Jim's Legacy

"What is the meaning of life?" While some would say "42" ... others, with a deeper sense of self and existence would say "Leave the world a better place than you found it".

We can safely say that Jim Wilson certainly left the Internet a better place than it was when he first found it. In fact, it could be argued quite easily that the Internet is a better place because of Jim Wilson.

Take a look at some of the things Jim pioneered .... and you'll really appreciate the impact he's had on all of us.

• 1993/1994 - Virtual Promote.
  Back in those days, there were only 3 or 4 search engines: Altavista, Webcrawler, Excite, and Infoseek. These engines weren't the commercial giants they are today (or once were).... they were breaking ground, trying to make all of the information on the 'net find-able. Back then, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry had a website. Most of the sites out there were informational, loaded with actual documents, information, etc. Jim studied, learned, screwed up, and finally figured out that you and I could not only get our own websites listed there, but be somewhere above page 50. He learned how to "Optimize" his website for inclusion into these monsters, and then told the world about it.
  
  
• 1996: People start selling their time and services as "Search Engine Optimization Experts", or "SEOs"
  An industry spawned, and businesses formed, where none existed before. Thanks Jim.
  
  
• 1996 - SearchEngineForums.com
  Think back to life before "UBB". You had Matt Wright out there with is freeware BBS, and a few lousy offshoots of it. Jim finds this guy selling something called "The Ultimate Bulletin Board". It looked different and felt different. Jim buys a copy of it, and throws it up on the website more as a means of having an alternative to the 5,000 emails a day he's getting asking for advice. Within a few months, there are 10,000 people posting out in the forums, giving and getting, sharing and learning From each other .... A community is born.
  
  
• 1997: UBB has now sold a few thousand copies, and "communities" are popping up all over the place.
  The potential was always there ... once SearchEngineForums took off, and the community really took hold, our membership started seeing the benifet. They bought UBB by the bundles, which spawned an unbelievable level of competition in the Forum Software industry, and at the same time, the idea of "Community" started to mean a whole lot more. Thanks Jim.
  
  
• 1997 - Helpwaresites.com.
  Jim contacts a programmer (me) to obtain the software to start up his own little search engine. Remember, this is 1997 ... there's about 7 big spidering search engines, Yahoo, and a handful of lesser known engines out there. Helpware is launched, making use of the searchengineforums.com community's desire to work with one another. It's successful in it's own right, but the impact it has on the Internet was huge.....
  
  
• 1998 - Vortals are Born.
  Helpware sites runs on Hyperseek. Immediately, members of the community realize how cool it would be to start up their own mini-search engines, devoted to their area of expertise. Within a year, Hyperseek, and its growing number of competitors are powering over 5,000 niche-specific search engines. Today, that number is up over 100,000. I don't think that even Jim saw that coming.
  
  
• 1998/1999 - GoTo.com
  Jump into the wayback machine. Goto.com comes out with a novel idea ... people are struggling with SEO, so lets make that easier on them, and let them not only decide what exact keywords they want to target, but give them the ability to easily ensure themselves page 1 placement. Jim sees this as "The next big thing" ... talks to Goto.com, who at the time had about 200 advertisers, and gets them their own forum at searchengineforums.com to help get the word out and answer all of the questions that this type of medium generated. Within a year, goto.com has 8,000 advertisers and is the biggest coolest thing going.
  
  Here's something I'll bet you didn't know .... goto.com, the guys that "invented" pay per click, were avid and active members of the searchengineforums prior to launching the idea. They've never actually admitted it, but I'm sure that the SEO nightmares, as told in the thousands of posts at SEF were a big part of the catalyst spawning their creation. Goto credits Jim's steadfast support of the idea, and the proliferation of it's relevance and importance in the forums, and the Gazette with their success. To hear them tell it, there wouldn't be an overture.com today if Jim didn't do all that he did for goto.com back then.