Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

Po Bronson’s 1999 article about Epinions, then a

Po Bronson’s 1999 article about Epinions, then a nascent startup, is a neat little time capsule of the period just before almost everything in Silicon Valley went poof.

Everything is faster. Zero drag is optimal. For a while, new applicants would jokingly be asked about their “drag coefficient.” Since the office is a full hour’s commute from San Francisco, an apartment in the city was a full unit of drag. A spouse? Drag coefficient of one. Kids? A half point per. Then they recognized that such talk, even in jest, could be taken as discriminatory in a hiring situation.

Epinions is still going and is now owned by eBay. (via sippey, who is somewhat of an internet time capsule himself)