22 Mile­stones - The World Wide Web Turns Age 20 Today!

Birth­days are im­por­tant as they sig­nify life and a great be­gin­ning. That is es­pe­cially true when we are talk­ing about the birth of the in­ter­net, of the World Wide Web.

Some think that the in­ter­net and the World Wide Web are the same thing; peo­ple use these two terms in­ter­change­ably, in fact. How­ever, they are ac­tu­ally two very dif­fer­ent things. The in­ter­net and the first in­ter­net mes­sage was sent over 40 years ago, but the web­sites, de­liv­ery of in­for­ma­tion, and user in­ter­ac­tion that we are so fa­mil­iar with to­day only started with the WWW Project in 1991.

WWW Project

Back in the 80ies, the in­ter­net is a place where physi­cists share in­for­ma­tion. If you are a com­mon folk, there is no way that you can ac­cess the in­ter­net and use it for per­sonal or busi­ness gains.

For­tu­nately, in 1991, Tim Bern­ers-Lee re­al­ized that for the in­ter­net to grow, it should be a plat­form not only for ex­perts but for every­one. That is the year that the World Wide Web is con­ceived and given birth to.

And to­day, my friend, that is what we celebrate—the World Wide Web’s 20^th birthday.

The world wide web has re­shaped the world. 

• New in­dus­tries and new pro­fes­sions have been created.
• Mil­lions of on­line and of­fline busi­nesses only ex­ist be­cause of the internet.
• Work be­came lo­ca­tion in­de­pen­dent, for work­ers as well as for busi­ness owners.
• Or­ga­ni­za­tions, busi­nesses and gov­ern­ments man­age and in­ter­con­nect their work online.
• Ap­pli­ca­tions move from PCs to on­line servers, soon bring­ing an end to the clas­sic desk­top PC.
• On the down­side new threads emerged, mak­ing gov­ern­ments and busi­nesses more vul­ner­a­ble than ever before.

Look­ing Back at Yesterday

Twenty years has brought along a lot of changes to the World Wide Web. From cod­ing to user in­ter­ac­tion and to graphic presentation—the in­ter­net has evolved from sta­tic to brim­ming with life and ac­tiv­ity. As we com­mem­o­rate this great day, let us look back at 22 par­tic­u­lar events, or mile­stones, that made the World Wide Web that we know today…

1990-1991: The Birth Year

In 1990, Tim Bern­ers-Lee, the man be­hind the WWW Project, launches the first web server and the first site that is still on­line to­day info.cern.ch. This web­site, and his WWW project, started free use of the in­ter­net and is the rea­son why we are all able to con­vene in a vir­tual world and eas­ily share information.

1993: In­fancy

The World Wide Web con­tin­u­ously and rapidly grew. En­thu­si­as­tic mar­keters be­gan to start on­line cam­paigns, us­ing web­sites and emails to de­liver in­for­ma­tion and advertisements.

Sadly, in1993, “spam” gets com­monly ac­cepted as term for un­so­licited email. Email mar­ket­ing gets its bad name, mak­ing busi­ness harder for se­ri­ous marketers.

On the up­side, the first web cam is used in the same year. The first im­age it cap­tured is of a cof­fee maker in a com­puter lab in Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity. The pop­u­lar cof­fee ma­chine stays on­line un­til 22^nd Au­gust 2001.

1994: Ac­cess for All

While the in­ter­net has be­come free for use, there is no doubt that in 1994 a cer­tain amount of knowl­edge of com­put­ers is still nec­es­sary. For­tu­nately, in 1994, Netscape Nav­i­ga­tor makes WWW ac­ces­si­ble for non-geeks. It’s the first pop­u­lar in­ter­net browser.

1995: Start of Today’s 3 Top Sites 

In 1995, three big web­sites and cor­po­ra­tions emerge: Ya­hoo, Ama­zon, and eBay.

We all know that Ya­hoo cre­ated a search en­gine and news por­tal, but do you know that Ama­zon made af­fil­i­ate mar­ket­ing pop­u­lar? Yes, when we are talk­ing about the eas­i­est and most lu­cra­tive form of in­ter­net busi­nesses, you can count on Ama­zon be­ing its fore­fa­ther. Ama­zon be­came the num­ber one on­line shop it is to­day through its af­fil­i­ate mar­ket­ing pro­gram. In the year 2011 count­less other busi­nesses use af­fil­i­ate part­ners for pro­mot­ing their prod­ucts and services.

1995 also saw the birth of eBay—today’s most fa­vored site when it comes to pri­vate sell­ing and small in­ter­net busi­nesses us­ing eBay as their af­ford­able and easy to use ecom­merce platform.

1996: In­ter­net Ex­plorer and Flash Takes the Scene

With the in­ter­net be­com­ing a nec­es­sary part of busi­ness­men and com­mon folks’ lives alike, Mi­crosoft finds the need for a new and re­li­able browser. Thus, in this year, it in­te­grates In­ter­net Ex­plorer into its Win­dows op­er­at­ing sys­tem. At its peak IE reaches a mar­ket share close to 70%, 15 years af­ter its in­tro­duc­tion IE has a mar­ket share around 40%.

