Websites that changed/shaped the internet

[mrcfo]

Here's mine...(in no particular order)

google.com - I remember using alta vista way back when I first started webbing. OK, the web and contents was shit but nevertheless the web search engines and algos back then was just crap. I like google's clean, simple interface and relevant searches. Oh, also great for stalking ex gfs and potential gfs LOL.

youtube.com - love the amateur videos, talkback shoes, bootleg asian movies and all. really revolutionised the web experience

gmail.com - hotmail was really the one which made email popular but honestly, i love gmail, bigger capacity and personally I liked the layout/how everything is filed.

facebok.com - ok, it's lost it's lustre amongst friends and family and it's also a fad but when it first came out, it took most by storm. Great way to keep in touch if used properly (that means a reasonable number of friends and not 500+). Although friendster was arguably the "first mover" in social networking - or at least to popularise it, facebook has better features, is far more dynamic (though I wish it would stop changing so...) and by far has more apps and junk.

icq - yes, the thing that started the whole webchat phase but honestly, it's now dead but nevertheless, i still miss that stick not and "uh-oh" noise popping up.

mirc - another app and not website but nevertheless, it was revolutionary in my books. made a few good mates out of it, connected with most 16 yr olds (my age) back in 1997 and never knew how many Asians there could be in Melbourne LOL.

geocities - ah yes, granddaddy of myspace. the days of shitty 640x380pixel pics, simple layouts and no fancy add ons (e.g. flash). Days where you could do up random pages and post LOL.

google maps - god where would I now be without it? Getting directions before going to that party and never arriving late! Also helps with stalking potential gfs and where they live! LOL.

interestingly enough, none of the above probably with the exception of youtube created anything breaktaking and were often 2nd with the idea, but it was their ability to exploit exisitng techs and improve them to the masses that had made them memorable.

[Sunflare]

You forgot about the image boards such as 4chan and 7chan. Yes, I'm actually serious.

This article published in Time Magazine pretty much sums up the impact on the internet these image boards have made that exists on the internet.

http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...821435,00.html

[tapestrybabe]

Originally Posted by mrcfo

geocities - ah yes, granddaddy of myspace. the days of shitty 640x380pixel pics, simple layouts and no fancy add ons (e.g. flash). Days where you could do up random pages and post LOL.

ahhh...
geocities. where i would spend
hours and hours updating to
make a perfect webpage.
yeah, i remember those days...

i still have a geocities account...
with a lot of photos there still too...
they will be shutting down in october
and i have to move all my junk from
out of there still...

[mrcfo]

Originally Posted by tapestrybabe

ahhh...
geocities. where i would spend
hours and hours updating to
make a perfect webpage.
yeah, i remember those days...

i still have a geocities account...
with a lot of photos there still too...
they will be shutting down in october
and i have to move all my junk from
out of there still...

hahaha brings back the memories...ahh yes the "neighbourhoods". I remember most Asians were on Tokyo.

haha my friends would spend hours literally writing about who their friends were at school, post scanned pics of their gfs etc and shoutouts etc. those were the days mate!

who could also forget NAPSTER? literally started the whole P2P music trend!

sadly many of the startups during the dot com boom that started the whole net revolution are now bought out or out of business due to poor updates in own tech!

[Sunflare]

Definitely google maps as listed by OP. It is extremely useful for all practical purposes. Including finding out where the heck that bar is at already for the meetup with friends.

[SunWuKong]

Originally Posted by mrcfo

google.com - I remember using alta vista way back when I first started webbing. OK, the web and contents was shit but nevertheless the web search engines and algos back then was just crap. I like google's clean, simple interface and relevant searches. Oh, also great for stalking ex gfs and potential gfs LOL.

actually Lycos has the distinction of first doing search like Google currently does. but Lycos abandoned that kind of search in the late 90s when Yahoo was doing better, and switched to the Yahoo type of directory-based search engine. all the tech nerds like me and my college friends, however, had always preferred Lycos simply because it was an objective and indiscriminate search. at any rate, this switch ultimately doomed Lycos. as the web became more saturated, however, text-based search became much more useful than Yahoo's directory-based search, which just could not keep up with the growth of the web. in came Google.com and Yahoo was just not quick enough to fill the need that Google.com did.

Originally Posted by mrcfo

gmail.com - hotmail was really the one which made email popular but honestly, i love gmail, bigger capacity and personally I liked the layout/how everything is filed.

gmail is a step above most other web-based mail when it first came out because of its new way of organising emails in the form of threaded discussion. but hotmail definitely is much more important in shaping and changing the internet for being the first web-based email client that anybody can sign up for. prior to that, you could not get your emails on just any computer with an internet connection. you needed a computer with an email client, and you would have needed an email account that allowed POP3/IMAP access. either that, or you needed an email client that was specifically designed for your email account. and keep in mind, back then, there wasn't such a thing as email accounts that literally anybody could sign up for. hotmail changed all that. it was email for all, and accessible anywhere with a connection and a browser. but it wasn't just about accessing your emails anywhere. hotmail was perhaps the first realisation of using a web browser as a universal client application that delivered rich content. when hotmail was popularised, your average user began to realise that the web can be used for more than just looking at websites.

Originally Posted by mrcfo

facebok.com - ok, it's lost it's lustre amongst friends and family and it's also a fad but when it first came out, it took most by storm. Great way to keep in touch if used properly (that means a reasonable number of friends and not 500+). Although friendster was arguably the "first mover" in social networking - or at least to popularise it, facebook has better features, is far more dynamic (though I wish it would stop changing so...) and by far has more apps and junk.

in my opinion, the importance of facebook.com is not actually social networking. it is the facebook API which allowed third parties to develop and deploy their own applications. facebook in essense became a second tier upon which web apps are located. though not without its limitations, it allowed for faster-to-market time for new web apps. the whole idea has launched million-dollar businesses, and other platforms are following suite.

Originally Posted by mrcfo

mirc - another app and not website but nevertheless, it was revolutionary in my books. made a few good mates out of it, connected with most 16 yr olds (my age) back in 1997 and never knew how many Asians there could be in Melbourne LOL.

MIRC was just a client for IRC though. if it wasn't MIRC that got so popular, another client would have gotten popular. IRC itself has a longer history, and i think it was the first chat system that communicated via TCP/IP (somebody correct me if i'm wrong), and that's why it was important.

[tapestrybabe]

i started my online activity
around 1999/2000...
cuz thats when i bought my first computer...

yeah, hotmail was my first email i ever created...
geocities was my first webpage i ever started using...
and yeah, i remember using icq as my main
chatting device...

how about adding livejournal...
but i dont know which blog site came first tho.
but livejournal was my first blogging account
i ever signed up for...

and back in the day when it
came to social networking sites...
i miss my korealink.
c2a and asianavenue days..

[MarshalStealth]

My first web service was a MCI email service back in the 90's. Then I jumped to Hotmail.com and Rocketmail.com ... Later Rocketmail became Y! mail. (fyi- MCI mail no longer exist.)

My current favorite web services are: gmail.com, most google services (esp. google maps), weather underground, hushmail.com, NYT.com, WSJ.com and craigslist.

[Arex]

Was anyone ever on the Prodigy Network? I used to frequent their video game discussion boards in the early 90s.

[mrcfo]

Originally Posted by SunWuKong

actually Lycos has the distinction of first doing search like Google currently does. but Lycos abandoned that kind of search in the late 90s when Yahoo was doing better, and switched to the Yahoo type of directory-based search engine. all the tech nerds like me and my college friends, however, had always preferred Lycos simply because it was an objective and indiscriminate search. at any rate, this switch ultimately doomed Lycos. as the web became more saturated, however, text-based search became much more useful than Yahoo's directory-based search, which just could not keep up with the growth of the web. in came Google.com and Yahoo was just not quick enough to fill the need that Google.com did.



gmail is a step above most other web-based mail when it first came out because of its new way of organising emails in the form of threaded discussion. but hotmail definitely is much more important in shaping and changing the internet for being the first web-based email client that anybody can sign up for. prior to that, you could not get your emails on just any computer with an internet connection. you needed a computer with an email client, and you would have needed an email account that allowed POP3/IMAP access. either that, or you needed an email client that was specifically designed for your email account. and keep in mind, back then, there wasn't such a thing as email accounts that literally anybody could sign up for. hotmail changed all that. it was email for all, and accessible anywhere with a connection and a browser. but it wasn't just about accessing your emails anywhere. hotmail was perhaps the first realisation of using a web browser as a universal client application that delivered rich content. when hotmail was popularised, your average user began to realise that the web can be used for more than just looking at websites.



in my opinion, the importance of facebook.com is not actually social networking. it is the facebook API which allowed third parties to develop and deploy their own applications. facebook in essense became a second tier upon which web apps are located. though not without its limitations, it allowed for faster-to-market time for new web apps. the whole idea has launched million-dollar businesses, and other platforms are following suite.



MIRC was just a client for IRC though. if it wasn't MIRC that got so popular, another client would have gotten popular. IRC itself has a longer history, and i think it was the first chat system that communicated via TCP/IP (somebody correct me if i'm wrong), and that's why it was important.

Thanks for pointing out my mistakes...but what I really meant was that whatever these sites lacked in development and r&d or whatever, it will always be them who will be remembered by the masses as marketing the idea or technology.

It's like when most think of computers they would always associate Windows.

Originally Posted by tapestrybabe

i started my online activity
around 1999/2000...
cuz thats when i bought my first computer...

yeah, hotmail was my first email i ever created...
geocities was my first webpage i ever started using...
and yeah, i remember using icq as my main
chatting device...

how about adding livejournal...
but i dont know which blog site came first tho.
but livejournal was my first blogging account
i ever signed up for...

and back in the day when it
came to social networking sites...
i miss my korealink.
c2a and asianavenue days..

hehe sorry, never blogged or kept a sorta online journal, I had a wordpress account, and by then the web was well into it's development. Blogging wasn't difficult to develop and neither it was it as revolutionary as the other sites were.

yeah I remember aa (asian avenue), sorta like the Asian facebook. I wonder how they got away with serrogating Asians with that and Blacks with blackworld or something and if I recall correctly

mIRC perhaps left the biggest impression of the web for me. The thing was, it brought my school friends back then a lot closer. Prior to tenth grade, we'd only hang out for a certain few hours after school and call each other up occasionally but with mIRC, in one way, it kept the communicaiton channels flowing.

another big siite I missed - EBAY!

[tvbdude]

Originally Posted by Arex

Was anyone ever on the Prodigy Network? I used to frequent their video game discussion boards in the early 90s.

the 1st computer I had, it came with 1 month free internet from prodigy

[MarshalStealth]

Wall Street Journal and Stratfor.com are the few quality news web sites who are making money through paid subscription. Regardless of the freebies that are out there, people are willing to pay for well-timed and well written business news and information.

Conclusively, not every freebie that glitters is tangible.