[HN Gopher] Websites That Changed the World (2006)
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       Websites That Changed the World (2006)
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2023-11-11 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | ulrischa wrote:
       | Facebook is not in the list. Edit: I see it is from 2006.
        
         | simbolit wrote:
         | The list is from 2006, back then Facebook was rising, but not
         | yet big-big.
        
           | elicash wrote:
           | Specifically, it's from a month before Facebook opened to
           | everyone with an email address.
        
           | ulrischa wrote:
           | Ok I see. A Top 15 for our times would also be very
           | interesting
        
             | brvsft wrote:
             | The list would need to incorporate apps because a lot of
             | 'websites' that are extremely popular in use are more
             | typically used as apps (e.g., Instagram).
        
       | simbolit wrote:
       | The list:
       | 
       | * 1 EBay
       | 
       | * 2 Wikipedia
       | 
       | * 3 Napster
       | 
       | * 4 YouTube
       | 
       | * 5 Blogger
       | 
       | * 6 friendsreunited
       | 
       | * 7 Drudge Report
       | 
       | * 8 MySpace
       | 
       | * 9 Amazon
       | 
       | * 10 slashdot
       | 
       | * 11 salon
       | 
       | * 12 Craigslist
       | 
       | * 13 Google
       | 
       | * 14 yahoo
       | 
       | * 15 easyjet
        
       | mattcantstop wrote:
       | GitHub would certainly be on the list now. Not from the public
       | psyche, but in terms of actual impact.
        
       | gardenhedge wrote:
       | Wow, very interesting to see this list from 2006. What are the
       | sites that would be in the top 15 now?
       | 
       | Facebook
       | 
       | Twitter
       | 
       | Netflix
       | 
       | ChatGPT?
        
         | throwaway167 wrote:
         | +s for:
         | 
         | GitHub (influence).
         | 
         | Reddit (despite spez, it has a handful more years).
         | 
         | YouTube (remaining video king).
         | 
         | Signal and Tiktok if apps are allowed.
        
           | afefers wrote:
           | I don't know anybody who uses Signal and isn't a programmer
           | (on the cryptography/security side) or journalist that needs
           | it in order to work. Anybody else uses Telegram, WhatsApp, or
           | both. SMS if you're in the USA.
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | c2.com changed some world
       | 
       | and symbolics.com didn't change it enough
        
       | _the_inflator wrote:
       | Digg, Delicious, Technorati, ICQ, Stumbleupon, Astalavista, eMule
       | and many file hosters have been critical and changed the world as
       | well at that time. ;)
        
       | kylecazar wrote:
       | I think arguments could be made for MSN, Geocities and maybe even
       | MapQuest as honorable mentions.
       | 
       | It's not necessarily that whey were groundbreaking as much as
       | extremely popular. The design and content and strategy decisions
       | influenced others to come.
        
       | blowski wrote:
       | easyjet is a pretty odd inclusion on this list. They weren't the
       | first, biggest, or most innovative budget airline website - even
       | in the UK.
       | 
       | The contributor (Carole Cadwalladr) wrote a puff piece [1] about
       | easyjet a few months before, so she is obviously a big fan.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/08/transport.world1
        
         | dylmye wrote:
         | After the whole Easy Life situation[1] I'm completely over
         | them. What scummy business practices.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/03/easyjet-
         | own...
        
       | elicash wrote:
       | For my world, personally (in no order), my top four:
       | 
       | 1. Geocities is where I built my first website and got me started
       | in web design.
       | 
       | 2. DailyKos got me interested in local political blogging and got
       | me started in politics as a career.
       | 
       | 3 and 4: twelve years ago, I met my fiancee and we became friends
       | on Facebook, and then moved to different cities for a decade. And
       | two years ago, after moving back, we matched on OKCupid and I
       | alluded to us being FB friends to get a reply.
        
       | throwaway167 wrote:
       | I don't see any newspaper sites there, and I can't make a strong
       | case for a newspaper now.
       | 
       | For all the pleading to save journalism to content walls that do
       | nothing but self silo and isolate their voice, I feel big
       | newspaper journalism has consistently dropped the ball so much
       | it's rolled into an entirely different ballpark. The 4th estate
       | is failing.
        
       | mg wrote:
       | A friend and I had a discussion today, whether Amazon was a small
       | internet company among many, back when it IPOed in 1997. Or if it
       | already stood out as one of the biggest IPOs of that time.
       | 
       | To our surprise, we did not find a list of dotcom IPOs from the
       | 90s together with their IPO market cap.
       | 
       | If someone here knows about such a list, I would love to see it.
        