1996 also marks the re­lease of Macro­me­dia Flash, the soft­ware that is used to cre­ate mul­ti­me­dia ap­pli­ca­tions for web sites.

Side­note - Every­thing Is Im­per­ma­nent. The year 2011, in my hum­ble opin­ion, marks the soon to be cel­e­brated death of the Flash for­mat, thanks to HTML5, CSS3, and web de­vel­op­ers com­ing to their senses.

1998: Go Google

Prob­a­bly the most mem­o­rable event in 1998 is the birth of today’s most pop­u­lar search en­gine, Google. In this year, Google was in­cor­po­rated by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD stu­dents of Stand­for Uni­ver­sity at the time. They used a friend’s garage as base and hired a fel­low stu­dent, Craig Sil­ver­stein, as their first employee.

We all known what Google has be­come, and what a huge im­pact it has for in­ter­net busi­nesses. It sends traf­fic to our web sites through search and ads. It cre­ates new in­dus­tries (SEO), and al­lows mil­lions of peo­ple to make easy money on­line by sim­ply putting ad­sense on their sites.

By 2011 it spreads into gazil­lion busi­ness ven­tures, fre­quently launch­ing new services.

Such a hum­ble be­gin­ning that rock­eted to unimag­in­able heights, isn’t it?

1999-2001: Nap­ster is Born

To­day, we know Nap­ster as an on­line mu­sic store and a Best Buy Com­pany. How­ever, it first be­gan as a P2P (peer-to-peer) file-shar­ing com­pany. Of course, it eas­ily at­tracted at­ten­tion, crit­i­cism, and law­suits. Af­ter all, it is of­fer­ing copy­righted ma­te­ri­als for free—something that mu­sic and la­bel own­ers can’t stand. It is even­tu­ally shut down by court or­der but was bought and re­vived into a mu­sic store by Roxio.

2000: Dot Com Boom Meets Its End

Dur­ing the 90ies the in­ter­net is the new gold rush. In­vestors pour bil­lions of dol­lars into seem­ingly promis­ing star­tups, wi­htout even ask­ing how the star­tups ever plan to make prof­its. With this thought, nu­mer­ous sites popped up in mid-1990s—all us­ing “.com” in their web ad­dress, thus the term “dot com boom.” At this pe­riod, stocks are boosted and prof­its abound. Sadly, though, every be­gin­ning has an end. In 2000, the dot com bub­ble bursts, leav­ing a lot of loses and tears.

Side­note - The New Dot Com Bub­ble. In 2011 Face­book’s (still the­o­ret­i­cal) stock value is es­ti­mated to be higher than $100,000,000,000.00. That’s 100 Bil­lion dol­lars, more than $130.00 per Face­book user. In 2010 the rev­enue (not profit!!!) per user was $4.00. The pub­lic will be ripped of again, the lit­tle guy / in­vestor will lose his money, banks and CEOs get 100 Bil­lion richer.

2001: We Get Wikipedia

What do peo­ple do when they want to get quick in­for­ma­tion about some­thing? They open their browsers nad do a search on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an on­line en­cy­clo­pe­dia with in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted by users, mak­ing it a con­tin­u­ous, col­lab­o­ra­tive project.

2002: Find­ing Friends in Friendster 

One of the ear­li­est so­cial net­works founded is Friend­ster. It is es­tab­lished in Cal­i­for­nia by com­puter pro­gram­mers Jonathan Abrams and Pe­ter Chin. At that time, Friend­ster is the talk of the town, its cre­ator be­ing the cover, or at least fea­ture, of nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions as well as by late-night talk shows.

Side­note - Every­thing Is Im­per­ma­nent. Al­though it sa­vored its peak, though, it had to go through rough times, es­pe­cially when strong ri­vals like My­Space came around. In May 2011 Friend­ster says good­buy to so­cial net­work­ing, and turns into a gam­ing site.

2003: My­Space and Skype Get on a High

In 2003 Niklas Zennström from Swe­den and Janus Friis from Den­mark cre­ate Skype, an ap­pli­ca­tion that al­lows users to make phone calls and chats via in­ter­net. For in­ter­net en­tre­pre­neurs it’s an­other piece in the puz­zle of lo­ca­tion in­de­pen­dent busi­nesses. Skype will later be sold to eBay, and fi­nally, in 2011, to Microsoft.

With so­cial net­works be­ing a hit, My­Space came up strong af­ter it is launched in 2003. In fact, it is named the most pop­u­lar so­cial net­work in the US in 2006 to 2008. Of course, that is un­til it got beaten by Face­book. Let’s see what Just­ing Tim­ber­lake will do about that.

