Man Who Invented Pop-Up Ads: ‘I’m Sorry’

[Outrageous]

Ethan Zuckerman is sorry.
Zuckerman, who leads the Center for
Civic Media at MIT , says he didn’t
realize what he was bringing into the
world when he wrote the code for the
first pop-up ad more than 20 years
ago.
He tells the story of how it happened
in an exquisite essay about how the
ad-based business model came to
dominate the Internet — and why it
really shouldn’t (and what we ought
to do about it).
It was the mid-1990s, and
Zuckerman was working as a designer
and programmer for Tripod.com :

“At the end of the day, the
business model that got us
funded was advertising. The
model that got us acquired was
analyzing users’ personal
homepages so we could better
target ads to them. Along the
way, we ended up creating one
of the most hated tools in the
advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up
ad.
“It was a way to associate an
ad with a user’s page without
putting it directly on the page,
which advertisers worried would
imply an association between
their brand and the page’s
content. Specifically, we came
up with it when a major car
company freaked out that
they’d bought a banner ad on a
page that celebrated **** ***. I
wrote the code to launch the
window and run an ad in it. I’m
sorry. Our intentions were
good.”​

When Geocities introduced pop-ups a
few weeks later, he says, they reused
his code.
“Not only did I deploy what was
probably the first popup, I wrote the
JavaScript and the server-side Perl to
launch it,” Zuckerman told me in a
follow-up. “I’m old.”

Source:

You must be registered for see links

He isn't forgiven tbh

You must be registered for see images

 

[~Ethereal~]

He should be not allowed to invent something for at least a decade.

 

[Jinrou]

Sorry? Can never forgive him

 

[Outrageous]

He should be not allowed to invent something for at least a decade.

Or forever

You must be registered for see images

 

[ByakuganUser]

Zuckerman is like ...

Spoiler

You must be registered for see images

And I'm like ...

Spoiler

You must be registered for see images

 

[Sharingankingitachi]

That guy hates humanity
What kind of monster does that he is terrible

 

[BlacLord™]

You guys need to get a grip and Adblock.

 

[Lord Naruto San]

Thank god who invented Ad Blocker xDD

 

[Outrageous]

AdBlocker? already installed it on my Firefox and Chrome

 

[Sex]

You must be registered for see images

Yes

 

[slayerdanger]

I think it would have been invented anyway, it's a simple concept really. So, I don't understand why he's apologizing.

 

[Wabbit]

Seriously.Are you using Internet Explorer and ask tool bar?
It is a very rare thing for me even if I hang around torrent and porn sites. Firefox blocks it for me. Also ABP and Ghostery blocks ads and cookies.A regular Internet user should know at least about an adblocker or do you enjoy those vulgar ads every time you downloads some pirated shit??

 

[Fireplay]

The offspring of satan himself.

 

[Jazzy Stardust]

This was a problem like 10 years ago. He should've done it then, but no he got rich.

 

[Gintõki1]

Burn in hell.
Adblocker dude have fun in heaven.

 

[Aim64C]

This was a problem like 10 years ago. He should've done it then, but no he got rich.

Actually, he really didn't get rich.

This was all back during the more wild days of the internet.

If you look at the story and the sequence of events - it makes a lot of sense. Basically - the idea was to have an advertisement that wasn't associated with the host content. A car company realized that the banner ad space they had purchased also displayed on any site that accepted that ad company's banner - to include pornography sites. The car company didn't want people thinking they were purchasing advertisement space on pornography sites.

It was a way to dissociate the two pages.

Of course - other advertising firms hopped on board and realized that it could be used to blast shit in people's faces to force attention from a web user.

This guy wouldn't have gotten rich from it. If anything - the advertising company he worked for would have - but even that is unlikely. This was back in the more wild days of the internet and IP concepts hadn't been transferred over very well.

 

[Retro Chaos]

He can be forgiven - Adblock now exists.

 

[MysticalMizuki]

He can be forgiven - Adblock now exists.

Exactly, you said what i was gonna say xD

 

[Keyboard Uchiha]

We should thank the adblock dude though