A Brief History of the Web- Part nine...

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  Finally, my 'Brief History of the Web' series continues with part nine.  I'm sorry for the long delay.  I've been busy writing for Blogcritics and Dragon Blogger.  I also was busy creating a website for my father and stepmother, Telltale.ca.  More about that in my next post...

  If you've missed previous posts in my 'Brief History of the Web' series, here's your opportunity to catch up.

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five
• Part six
• Part seven
• Part eight

   In part eight, I told the tale of Mozilla Firefox, which debuted in 2004, and the other web browsers in the new browser war, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari.  The days of IE versus Netscape are no more, but much of Netscape Navigator's code lives on in Firefox.

   Earlier in the series, I introduced Friendster, which was the launch of social networking as we know it today.

  Friendster launched in 2002, and became a web phenomenon by 2003.  Well, employees of eUniverse, which later became Intermix Media, took notice.  Intermix founder Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman and Tom Anderson launched Myspace in August 2003, months before Firefox made its public debut.

   Actually, Chris DeWolfe already owned the Myspace.com domain as a website for customer data storage and web hosting.

Myspace.com in 1997

   

Myspace.com in 2000

  In February 2004, Richard Rosenblatt became Myspace's CEO, and Myspace went from a little unknown website, to a Friendster killer.  

Myspace.com in October 2003

  

Myspace.com in October 2004, after Richard Rosenblatt took the helm

     Throughout 2004 and 2005, fewer and fewer people were using Friendster, and more and more people started using Myspace.  It was a boon for musicians, because they can feature their music in their profiles.  Myspace started to generate a huge amount of ad revenue for Intermix, until Intermix and Myspace were bought by News Corp. for $580 million in July 2005.

Myspace.com in October 2009

  By 2008, though, Facebook started to make gains ahead of Myspace in the number of users.  Now, Facebook is the Goliath to Myspace's David.  In 2010, Myspace debuted a remarketing campaign.  Myspace is now officially stylized as my______, and the site has a new look, with new features.

Myspace.com today, with a new look

      Time will soon tell how successful Myspace's rebranding campaign will be.  Richard Rosenblatt left the company in 2006, and founded Demand Media, the company behind eHow.com.  In my very brief career there as a writer, I learned how horrible Demand Media is to their writers.  See the views of other former Demand Media writers- Demand Studios, 4 Reasons Why It Sucks on Hubpages.com.


     It's a little known fact that YouTube launched as a Myspace widget.


    The YouTube website launched on Valentine's Day 2005, after YouTube's success on Myspace.

YouTube in April 2005

  Former Paypal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim founded YouTube.  They saw a need for an easy video sharing venue on the web.  The very first YouTube video was uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23rd, 2005, titled Me at the zoo.  Here it is!





    The YouTube beta test started in May 2005, and the official launch was in November.


    By November 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.  Yes, that's a BILLION, not a million.


    As of November 2010, videos have been viewed via YouTube over 14 billion times.


    When 'A Brief History of the Web' continues very soon with part ten, learn how Facebook started!  Well, we all saw The Social Network, so it'll be a brief refresher course.









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