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15 Websites That Changed the World

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shake-it-up dept.

nuke-alwin writes "To mark the web's 15th anniversary, The Guardian is reporting on 15 websites that changed the world. Everything from commercial sites like eBay and Amazon to social collaboratives like Wikipedia and Slashdot made the list." From the article's comments on Blogger: "Content was once made by companies for passive consumption by people. After Blogger, people were the content. They wrote about and read about their friends, their opinions, their cats. (There was a lot about cats in the early blogs.) None had a huge audience but collectively they were massive. Now you see TV networks saying: 'We've gotta get on the web because that's where the audience is,' says Williams."

9 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Myspace, blogger, youtube by phorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not all these changes have been positive. In terms of large-scale changes along those lines I'd probably include the nasties such as doubleclick and whatnot. They've definately had a lasting impression on how advertising is done on the 'net (regardless of poor motives or whether it was a possitive impression)

  2. napster.com? by muftak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    napster.com wasn't really a website that changed the world, napster was a bit of software that changed the world.

    1. Re:napster.com? by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Here's how Napster changed the world: It made a generation of young people think that getting music for free was practically a birthright.

  3. Quibbler by Paladin144 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'm gonna have to quibble (stand back everyone!).

    #3 - Napster.com

    Ummm... I don't think anybody was going there because of the website. Napster was technically a program that you downloaded and installed on your computer. It used different ports than good ol' 80 and it was not a website in any recognizable way.

    Nothing wrong with Napster, I'm just sayin'!... If we let napster.com in, then why not let microsoft.com in?

    --
    Electric Monkey Pants
  4. anon.penet.fi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    anon.penet.fi was a classic- more of a service than a website, but it was just one of those things that made anonymnity accesable (and yes, I did post this as AC)

  5. "Sticking it to the man" by Infonaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From Wikipedia:

    Upon reopening on June 3, 2006, its number of visitors has doubled, the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the recent media coverage. This has in turn increased the advertisement revenues to the founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij. The advertisements now generate about 75,000 USD per month according to speculations by Swedish newspaper SvD.

    I guess you could call that "sticking it to the man." You could also call it profiting. Perhaps a bit less Robin Hood and a bit more ticket scalper.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  6. napster.com is not a website ... by pan_sapiens · · Score: 4, Insightful
    .. and yet the mainstream media persist on calling it one, along with kazaa, grokster etc etc.

    Phrases like "the music swapping website kazza" are all two frequent in the media. I find this really depressing because it highlights the general lack of understanding of technologies which the authors then proceed to make value judgements about.

    Most of this is old news to Slashdotters, but just in case a "journalist" reads this post (yeh, right):
    • Napster / Kazaa etc are not websites. They were peer-to-peer filesharing networks, and associated software. After they were shutdown by legal action, the trademarks were retained and used to market services which sell music.
    • They were filesharing networks. This means potentially any data stored on a a computer, legal or illegal, can be shared. Not just music.
    • It's not file swapping, it's sharing. In a swap, two parties exchange goods. If I share a file with you, I do not lose a copy of it, and you don't need to offer me anything in return.

    When anyone calls Napster a "website", they quickly expose that they have no experience with the software they are talking about.

    Eh, got that off my chest, despite being a bit OT ..
  7. Geocities by Trespass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, Geocities. A lot of people made their first (crappy) webpage there and got their feet wet that way.

  8. Missing what got the internet started by jeffsenter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the list is pretty good, but it is missing what got the web started in large part, porn. I don't mean to be a troll, but early in the web's commercial development porn was a big fraction of the business, perhaps a third of the web. I do not know if there is a single pioneering porn website that could be listed with the likes of eBay, Yahoo, and craigslist, but porn's role should not be forgotten.


    P.S. I think Yahoo should be ranked higher. Yahoo was a leader in searching and portalness. Mapquest.com also maybe should have made the list over say Salon.com or easyjet.com