Q Where did Palace come from ?
Time-Warner - Palace started life as a project of Time-Warner, headed by Jim Bumgardner as head technical guy.
The first Palace to hit the net was "The Mansion", a palace owned and operated by Time-Warner.
The doors at The Mansion opened to the public in November of 1995.
Some of the first users of Palace became instant Palaceaholics and the Palace User Group was created by Myotis and, in the summer of 1996, a handful of his fellow Palatians, including Carol, Drover, Skeezil, River, Finchy, Blondie and Mila.
The Palace Inc (TPI) - On July 1, 1996, the Palace left Time-Warner and became it's own separate company. The Palace, Inc. (TPI) announced its formation as a new private corporation, with Mike Maerz named as president and chief executive officer, Jim Bumgardner as chief technology officer, and Mark Jeffrey as director of commercial marketing. Investors in the company were Intel, Softbank, and Warner Music Group. TPI was located in Portland, Oregon.
The Early Days - The early days of Palace were filled with growing pains and changes that shaped the software and the basic phyosophy of palace life.
Some of it was fascinating and some of it was just plain strange.
You can read a detailed accounting of some of these events at A History of the First Year (or so) of The Palace by Dr Richard Suler.
Doc Suler also has a ton of articles about Life at the Palace for anyone looking for a deeper meaning to palace life.
The Move to California - TPI closed it's doors in July of 1998 and sold the rights to the Palace software to Electric Communities in Cupertino, Ca. In June of 1999, Electric Communities changed their name to Communities.com and held that name until they went out of business in late 2000.
The Death of Palace ? - A lot of people saw the closing of Communities.com as the death of Palace. To be sure, it had an effect on "Palace life as we know it" - but it was far from a death.
More than any other program on the net, Palace users are a community. Instead of just separating into separate servers with isolated communities, Palace users have always banded together as a worldwide community of users.
This sense of community is evident in the mailing lists and events that are attended by Palace users from every part of the Palace world - even real life parties where Palace users step out from behind their avatars for a few days of personal chat in the real world.
When Communities.com closed their doors, this worldwide Palace community drew together and formed support systems and tools to fill the void. In many ways, Palace is stronger today without Communities.com.
What remains for Palace, when and if another company picks up the Palace software, remains to be seen.
Where is JBum ? - If you want to drop in on JBum (Jim Bumgardner) and see what he's up to today, you can find him at www.jbum.com.
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