Talk:Hotline Communications

Article merged: See old talk-page here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.108.72.198 (talk) 23:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

It is questionable/debatable whether this article is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia. The article merely describes one of the numerous not-particularly-significant unsustainable companies that briefly existed during the .com boom/bust period that occurred a decade ago, before going bankrupt.

The article is not too badly written, but Wikipedia is not a catalog of failed business ventures, and should not describe all of the dead .com boom/bust companies. Only companies with significant societal impact should be included. The article is mostly only of sentimental/nostalgic/emotional interest to the small group of ex-employees of the company, and to a few diehard fans. It is not really of interest or significance to the general public, and not of any particular historical value.

The article lacks citations and is therefore mostly personal opinion (not appropriate for an encyclopedia). It is difficult to justify a claim that this ephemeral company was sufficiently noteworthy/significant to warrant having a permanent article in a general encyclopedia.


 * Hotline at its peak was [i]extremely[/i] popular, had millions of downloads, and played a significant role in P2P history. The characterization of this as some small company that did nothing and fizzled is completely inaccurate. Torc2 21:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Besides that, I think the fact that the Hotline community is in fact still active is reason enough to have this article in Wikipedia. --89.6.201.226 (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

David Pogue, in some article for MacWorld, alluded to being introduced to Hotline by some 11-year-old kid. His article raved about social connectedness and whatnot. At the end, however, he made an ironic comment about seeing his new book as one of the popular downloadables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.123.95 (talk) 07:36, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

"In September 2001, Hotline Communications announced development of version 2.0 of the Hotline suite had been stopped, beta versions of which had not been well received by the community, and laid off most of its employees. In mid-October of the same year, the company announced the re-hire of their engineering team "in anticipation of the release of Hotline 2.0" on their website (http://www.bigredh.com/ - offline as of April 2005). However, no stable build of Hotline 2.0 was ever released."

Note that this is what happened according to the press releases. Hotline laid off all of its staff, with the exception of a few executives left to clean up the intellectual property and business affairs of the company in preparation for sale. The rehire of the engineering team consisted of three or four members of the former team.

I'm just not sure how to word this to be non-biased.

As to the first point on the relevance of having a Wikipedia page about Hotline, I think it's worth keeping. It could be argued that Hotline was an important predecessor to AOL Instant Messenger, and, later, social networking sites, as Hotline provided a sense of community and allowed chat and bulletin board postings, and allowed users to share in their interests with friends.

216.175.100.80 05:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC) David

Did Hotline win a Macworld [magazine] "Best of Show" Award, or was it a Macworld Expo "Best of Show" award from the Boston Mac Users Group? (Or both?). In any case, Hotline did win Macworld Sweden's [magazine] Golden Mouse Award —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.192.87 (talk) 08:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

BNET.cc?
"Various versions of hotline can be found on-line, and are freely downloadable at BNET.cc"

This statement appears to be no longer accurate. Please provide updated info about where one can download Hotline clients. 64.178.125.46 (talk) 05:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)


 * A current source for the Hotline software is http://preterhuman.net/gethotlinekdx.php 24.67.80.228 (talk) 19:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That source only lists a very old version of the hotline client. http://www.nailbat.com/content/view/14/32/ lists newer versions, although it does not list the various ports. 71.207.62.100 (talk) 06:27, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Potential sources
Here are some potential sources for this article, found as part of the deletion discussion (which closed as "keep"):

And another one found while looking around: "Hotline sees network plan as its path to profit", The Globe and Mail, 2001. Dreamyshade (talk) 11:21, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Salon.com: "Hotline to the underground" and "Hotline's civil war", 1999
 * MacWorld: "Hotline revisited", 2013
 * In Maximum PC, 2000
 * FileShareFreak: "Hotline - a P2P Pioneer Still Lives On", 2008
 * Lists of press highlights (potential leads for more references): AngelList and DocsHut. One from there: "Napster Leads, but What Follows Works", LA Times, 2001.
 * Wired: "Street Cred: Hot Connection" (1997), "Hotline Reinvents the BBS" (1998), "Still Plenty of Music Out There" (2001)
 * In "Exploring the Internet as a medium for research: web-based questionnaires and online sychronous interviews"
 * In Maximum Security, 2003
 * In Australian Intellectual Property Law
 * In McCallum's Top Workplace Relations Cases

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