computer in every home: We recognized that eventually you'd be able to trade all kinds of things this way."

Actually lots of people had home computers in '83 and for several years before. Ask Apple and Radio Shack. What they didn't have were modems.

[LifeinAsia]

I think it's a stretch to call that an E-commerce transaction. This isn't much different from a guy on an e-mail list sending a message to the entire list saying he wants to sell his bicycle, then finds a buyer from one of the list members. (I'm sure something like this happened more than once before then.)

To me, to qualify as "E-commerce" should require payment to be handled online, not just advertising.

[Wlauzon]

According to the History channel, the first "real" ecommerce, with secure ordering etc, was in 1995.

We had an advertising site up in 1992 and sold stuff by phone, but I don't think that qualifies as real ecommerce. (I wish I had a copy of our first website - it was mostly just text, and HTML was like ... "crude").

To me, ecommerce are transactions and orders that take place 100% online. And email orders don't count.

[edited by: Wlauzon at 5:03 am (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]

[Jack_Hughes]

I was on a view data based bulletin board in 1986 and I bought a game via my telephone bill (an asteroids clone). I'm sure there are instances like that prior to 1986. It was an entirely electrical transaction performed on my then computer (an Amstrad CPC 6128).

I don't think that e-commerce has to involve the internet.

[jsinger]

I'd trace modern ecommerce back to the day some guy first bought "feelthy pictures" online.

I got online in '93 and people would ask what you could do on the then-new WWW. Only one answer seemed to register with non-techies: "you can see unlimited porn."

[Essex_boy]

Yes and thats an odour that has stuck with the WWW

[Bewenched]

Ha .. I remember my old modem.... the kind you put your telephone hand set on. Wow that was a long time ago.

[StarCoder]

i had an old computer book from the mid-80's, and they already mentioned connected computers between 2 factories in the early 70's - and the one computer would send a message to the other factory's computer every time they run low on supply so that they would send a truck.
now THATS a usefull thing!