| Okay, this whole article is going to seem a bit Andy | | | | customers with networks and telco services. Then I |
| Rooneyesque. But I just can't help it. I have to say | | | | was at UUNET, when, at the time, it was the worlds |
| this. What happened to concern over page load | | | | largest Internet backbone provider. From there, well, |
| times? | | | | I went to work at EarthLink, my beloved ISP, to |
| Back in 1996, I subscribed to my first ISP, GNN (soon | | | | leave the wholesale world to get closer to the |
| acquired by AOL) for $19.95 per month. This, of | | | | customer. |
| course, is back in the days of metered service. I | | | | It was at EarthLink where we had to do a balancing |
| think it included 16 hours per month of use. Although | | | | act between ad revenues and customer experience. |
| it was slow, I do know that it was a fun time to be | | | | Our ad group, bless their hearts, worked so hard to |
| online (as long as you kept an eye on your watch). | | | | get deals and folks like me in Customer Experience |
| Page loading was slow due to the 14.4k modem, but | | | | (that was what the product management group was |
| the excitement was there. I was an information | | | | called) shot them down half of the time. Why? We |
| pioneer. Shortly thereafter, I heard about a company | | | | were looking out for our subscribers. We were |
| called EarthLink. They were giving unlimited dialup for | | | | concerned about intruding on their time. They were |
| the same $19.95. Then came the 56k modem. I was | | | | paying us for access, not to be barraged with ads. |
| sold! | | | | We were concerned with page load times. On our |
| Now, fast forward a few years to 1999. I got DSL | | | | start page, we took tremendous efforts to ensure |
| and boy was that nice. I was surfing and downloading | | | | that pages were well-designed from both a |
| (anyone remember Napster?) to my hearts content. | | | | performance perspective and aesthetically. |
| DSL truly was, as the marketers were saying: | | | | Finally...fast forward to 2008 and the point of this |
| "lightning fast", with "blazing downloads". Why? Well, | | | | article. I am sitting here on a DSL connection in my |
| pages were still relatively purpose-built without too | | | | Web 2.0 world waiting for the pages to load...Java, |
| much extraneous information, advertising was used | | | | AJAX, rich media ads, embedded videos, blah, blah, |
| more sparingly, and you had technologists keeping us | | | | blah...Yes, the marketers have done what the early |
| marketers in our places. After all, the Internet was | | | | inhabitants feared and developers have capitulated |
| envisioned as this place of free thought and free | | | | because they've become obsessed with pushing the |
| information sharing. It was a new world and the early | | | | envelope. My page load times are back to circa 1996 |
| inhabitants respected it. | | | | and what am I waiting for? I am waiting on flashy |
| I should add that besides writing articles I've done a | | | | content that I am not even interested in, so-called |
| lot of things, particularly in this area of technology. I | | | | targeted ad content, and whatever else. All I want is |
| began my career in technology back in 1996 when I | | | | an experience like 2000. I want my page fully loaded |
| began working in global Telco at a company called | | | | in under 2 seconds. Let's take a cue from the classic |
| Concert Management Services. It was a joint venture | | | | blues guitarists: "Less is more" my friends. |
| between BT and MCI to serve large, global corporate | | | | |