Viaweb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Viaweb is a web-based application that allows users to build and host their own online stores with little effort and technical expertise, directly from their own web browser. Started in August 1995 by Paul Graham and Robert Morris, it is well-known as the first application service provider and for being written in the Lisp programming language.

According to Paul Graham, the software was originally called Webgen; ^[1] another company was using the same name ^[2] and they renamed it to Viaweb, "because it worked via the Web".^[3]

In 1998, Yahoo! Inc. bought Viaweb for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at about $45 million, and renamed it Yahoo! Store. ^[4] It is currently still operational.

[edit] See also

• RTML

[edit] References

• ^  http://paulgraham.com/vwplan.html Viaweb's First Business Plan, Paul Graham
• ^  http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html Apr 2005, Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas, Paul Graham
• ^  http://paulgraham.com/avg.html Apr 2001, Beating the Averages, Paul Graham
• ^  http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release184.html June 1998, Yahoo To Acquire Viaweb, Yahoo! Inc.

[edit] External Links

• Archive.org Pre-Yahoo screenshots, via Archive.org
• http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/ Yahoo! Stores