Seven years ago Mark Zuckerberg set to work on his brainchild, Facebook, or ‘the Facebook’ as it was called at the time.
Just a few weeks later the site was launched to his fellow Harvard scholars and the tidal wave of ‘Facebook mania’ began.
Facebook has changed life as we know it, with 50% of active users logging on almost everyday. But what was life like before Facebook?
How did we fill those hours on the net that are currently spent examining the lives of people we haven’t seen in 10 years? Let’s rewind to 2004 and take a look at which websites dominated our attention and how they are faring in today’s Facebook and google-dominated World Wide Web.
In 2004, before Facebook reached our shores, email was the primary vehicle through which we made contact with our network of friends and contacts. Without the messaging and media-sharing capabilities that Facebook provide us with, a huge proportion of the UK population would use email to stay in touch.
Imagine life without social media/networking sites. Can you picture it? That’s pretty much where we were in 2004
Due to email’s growing popularity and the necessity for people to have a ‘personal’ address in addition to their work/education address, there was a huge range of email providers to choose from, for example Yahoo, Hotmail, Lycos, Excite, Compuserve and AOL to name but a few. These providers will be a distant memory for some and unheard of for others, with Gmail rising to top of the pack in 2011 and Facebook imminently to launch its ‘non-email email’.
Social Media
Imagine life without social media/networking sites. Can you picture it? That’s pretty much where we were in 2004.
A few options were open to those hoping to reconnect with old friends, family or colleagues in the form of Friends Reunited and similar sites, but nothing as effective at connecting people as today's networks. Although popular for a good few years (selling for 120 million to ITV in Dec 2005), Friends Reunited was eclipsed in 2007 by Bebo (launched 2005), MySpace (UK launch in 2006) and Facebook, which racked up a million active UK users by March 2007.
According to Hitwise, Facebook is currently the most visited social network (and indeed website) in the world with YouTube second and MySpace third.
Search engines
The 2004 Search Engine Watch Awards declared Yahoo the ‘Outstanding Search Service’ with Google ranking second and Ask Jeeves third. While all three remain to this day, Google has definitely taken the lead, with Hitwise.com reporting that nearly 70% of US searches are undertaken on the search engine.
Yahoo has been bumped down to second and Bing has supplanted Ask Jeeves in third. Although Yahoo and Ask Jeeves (currently ranking forth) have managed to retain a number of dedicated users, there are several beloved sites from 2004, such as Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite and MSN, which are struggling to keep up with the pack.
News and information
In terms of the sites we use on a daily basis, news is the one area where change over the past seven years has been minimal. In 2004 most people were drawn to the website of their favourite newspaper, the BBC (in the UK) and online information providers such as Wikipedia.
Little has changed in that respect with the exception of growth and development – these sites are bigger and better and draw a larger audience as more people are choosing web over print and television for news.
However, although changes have been minimal it would be remiss of me not to mention a few notable developments:
- Google News, the clever tool which draws news from a variety of sources and delivers them in one place moved on from its Beta stage in 2006, from which point onwards its popularity has grown rapidly.
- The Times Online decided to start charging for content in 2010. The move was criticised but despite a loss of some readers they have retained their dedicated readership. The FT has already followed suit and it is expected that a number of other news sites will not be far behind.
- Blogs were beginning to gain in popularity in 2004, seven years on they are everywhere, with most National news sites having dedicated blogs/bloggers providing news analysis.
What does this mean?
One thing that’s for sure, although the web has grown a phenomenal amount in the past seven years it seems as if our choice has diminished. Or is that just an illusion?
Perhaps the choice remains and it is merely our focus that has narrowed. With the introduction of supermarkets, people soon stopped visiting a greengrocer, fishmonger and butcher, instead doing their shopping all in one place.
Apparently our use of the internet has followed suit in that respect; rather than shop around for alternative sites we are all happy to use the most obvious choice. And let’s be honest Facebook and Google are great websites, BUT there’s a risk of overlooking a number of great products existing in cyberspace and missing out.
