![theatlantic:
The Internet at the Dawn of Facebook
Facebook launched in 2004. Today, it has more users than the entire Internet had in 2004.
Before Facebook roamed the web, the digital world was dominated by big, bulky websites that assumed they’d stay big and bulky: Microsoft and its Hotmail, Time Warner and its AOL, Ask and its Jeeves. It’s striking how much the Internet has changed since Facebook sprinted onto the scene — and more striking still how Mark Zuckerberg’s production changed the course of that scene.
Back in 2004,
the web had some 50 million sites. (Today, it has more than 600 million.)
the most popular brand on the World Wide Web was Microsoft’s MSN.
Google was the fifth most popular brand on the World Wide Web, ranking below Yahoo and AOL.
people still talked about the “World Wide Web.”
”blog” — defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks” — was chosen as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
Read more. [Image: Thefacebook, lol]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m46jn9glAz1qcokc4o1_250.png)
The Internet at the Dawn of Facebook
Facebook launched in 2004. Today, it has more users than the entire Internet had in 2004.
Before Facebook roamed the web, the digital world was dominated by big, bulky websites that assumed they’d stay big and bulky: Microsoft and its Hotmail, Time Warner and its AOL, Ask and its Jeeves. It’s striking how much the Internet has changed since Facebook sprinted onto the scene — and more striking still how Mark Zuckerberg’s production changed the course of that scene.
Back in 2004,
- the web had some 50 million sites. (Today, it has more than 600 million.)
- the most popular brand on the World Wide Web was Microsoft’s MSN.
- Google was the fifth most popular brand on the World Wide Web, ranking below Yahoo and AOL.
- people still talked about the “World Wide Web.”
- ”blog” — defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks” — was chosen as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.
Read more. [Image: Thefacebook, lol]
“Internet Marketers” vs “Internet Scammers”
Talking about Scamworld with Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.
(Source: youtube.com)
Last week, we reported that traffic from the mobile Web will overtake fixed-line Internet usage in India by the end of the year, and that inspired Pingdom to update its stats on global mobile Web usage with some interesting findings. (via Mobile Now Accounts for 10% of all Internet Usage Worldwide)
(via emergentfutures)
Why Twitter Is Bigger Than You Think
“Here you can see that 11% of Americans 12+ (the gray slice) have not heard of Twitter, which means that 89% have. That is more than the percentage of Americans with online access (~86%), by the way, which gives you a pretty good yardstick for the ubiquity of Twitter.”
(Source: a-very-mad-world, via marshmallowsonmyfridge)
Dave Pell has the answer »
Email is one of the many technologies that has changed the line “everybody’s working for the weekend,” to everybody’s working on the weekend.
![After this blog post, Anil Dash was “cautiously optimistic” to see Popchips’ response and as per his expectation, Popchips’ founder Keith Belling phoned and offered him “a thoughtful, apologetic response” that indicates Keith’s understanding of what he was trying to say in that blog post.
So, what really happened? Recently, Popchips introduced a series of promotional videos that featured Ashton Kutcher playing different characters. One of the characters featured the celebrity spokesperson of Popchips in brownface and was a parody of an Indian Bollywood producer. Longtime blogger and Internet observer Anil Dash was rightly offended. He complained. Others joined him and within hours, the video was down.
It’s a hackneyed, unfunny advertisement featuring Kutcher in brownface talking about his romantic options, with the entire punchline being that he’s doing it in a fake-Indian outfit and voice. That’s it, there’s seriously no other gag. […] Naturally, a bunch of us (initially mostly Indian diaspora members whom I follow on Twitter) started complaining about it, and a number of like-minded allies also registered their offense as well. I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad “funny” accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course.
In many ways, the entire story explains the power of the Internet to provide instant and loud feedback.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3hl2fZFJZ1r8dxvuo1_250.jpg)
After this blog post, Anil Dash was “cautiously optimistic” to see Popchips’ response and as per his expectation, Popchips’ founder Keith Belling phoned and offered him “a thoughtful, apologetic response” that indicates Keith’s understanding of what he was trying to say in that blog post.
So, what really happened? Recently, Popchips introduced a series of promotional videos that featured Ashton Kutcher playing different characters. One of the characters featured the celebrity spokesperson of Popchips in brownface and was a parody of an Indian Bollywood producer. Longtime blogger and Internet observer Anil Dash was rightly offended. He complained. Others joined him and within hours, the video was down.
It’s a hackneyed, unfunny advertisement featuring Kutcher in brownface talking about his romantic options, with the entire punchline being that he’s doing it in a fake-Indian outfit and voice. That’s it, there’s seriously no other gag. […] Naturally, a bunch of us (initially mostly Indian diaspora members whom I follow on Twitter) started complaining about it, and a number of like-minded allies also registered their offense as well. I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad “funny” accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course.
In many ways, the entire story explains the power of the Internet to provide instant and loud feedback.
ROFLCon brings a convention of Internet hit-makers to MIT
- The idea behind ROFLCon is an ambitious one: to bring a swath of the Internet’s pop culture players and viral celebrities together under one roof.
(LANEY GRINER)
