Tripod.com
Encyclopedia
Tripod.com is a web hosting service
owned by Lycos
. Originally aiming its services to college students and young adults, it was one of several sites trying to build online communities
during the dot-com bubble
. As such, Tripod formed part of the first wave of user-generated content
.
s of webspace and the ability to run Common Gateway Interface
(CGI) scripts in Perl
. In addition to basic hosting, Tripod also offers a blog
ging tool, a photo album manager, and the Trellix
site builder for WYSIWYG
page editing. Tripod's for-pay services include additional disk space, a shopping cart, domain name
s, web and POP
/IMAP email.
classmates, Bo Peabody
and Brett Hershey, along with Dick Sabot
, an economics professor at the school. The company was headquartered in Williamstown, Massachusetts
, with Peabody as CEO. Although it would eventually focus on the Internet, Tripod also published a magazine, Tools for Life, that was distributed with textbooks, and offered a discount card for students.
writing features and a simple homepage
builder.
Although the feature was an afterthought originally, Tripod soon became known as a place where people could create free web pages, competing with the likes of GeoCities
and Angelfire
. Criticizing AOL
, the existing leader in this space, for its walled-garden
approach, Peabody described the company's aims: "Our idea is to build a community through user-created and user-based content." A Washington Post reviewer recommended Tripod over GeoCities for giving users an easier URL to remember, and because GeoCities sites had a tendency to crash computers.
, led by New Enterprises Associates, in May 1997 Tripod took an additional round of investment totaling $10 million. By this time the company had grown to 40 employees and was hoping to reach profitability by the 1st quarter of 1998. The second group of investors included Interpublic, which paid $2.5 million for a stake in Tripod estimated at 10 percent, thus implying a valuation of $25 million for the company overall. As it turned out, Tripod would be sold in February 1998 to Lycos for a reported $58 million in stock.
Lycos also ended up owning Tripod's former competitor Angelfire, picked up as part of the acquisition of WhoWhere. The two properties were run concurrently, with Tripod continuing to focus on its college-age audience while Angelfire tended to attract high school
users. In early 2001, Tripod reached 6 million registered users (up from nearly 1 million at the time it was acquired) and was expanding at an estimated 250,000 new sites per month. However, generating profits remained difficult, with an analyst opining that they needed better user profiling so the sites could generate the results expected by advertisers. They also had the challenge of not alienating users while trying to make money. By the end of the year, Tripod and Angelfire also introduced account options allowing users to pay in order to keep their sites ad-free. GeoCities, itself now acquired by Yahoo!
, would follow suit not long afterward.
of tripod.com. However, users can pay a monthly charge and own a domain name.
Paying in this manner also allows for other benefits, such as more disk space for the site which allows the site owner to put more information onto it, and personalized email accounts (i.e. yourname@yoursite.com).
TechCrunch
erroneously reported that Lycos would be shutting down the Tripod service on February 15, 2009. In actuality, the February shutdown was correct but applied only to Lycos Europe and so only users of Lycos Europe services were affected. By the afternoon following the initial TechCrunch article, Lycos posted an entry on their Lycos Buzz blog explaining this and assuring readers that Lycos US and the Tripod service were not shutting down. TechCrunch subsequently corrected the error in their original article.
Web hosting service
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
owned by Lycos
Lycos
Lycos, Inc. is a search engine and web portal established in 1994. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and entertainment websites.-Corporate history:...
. Originally aiming its services to college students and young adults, it was one of several sites trying to build online communities
Virtual community
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...
during the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
. As such, Tripod formed part of the first wave of user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
.
Services
Tripod offers free and paid web hosting services, including 20 megabyteMegabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
s of webspace and the ability to run Common Gateway Interface
Common Gateway Interface
The Common Gateway Interface is a standard method for web servers software to delegate the generation of web pages to executable files...
(CGI) scripts in Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
. In addition to basic hosting, Tripod also offers a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging tool, a photo album manager, and the Trellix
Trellix
Trellix was a software company whose various software offerings allowed web users to set up personal websites with the use of online publishing tools...
site builder for WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
page editing. Tripod's for-pay services include additional disk space, a shopping cart, domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s, web and POP
Post Office Protocol
In computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern...
/IMAP email.
