 | |
Type of site | Web portal |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Time Inc. (Time Warner) |
| URL | www |
| Launched | 1994 |
| Current status | Closed in April 1999 (redirects to 'timeinc.com/brands') |
Pathfinder was a landing page with links to various Time Inc. websites. In its initial form, Pathfinder was one of the first web portals, created as Time Warner's entry onto the Internet. The objective of Pathfinder was to be an all-encompassing site that brought the best content from all of Time Warner under one banner.
The site opened on October 24, 1994, with a small content team led by Paul Sagan, Walter Isaacson, James Kinsella, Bruce Judson, Craig Bromberg, Oliver Knowlton, and Curt Viebranz. [1] [2] [3] The team grew rapidly to service a growing list of internal "content partners" - at its highest point, these "content partners" numbered 80. Most of these content partners were Time Inc. magazines such as Time, People, Fortune and others, but others came from the widely distributed Time Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery) corporate empire.
Pathfinder.com was controversial within Time Warner. Many content partners were unhappy with the fact Pathfinder's existence prevented them from using their own URLs. For example, People Magazine was not allowed to use the domain "people.com," but was instead restricted to a directory on Pathfinder (pathfinder.com/people/). Pathfinder's own staff were shocked when Time Inc. senior manager Don Logan publicly derided Pathfinder.com at an external analyst's meeting as a "black hole" of unprofitability.
Pathfinder went through many managers and editors in its short life, and suffered from high staff turnover rates, especially after it became clear to many that its future was highly uncertain. Many early tech journalists and writers passed through its doors, including Walter Isaacson, James Kinsella (MSNBC), Daniel Okrent, John R. Quain (CBS News Up to the Minute and J-Q on Technology), John Voelcker (GreenCarReports.com), Josh Quittner, Lev Grossman, Maura Johnston and Steven Petrow.
The site was closed in April 1999, and was widely considered to be an expensive failure. Some claim that Pathfinder cost Time Inc. between $100 and $120 million.
Some analysts believe that Pathfinder's failure led Time Warner's senior managers to conclude that it was impossible to run a successful Internet portal, and this judgement led directly to Time Warner pursuing its eventual merger with AOL, a merger which unsuccessfully sought to generate "synergy" between the two corporate giants.
Pathfinder.com transitioned to a landing page, with links to Time Inc.'s other sites. [4]
AOL is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc.
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server. This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place. Usually though, advertisers use ad networks to serve their advertisements, resulting in a revshare system and higher quality ad placement.
Warner Media, LLC was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
Comcast Corporation, incorporated and headquartered in Philadelphia, is the largest American multinational telecommunications and media conglomerate. The corporation is the second-largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue, and is also the largest pay-TV company, the largest cable TV company, and largest home Internet service provider in the United States. Comcast is additionally the nation's third-largest home telephone service provider. It provides services to U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and the District of Columbia. As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is also a high-volume producer of feature films for theatrical exhibition, over-the-air and cable television programming, and theme park operator.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner in 1965. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner on October 10, 1996. As of April 2022, all of its assets are now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The headquarters of Turner's properties are largely located at the CNN Center in Downtown Atlanta, and the Turner Broadcasting campus off Techwood Drive in Midtown Atlanta, which also houses Turner Studios. Some of their operations are housed within WBD's corporate and global headquarters inside 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan's West Side district, and at 230 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan, both in New York City, respectively.
Paramount Media Networks is an American mass media division of Paramount Global that oversees the operations of many of its television channels and online brands. Its related international division is Paramount International Networks.
Excite is an American web portal operated by IAC that provides a variety of outsourced content including news and weather, a metasearch engine, and a user homepage. In the United States, the main Excite homepage had long been a personal start page called My Excite. Excite once operated a webmail service commonly known as Excite Mail until August 31, 2021.
Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, just behind Comcast, and the third-largest pay TV operator behind Comcast and AT&T. Charter is the fifth-largest telephone provider based on number of residential lines.
Hotwired (1994–1999) was the first commercial online magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of the print magazine Wired, Hotwired carried original content.
CDnow, Inc. was a dot-com company that operated an online shopping website selling compact discs and music-related products. In April 1998, during the dot-com bubble, the company was valued at over $1 billion. In July 2000, it was acquired by Bertelsmann Music Group for $117 million; shortly thereafter Amazon was contracted to operate the website. At its peak, it employed over 750 people and had offices in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, New York City, London, and Los Angeles.
Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operating in 29 states. Its corporate headquarters were located in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with other corporate offices in Stamford, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Herndon, Virginia.
Go.com is a portal for Disney content that was created after The Walt Disney Company acquired the search engine Infoseek. Go.com is operated by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, one of three divisions of the company. It began as a web portal launched by Jeff Gold. Go.com includes content from ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney Television and is hosted under a .go.com name. Along with Time Warner's Pathfinder.com, Go.com proved to be an expensive failure for its parent company, as web users largely preferred to use search engines to access content directly, rather than using directories. In 2013, the site was transitioned from a general-interest portal to a simple landing page.
Ashwin Navin is an American entrepreneur, who is the CEO and co-founder of Samba TV, a data and analytics service that measures television viewership using opt-in data from Internet-connected devices and set-top boxes. The company has been compared to more traditional TV measurement firms like Nielsen which rely on the people meter to gather viewership data.
Time Inc. was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New York City. It owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake Time, Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, Fortune, People, InStyle, Life, Golf Magazine, Southern Living, Essence, Real Simple, and Entertainment Weekly. It also had subsidiaries which it co-operated with the UK magazine house Time Inc. UK, whose major titles include What's on TV, NME, Country Life, and Wallpaper. Time Inc. also co-operated over 60 websites and digital-only titles including MyRecipes, Extra Crispy, TheSnug, HelloGiggles, and MIMI.
Ronald W. (Ron) Hovsepian is the chief executive officer of Indigo Agriculture. He was previously the president and chief executive officer of Novell, Inc., and the president, chief executive officer, and director of IntraLinks Inc.
NeoPlanet was a Trident-shell graphical web browser initially released in 1997 by New York–based Bigfoot International, Inc. and later maintained and developed by its subsidiary NeoPlanet, Inc. It was one of the first browsers to be fully skinnable.
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's third-largest telecommunications company by revenue and the largest provider of mobile telephone services in the U.S. As of 2023, AT&T was ranked 13th on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations, with revenues of $120.7 billion.
Ann S. Moore is a former chairman and chief executive officer of Time Inc. until the fall of 2010. She became the company's first female CEO when she was appointed to the position in July 2002.
Bruce Judson is an American author, media innovator, and public policy analyst.
James Kinsella is an American tech entrepreneur and former journalist and helped develop some of the earliest web- and cloud-based ventures in the United States and the European Union. He is considered a pioneer of early, web-based digital media. He served as president of MSNBC.com in the 1990s and as CEO at Interoute Communications, Ltd.
james kinsella pathfinder.
 | This World Wide Web–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |