Popularizing the web

by Chris Howard Dec 14, 2005

CNN’s Spark wrote on their technology pages a list of the top 10 “Web moments” since the World Wide Web was born 15 years ago.

Discussions about the article on Digg got me thinking and I’ve come up with my own list, but rather than events, mine is developments that changed the way we use the world wide web, and consequently, the internet. For those not technically au fait, in a nutshell, the web is a subset of the internet. For this list, I am sticking to developments that impacted on the world wide web - although on that basis, I understand if you question number 10.

Some of those on the list weren’t necessarily the first development of their kind, but they were from my experience at the time, the one that popularized it. Oh, and unlike other lists, I’m not going to build the suspense. I’m starting at number 1.

1. Broadband
Took off: 2003
Popularized: Permanent connection to the internet and a plethora of technologies that had been waiting for high speed internet.

Broadband changed the face of the web like no other development before or since, enabling the fulfillment of so much that had been promised for the web, with media rich content and, for the software junkies and tech support, blisteringly fast downloads.

Broadband brought two major changes to the way we use the web:
Firstly, as we are always connected the research value of the web leapt. It became part of our daily lives. No longer did we think, “I’ll check that when I get online next”, we did it now. What’s the meaning of a word? Jump on the web; Monitor your eBay auctions; Want to know what other films you’ve seen that actor in? Jump on IMDB. All of this without the time and tedium to log on - or the cost of the call. Broadband utilitified the web - like water, electricity, phone and other utilities, it became on tap with the advent of broadband.

Secondly, not only did it mean pages became close to instant, but it gave power to other developments that had been lingering with out it, such as voice calls over the internet; streaming video; and even P2P which instead of setting a few songs to download overnight, you could download them in a few minutes. The success of the iTunes Music Store, for instance, depended on the availability of broadband.

As a consequence, our bandwidth consumption went from tens of megabytes a month to hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes.

The other change with broadband was we developed dependency. When the internet is down, it initially feels very isolating and there is the fear of missing something important. It’s almost as stressful as when the electricity or water is off.

2. Netscape
Originated: 1994
Popularized: The graphical interface to the web
Netscape gave the web its first widely popular graphical interface. To many in the mid-90s, Netscape was their first experience of the web and even their first experience of the internet and if you asked someone from that era what the internet looked liked, they’d probably picture Netscape in their mind. I can still remember back in 1994, browsing the internet in a text based browser (Lynx), so Netscape was amazing and did for the web, what Macs did for computers 10 years earlier.

3. Amazon
Originated: 1995
Popularized: Online shopping
In some ways, Amazon represents the beginning of modern web time. There’s BA and AA. Before Amazon the web was for geeks and nerds and maybe some trendy companies who wanted to look hip. And then along came Amazon, ironically with the antithesis of the web - books.  Can you imagine the Amazon guys with the idea trying to pitch it at a venture capitalist:

Amazon guys: “Hi. There’s this whole new way of disseminating information that one day could signal the end of books. Its called the World Wide Web and we want to set up a shop on it to sell stuff.”
Venture capitalist: “What sort of stuff?”
Amazon guys: “Um…. books….”
Venture capitalist:  “Books?!”

Amazon came to symbolize the new web and opened a floodgate of businesses seeking to capitalize on the commercial potential of the internet. For some who remember the web fondly in its childhood years, the arrival of Amazon signaled the entry into its teen years when the web rebelled against the non-commercial ideals of its parents. Like all good teenagers, it all blew up in its face when the dotcom bubble burst. Those disappointed parents can now be found hanging around the Open Source community.

4. Altavista
Originated: 1995
Popularized: Searching for information on the web, rather than in books.
In the early years of the web, Altavista ruled the roost of search engines, achieving recognition as the largest search engine in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 1999. It’s hard to believe they were ever knocked off the perch. For people new to the web in the 90’s, the promise of finding a seemingly limitless resource of information on virtually any subject, was fulfilled by Altavista. Altavista changed how, and more importantly where, we looked for information. Google’s contribution was to merely improve on what came before, so can only be mentioned as a byline in this top ten.

5. eBay
Originated: 1995
Popularized: Selling online
eBay brought about another major change on our lives. No longer do we put an ad in the paper to sell something, with a price as high as possible without scaring off buyers - who will try to beat our price down. Now we put our goods on eBay at a low enough price to encourage a bidding frenzy, to maximize the selling price.

6. Hotmail
Originated: 1995
Popularized: Online email, accessible from any computer
The big paradigm shift that Hotmail brought was that we were no longer bound to our own computer. Email was, and still is, the commonest usage of the internet. Problem was, if you were interstate or overseas and wanted to check your email, you’d have to configure someone else’s email client with your settings - if they’d let you. Hotmail meant you could check your Hotmail email on any computer in the world with web access. Not surprisingly, online email took off with even the ISPs offering access to your email online.

7. HotDog Webpage Editor
Originated: 1995
Popularized: Personal web pages
Geeks and nerds were cutting HTML code using the likes of Notepad until the rise of web page editors. These, such as HotDog. one of the most popular (HotDog was named #3 most downloaded application on the Internet by Wired magazine in 1996 Source: Majitek)
and originating from Australia, put web page development in the hands of everyone. All of a sudden personal websites sprung up everywhere - although still mostly belonging to the technical savvy. These personal websites would later breed another phenomenon, the Blog.

8. Microsoft integrating Internet Explorer into Windows
Implemented: 1997
Popularized: The web
With Windows commanding greater than 90% of the desktop OS market, Microsoft brought a web interface to everyone as part of the OS. IE and Netscape had already been fighting the browser wars but with MS’s move to integrate IE into the OS, it nuked Netscape and began Microsoft’s stranglehold of website design, something we are still paying for today, with many websites still giving primacy to compatibility with IE’s non-standards.

Although there are a lot of negatives associated with this move, it is in my top 10 because it was what finally took the internet to everyone. If you bought a computer with Windows 98 on it, and even if you had no internet experience, it was there waiting for you. Microsoft made it not only “easy” for the masses to give web surfing a look, but also coerced them down that path.

9. Blogs
Took off: 2003
Popularized: The new journalist - you.
Advertising has long known the value of the man-in-the-street’s opinion and news services are always looking for first hand accounts of events, so it’s no surprise that blogging has spread like wild fire. Anyone can now easily report events as simple as their visit to the dentist; to their opinion on the Presidential elections; to reviewing new hardware and software.

Blogs have made us all reporters and on whatever topic takes our fancy. They have significantly affected the traditional flow of news as has been seen in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and recent natural disasters. They have also shown exceptional ability to mobilize people and influence public opinion (just ask Sony).

And unlike the personal web-pages of the mid 90s, blogs are much more dynamic, with their owners updating content as much as several times a day creating a phenomenal flow of thoughts, ideas and information around the world.

10. iTunes Music Store
Established: 2003
Popularized: Legal music downloads
Before iTMS, illegal music downloads were growing rapidly, and online music sales were in the doldrums with no vendor having any success, and record companies running scared of this new medium because of the deluge of illegal music sharing via P2P services.

Along comes Apple, gets the record companies all together, and leveraged by a new MP3 player making significant sales, their own iPod, turned online music sales on its head with exponential growth from month to month. As I write do I listen to a tape? A CD? A song illegally downloaded? No, the soundtrack for my day is provided by iTunes (or an iPod) and music legally downloaded from the iTMS. The song I’m listening to at the moment is a case in point of the change iTMS has brought about. The song is Forever Lost by The Magic Numbers which is one of my favorite tracks of the moment. When I heard it on the radio, I immediately jumped on iTMS and bought it. That’s a significant paradigm shift.

There were certainly other developments that could have made this list - such as Wikipedia, discussion forums, CMSes, Adsense, scripting, CSS, RSS etc - and I don’t expect anyone to agree with it. Please feel free to tell me what your list would be.


  • After yesterday’s discussion about OSes it occurred to me that the reason many people still use hotmail is similar to one of the reasons people still use Windows, at least here in Argentina. And since Hotmail got mentioned again today, I thoght I’d put it forward.
    Many of my friends use Hotmail as their main e-mail even though it still offers only 2MB (Or 25 after a series of steps to make the system think your account is US-based). It is not that they don’t use it much or that 2MB is enough, in fact most complain all the time about their inboxes being full. The thing is that Hotmail is the only way most people know to use Messneger and since everyone uses Messenger… well, you know. Of course, Messenger can be used with almos any other mail account, and there are a lot of free providers that offer more space, even excluding Gmail (more on this later). Yahoo for example was among the first to offer 100mb (at this time Gmail didn’t exist or was still obscure). Only now are some people begining to use Gmail for MSN, and only a few. It took a service with a much better interface and 500 or 1000+ times the storage, depending on the moment, to get people to change.
    What I am trying to show is that most people will stick to what they know even when there is something better and it will take an enormous advantage to get them to switch. And here we return to the Mac vs MS battle. Many people maintain that OSX is better but is it 1000 times better? 500 times? It will take something much better, a killer app or whatever you want to call it, to get the masses to switch.

    martunibo had this to say on Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 37
  • or perhaps more like a killer/Extremly Good/Famed game only available for Mac for the youth would do it too, and then perhaps 500 or 1000 of such

    Marius_Th had this to say on Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 11
  • What would this list look like if Apple had’ve retained large marketshare in the 90’s? iTools, .Mac, iMacs that get you browsing in 15 minutes from unpacking, iTMS etc. It could have looked very different.

    Chris Howard had this to say on Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 1209
  • I also read the CNN article and found myself wondering what the heck Flickr was.  So I googled it on my Safari and found myself downloading tons of photos using their OS 10.3 friendly uploading device.  What a change this Yahoo generated device will bring the photo world!

    How about Excite?  Not as profound as Netscape, but early chatters used this faithfully.

    SirGeorge53 had this to say on Dec 14, 2005 Posts: 27
  • Wasn’t Excite a search engine? Along with Lycos?

    Chris Howard had this to say on Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 1209
  • Forgive my lack of vocab as I may be confusing browser with a start up page.  However, Excite has a search engine, just as Netscape and Yahoo do.

    I remember the old days of using one of those 3 as a “start up” page to the net.  One would get their news and then go surfing.  Remember when a person would start a word search and you’d get a page of optional search engines?

    I’ll add something that may seem trite, but in the 90’s there was an explosion in public schools for the need of computers, computer education, computer teachers, computer repair personal, and rethinking how schools were made to accomodate all the new wires, servers and the lot.  Sections of some schools were set aside not for typing classes and other business type classrooms, but were now being used for computer education and computer lab work.

    Without a combination of business and education getting together to actually put computers in the schools, I’m not sure if we’d be having this conversation.

    I was a middle school principal for 3 years in the last part of the 90s.  I was brought on board as a principal to get the staff behind using computers.  I must have been one of the few that actually had any experience with e-mail that applied for the job then.  I didn’t know much.  I was more curious then anything which was more then what the others had that applied for the job.

    One of the rules we set up prior to doing job interviews for new teachers… they had to have computer experience and must have some experience using Apple.  It didn’t take long that that was also a precursor for principals too.

    The first shock I got the 1st day as a principal in ‘96, was there wasn’t a computer in the middle school office.  None of the secretaries had used one and the previous principal didn’t see the need or use for computers.

    Getting the school wired was a problem too.  Not just wired for the net, but getting enough electricity in the rooms so we could also have light and drink our coffee too.

    So another milestone with this technology had to be getting more Electricity into the schools.  Something we take for granted now.

    Our state was more then helpful in purchasing ‘puters for schools to put ‘puters in the classrooms, but many school systems didn’t have the capability to run them.  So many schools had computers just sitting in rooms not connected to anything b/c there wasn’t enough electricity to run them.  Just couldn’t plug in 40 of those in a room and call it a computer lab!  So we had to rethink how we’d get elec. to all these rooms.

    This was all a major shift in the system.

    SirGeorge53 had this to say on Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 27
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