2004: Face­book, Flickr, and World of Warcraft 

Face­book is one, if not the most, pop­u­lar so­cial net­work today.

Flickr is the most pop­u­lar photo-shar­ing site today.

World f War­craft or WoW is the the most pop­u­lar mul­ti­player on­line role-play­ing game of all time. For me it’s most of all an adorable in­ter­net busi­ness model.

Now, what do these 3 have in com­mon? They are all es­tab­lished in the year 2004! In­deed, it is a year where the in­ter­net bears wit­ness to sites and games that turn into legends.

2005: Rise of YouTube and Web 2.0

If there are just two in­ter­net things 2005 came to know of, it will prob­a­bly be YouTube and Web 2.0.

For one, YouTube was, is, and prob­a­bly will be the most pop­u­lar video-shar­ing site. In 2011 it is the third most pop­u­lar web site in the world, ac­cord­ing to Alexa.

In 2005, Tim O’Reilly also pop­u­lar­izes the term “Web 2.0.” It was ac­tu­ally first used in 1999 by Darcy DiN­ucci. Web 2.0 is the shift from web site pub­lish­ers push­ing con­tent to their web sites, and thus to users, to users push­ing their own ‘user gen­er­ated con­tent’ to the web site.

Users now have the power to post their own ar­ti­cles and com­ments, pub­lish their pho­tos and videos, share their in­ter­ests, and the like.

2008: Twit­ter Gets Tweeting

To­day, peo­ple like things fast and in­stant. That is prob­a­bly why fast food chains flour­ish. Per­haps it is also the rea­son why, when Twit­ter is in­tro­duced in this year, peo­ple hold on to it with much ar­dour. Af­ter all, who does not have just a few sec­onds to type their thoughts and share them with the world?

2007: Web Goes Mo­bile with Ap­ple iPhone

The in­ter­net started on the com­puter, but it is def­i­nitely not where it will end. In 2007, Ap­ple un­veiled the iPhone, a de­vice that does not only al­low users to send SMS and cap­ture pho­tos and videos but also ac­cess the in­ter­net. It’s the first mo­bile that makes brows­ing web sites some­what com­fort­able. With­out doubt, the iPhone is the fron­trun­ner of the mo­bile World Wide Web.

For mar­keters and busi­nesses the mo­bile web means hav­ing to ex­pand their ef­forts, knowl­edge and in­vest­ments on more plat­forms than ever before.

2008: Google Cre­ates Android 

Ap­ple got iPhone, so what is Google to do? Hav­ing such a com­pet­i­tive spirit, Google came up with An­droid, a soft­ware stack for mo­bile de­vices. An­droid cov­ers not only the op­er­at­ing sys­tem but also the mid­dle­ware and key ap­pli­ca­tions. Talk­ing about cre­at­ing an all-in-one system.

2009: Cloud Com­put­ing Soar to Popularity

Cloud com­put­ing is all about sav­ing your files and in­stalling your ap­pli­ca­tions on web servers, in­stead us­ing a lo­cal PC. Once this is ac­com­pliched, files and soft­ware can be ac­cessed from any com­puter all over the world - as long as in­ter­net is available.

Cloud com­put­ing is specif­i­cally use­ful to in­ter­net busi­ness own­ers who are on the go, those who love to travel, and those who sim­ply feel more se­cured with their files and other data in a sep­a­rate web space. It’s also great for backups.

2010: Ap­ple’s iPad takes the world by storm

Con­sid­er­ing the still not so ex­cit­ing web ex­pe­ri­ence on mo­bile phones, and the rel­a­tively small mar­ket share of net­books, the iPad is what fi­nally frees the in­ter­net from the PC. Within a very short time, more peo­ple will ac­cess the in­ter­net from mo­bile and tablet de­vices than from tra­di­tional PCs.

Be­sides of­fer­ing new plat­forms for brows­ing the in­ter­net, mo­bile hard­ware also in­tro­duces the use of apps (in­clud­ing the years be­fore 2010), bring­ing the web and ‘soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions’ (how old peo­ple like me tend to call apps) closer together.

2011: Google+ Starts a Buzz

So, what is the lat­est in the World Wide Web to­day? Why, Google+, of course! Google+ is just launched on June 28, but it al­ready ac­quired more than 20 mil­lion mem­bers. That is say­ing some­thing con­sid­er­ing it works on an in­­vi­­ta­­tion-only sys­tem. There is re­ally no doubt that Google+ is the fastest grow­ing so­cial net­work ever. If it is able to con­tinue its rapid growth once its beta phase is over, who knows just how much pop­u­lar­ity and in­flu­ence will it get? That will def­i­nitely be some­thing to look for­ward to!

There are so many things that hap­pened within the 20 years of the World Wide Web’s life that I prob­a­bly just scratched the sur­face with this news. Nev­er­the­less, it is great to take a mo­ment, see how far we have come and dream of how far we will be able to reach tomorrow!