History
Tripod originated in 1992 with two Williams CollegeWilliams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
classmates, Bo Peabody
Bo Peabody
Bo Peabody is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Internet executive who co-founded Tripod.com, one of the earliest dot-coms, in 1992.-Tripod.com:...
and Brett Hershey, along with Dick Sabot
Dick Sabot
Richard "Dick" Sabot was an economist, scholar, farmer, and Internet pioneer who was co-founder of Tripod.com, one of the first and most successful dot-coms, in 1992...
, an economics professor at the school. The company was headquartered in Williamstown, Massachusetts
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Williamstown is a town in Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,754 at the 2010 census...
, with Peabody as CEO. Although it would eventually focus on the Internet, Tripod also published a magazine, Tools for Life, that was distributed with textbooks, and offered a discount card for students.
Website launch
The domain name Tripod.com was created on September 29, 1994, and the site officially launched in 1995 after operating in "sneak-preview mode" for a period. Billed as a "hip web site and pay service for and by college students", it offered how-to advice on practical issues young people might deal with when first living away from home. It planned to charge a minimal fee and make money primarily on commissions from partners who would sell products on the site. Other services available included résuméRésumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
writing features and a simple homepage
Homepage
A home page or homepage has various related meanings to do with web sites:* It most often refers to the initial or main web page of a web site, sometimes called the front page ....
builder.
Although the feature was an afterthought originally, Tripod soon became known as a place where people could create free web pages, competing with the likes of GeoCities
GeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.GeoCities was originally founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages...
and Angelfire
Angelfire
Angelfire is an Internet service offering free space for web sites. It was founded in 1996 and was originally a combination web site building and medical transcription service. Eventually the site dropped the transcription service and focused solely on web site hosting, offering both free and...
. Criticizing AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
, the existing leader in this space, for its walled-garden
Walled garden (media)
A walled garden is an analogy used in various senses in information technology. In the telecommunications and media industries, a "walled garden" refers to a carrier or service provider's control over applications, content, and media on platforms and restriction of convenient access to...
approach, Peabody described the company's aims: "Our idea is to build a community through user-created and user-based content." A Washington Post reviewer recommended Tripod over GeoCities for giving users an easier URL to remember, and because GeoCities sites had a tendency to crash computers.
Investment and buyout
After receiving an initial investment of $4 million in venture capitalVenture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
, led by New Enterprises Associates, in May 1997 Tripod took an additional round of investment totaling $10 million. By this time the company had grown to 40 employees and was hoping to reach profitability by the 1st quarter of 1998. The second group of investors included Interpublic, which paid $2.5 million for a stake in Tripod estimated at 10 percent, thus implying a valuation of $25 million for the company overall. As it turned out, Tripod would be sold in February 1998 to Lycos for a reported $58 million in stock.
Lycos also ended up owning Tripod's former competitor Angelfire, picked up as part of the acquisition of WhoWhere. The two properties were run concurrently, with Tripod continuing to focus on its college-age audience while Angelfire tended to attract high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
users. In early 2001, Tripod reached 6 million registered users (up from nearly 1 million at the time it was acquired) and was expanding at an estimated 250,000 new sites per month. However, generating profits remained difficult, with an analyst opining that they needed better user profiling so the sites could generate the results expected by advertisers. They also had the challenge of not alienating users while trying to make money. By the end of the year, Tripod and Angelfire also introduced account options allowing users to pay in order to keep their sites ad-free. GeoCities, itself now acquired by Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
, would follow suit not long afterward.
Domain name
Web sites generally are a subdomainSubdomain
In the Domain Name System hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.- Overview :The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that is not...
of tripod.com. However, users can pay a monthly charge and own a domain name.
Paying in this manner also allows for other benefits, such as more disk space for the site which allows the site owner to put more information onto it, and personalized email accounts (i.e. yourname@yoursite.com).
Shutdown Rumor
On January 18, 2009 the blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
erroneously reported that Lycos would be shutting down the Tripod service on February 15, 2009. In actuality, the February shutdown was correct but applied only to Lycos Europe and so only users of Lycos Europe services were affected. By the afternoon following the initial TechCrunch article, Lycos posted an entry on their Lycos Buzz blog explaining this and assuring readers that Lycos US and the Tripod service were not shutting down. TechCrunch subsequently corrected the error in their original article.