         | raldi wrote:
         | I'm certainly in the 99th percentile of early tech adopters and
         | I didn't place my first Amazon order until 2000.
        
       | passion__desire wrote:
       | I have an idea for a free speech website, which could be called
       | as TalkingPoints.org
       | 
       | Basically today, idea wars are being faught in Tiktok and
       | Instagram and Reddit and each such website has a distinctive
       | flavour and their own hive mind. To allow better outside ideas,
       | opinions and facts to infiltrate such closed walled gardens, this
       | website would collect "talking points" from all around the web
       | which users of such networks could just copy paste and ask
       | influencers peddling a particular narrative to explain their
       | stand on other side's best facts.
       | 
       | Consider two opposing sides A and B of a particular issue. There
       | will be two boards : Pro-A and Pro-B. People in favour of Pro-A
       | would collect self-contained talking points of A and there will
       | be rating system and so on. Similarly for Pro-B.
       | 
       | I remember there was a nice website (don't remeber the name)
       | which was build with a very complex UI to discuss complex issues.
       | Basically there was a top level statements in blue, and one can
       | expand statments in favour of it (or against it would be in
       | green) and that new statement will be come a blue statement. I
       | liked the motive of that website. Instead of wikipedia's neutral
       | point of view principle[0], this should allow best framing of any
       | side to be represented, sort of like steelmanning.
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
        
         | JimRyan wrote:
         | The website you mention might be kialo.com?
        
           | passion__desire wrote:
           | Yes, thank you.
        
         | supriyo-biswas wrote:
         | The problem is that people writing in support of the positions
         | that they believe often unintentionally elide things that they
         | consider obvious, which, from the perspective of the other
         | group, sounds like nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, resulting in
         | derisive assessments of the first group as "idiots", "lunatics"
         | and so on.
         | 
         | Further, people also like staying in their ingroup, so while a
         | flat-earther can already look up evidence and statements
         | supporting a spherical Earth, they often choose to remain in
         | their ingroup to avoid the cognitive dissonance from
         | contradictory information.
        
           | ronsor wrote:
           | See also: the anti-AI debate, where most discussion has
           | devolved into either how "AI bros" are evil or artists are
           | all "dumb luddites."
           | 
           | Both sides believe all their points to be so obvious that the
           | only explanation for why someone could disagree is that
           | they're either stupid or malicious.
        
           | passion__desire wrote:
           | People don't even have the same facts to base distinct
           | opinions from. If one side's collection of facts differ from
           | another, there is no hope to reach any sort of agreement. The
           | whole propaganda thing is orchestrated to convince
           | bystanders, a large silent majority, so having them all the
           | facts is what this process about. The influencers might not
           | change their position but the bystanders will not be
           | enthusiastic to the same degree especially when they have
           | both sides's facts. If this happens consistently, the debate
           | would have advanced to a more nuanced take. It is hard to be
           | violent and morally upright about it when you also know about
           | your own shortcomings.
        
         | elicash wrote:
         | It's somewhat different, but reminds me of some of the
         | aspirations of Brigade years ago
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_Media
        
       | blackoil wrote:
       | Of all listed many are dead/irrelevant now:                  *
       | napster.com - Now Spotify, streaming music have taken its place.
       | * blogger.com - Blogging is dead for general public. Medium,
       | Substack have captured some space.        * friendsreunited.com
       | * drudgereport.com        * myspace.com        * slashdot.org
       | * salon.com        * yahoo.com
        
         | vlark wrote:
         | You might claim Yahoo! is irrelevant, but it still gets 3.6
         | billion visits a month:
         | https://www.similarweb.com/website/yahoo.com/#overview
         | 
         | Drudgereport gets 57 million visits a month:
         | https://www.similarweb.com/website/drudgereport.com/#overvie...
         | 
         | Blogger gets 38 million vists a month:
         | https://www.similarweb.com/website/blogger.com/#overview
         | 
         | Salon gets 8.4 million visits a month:
         | https://www.similarweb.com/website/salon.com/#overview
         | 
         | So, not totally irrelevant to the overall social conversation,
         | but getting there. Except for Yahoo.
        
       | autokad wrote:
       | Me thinking about 2006,
       | 
       | digg.com was something I went to every day. Found it more
       | entertaining than slashdot.
       | 
       | craigslist was something I used a lot, finding dates, things to
       | buy, a place to rent.
       | 
       | for downloading stuff, if I recall I used kazaa
       | 
       | instant message: msn messenger
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-11 23:02 UTC)