Mailland article compares 101 Online, Minitel
Assistant professor Julien Mailland’s study on the history of the U.S. Minitel Network has been accepted for publication in the Annals of the History of Computing, which is published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Mailland’s article, “101 Online: History of the American Minitel Network and Lessons from Its Failure,” follows the trajectory of the French company Minitel, which was the first organization to successfully distribute digital information to a mass market. The U.S. version of Minitel, 101 Online, performed poorly by comparison, he says.
The paper draws on a number of interviews with 101 Online decision makers and traces the company’s activities from its inception in 1991. In his abstract, Mailland says his work examines the 101 Online “ecosystem” and suggests reasons it failed and Minitel succeeded.