The Coupon Explosion — Robert M. Johnson

Allen's List was published in 2011 and tells the story of an internet entrepreneur who scored big in the era following the burst of the DOT.COM bubble. It is about a man who wanted to ride the crest of a profound change in American society and ingenuity. In some ways the DOT.COM bubble happened because the culture that was to be had not yet reached maturity. Those who were the creators of the internet world that would emerge did not yet have the clientele in place because the personal computer was still making its presence felt in the popular culture.
Having only come to market in 1981, the PC as it came to be called, was still a business machine that aspired to be a popular icon. When music and photography became digitalized, there was no stopping the development of the computer movement in American society. Thirty years later, the computer had become almost as commonplace in the home as the television. Unlike the television, it was highly interactive and marketers were now jumping on the bandwagon.
What could not be foreseen in 1981 was the social media phenomenon. People had been using their personal computers for online shopping, gambling and even bidding on auction sites. But what came about in 2004 out of Harvard University's IT innovation labs was going to change the whole world of the PC. Facebook, MySpace and other social sites like Twitter and YouTube would bring another dimension, the audio-visual realism to computing. Where earlier computers could not manage the memory demands of digital images, the new, easily accessible home computer, was now linked to the internet. Because it had more efficient transmission speeds, this faster and more powerful machine would again move the computer culture forward to rival the television's visuals.
The story of Allen Dowling, internet entrepreneur, is part of this socio-economic growth online. Somewhere around 2009, a critical mass of home computer ownership was reached and there would be no turning back. But even more essential to this social evolution in America, was the fact that twenty year olds like Mark Zuckerberg were coming of age in the computer culture. It was in their DNA; their lifeblood was programmed to think not “what can we do with the computer,” but “how far can we go with the computer.” Coupon Explosion is the story of this expansion.