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The Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade

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Aug 14, 2008
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Craigslist expands outside San Francisco (2000)
In 2000, the free classifieds site broadened its reach outside of San Francisco into nine additional U.S. cities, sending chills down the spines of newspaper publishers everywhere. Today Craigslist serves free listings in more than 500 cities in 50 countries, serving as a model for no-frills business and community success and the catalyst for countless jobs, apartments, and just about anything else you can think of.

Google AdWords launches (2000)
With the launch of AdWords in October 2000, Google turned advertising on its head. The self-service ad program opened up the marketplace to any business, no matter how big or small, and allowed advertisers to target their customers with laser-sharp precision.

Wikipedia launches (2001)
Containing 20,000 articles in 18 languages by the end of its first year online, Wikipedia today boasts more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages. The free open-source encyclopedia epitomizes the Internet's power to bring strangers from around the world together to collaborate on projects both big and small.

Napster Shut Down (2001)
Although Napster was shut down in 2001, it opened the file-sharing floodgates. Its demise sparked a wave of innovations that forever changed how we obtain and experience music and video - from Hulu to iTunes to Radiohead famously dropping its label and self-distributing their "In Rainbows" CD online for free.

Google IPO (2004)
Google's IPO, one of the largest in history, put the six year old search engine on the path to becoming the most dominant and influential company of the decade. From gmail and YouTube to Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Android, the Internet giant and constant innovator is the engine that powers countless aspects of our everyday lives.

Online video revolution (2006)
In 2006, a perfect storm of faster bandwidth, cheaper camcorders, and the groundbreaking use of Adobe's Flash 9 video player by YouTube combined to launch the online video revolution. The trifecta led to a boom in homemade and professional content - the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, lonelygirl15, SNL's Lazy Sunday, and Senator George Allen's "macacagate" - that has reshaped everything from pop culture to politics.

Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter takes off (2006)
In September 2006, a social networking site for college students changed its user qualifications to include anyone 13 and older with a valid e-mail address. Facebook struck an immediate chord -- and almost overnight, social media went mainstream. Less than a month later, the creators of Twitter acquired the company and its assets from its investors, paving the way for the service to take off in 2007. Both companies took social media mainstream, radically changing the way we connect, collaborate, and communicate with everyone from friends to colleagues to customers.

The iPhone debuts (2007)
The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. By the end of the weekend, half a million had been sold, and smartphones had gone from a luxury item to a necessity. The iPhone inspired the development of operating systems like Google Android, as well as an app for just about every aspect of modern life. Over the next decade, it's estimated that a billion new users will come to the Internet for the first time through mobile devices.

U.S. Presidential Campaign (2008)
The Internet altered presidential politicking in 2008 much as television had forty years earlier during the Kennedy/Nixon race. From videos like "Obama Girl" and the Reverend Wright clip shaping the debate, to social media mobilizing voters, to record-breaking online fundraising from small donors, every facet of the way campaigns are run was permanently transformed.

Iranian election protests (2009)
When Iran's 2009 presidential election produced fishy results, the opposition took to the tweets -- and the "Twitter Revolution" was born. In fact, it was so vital to organizing demonstrations that the U.S. State Department asked the company to delay planned maintenance.. The protests also highlighted Twitter's key asset as a protest tool: Since most users don't access it through a central website, it's nearly impossible to censor.
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LINK

Interesting list. I'd say I can't really argue with any of them.
 
Interesting. I can't think of anything at the moment that they omitted.
 
^ That's actually a pretty good example of how the internet could produce instant celebrity due to things like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. That wasn't possible in the 90's.
 
Tilpots said:
^^Us folks in the US never even saw her on TV, she truly became a global sensation over the internet. It's amazing...
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Are you kidding me? That ****ing song was played over and over and over and over and over and over on every news or entertainment news program for weeks. I dare say, she probably got more American media coverage than English.
 
rdowns said:
Are you kidding me? That ****ing song was played over and over and over and over and over and over on every news or entertainment news program for weeks. I dare say, she probably got more American media coverage than English.
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They played it on TV well after she became a hit on the internet. Going to look for source now...

EDIT: Wikipedia info

Web sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have been crucial in facilitating Boyle's rapid rise to fame:[17] The most popular YouTube video submission of her audition garnered nearly 2.5 million views in the first 72 hours.[74] On the day following the performance, the YouTube video was the most popular article on Digg.[75] The same video was judged so popular on Reddit that it was put on the site's main page.[76] Within a week, the audition performance had been viewed more than 66 million times, setting an online record, while on Wikipedia her biographical article attracted nearly half a million page views. A total of 103 million video views on 20 different Web sites was reached within nine days.[7] The Los Angeles Times wrote that her popularity on YouTube may in part be due to the broad range of emotion packed into a short clip which was "perfect for the Internet".[77] In December 2009 her audition was named the most watched Youtube video of the year with over 120 million viewings, more than three times higher than the second most popular video.[78]

Many newspapers around the world[79][80] (including China,[81] Brazil[82] and the Middle East[83][84]) carried articles on Boyle's performance. British tabloid The Sun gave her the nickname "Paula Potts" in reference to the first series' winner.[85] In the U.S., several commentators also drew parallels between Boyle's performance and that of Paul Potts.[86] ABC News hailed "Britain's newest pop sensation", and its Entertainment section headlined Boyle as "The Woman Who Shut Up Simon Cowell".[87]

Within the week following her performance on Britain's Got Talent, Boyle was a guest on STV's The Five Thirty Show.[88] She was interviewed via satellite on CBS's Early Show,[25] Good Morning America,[89] NBC's Today and on FOX's America's Newsroom.[89][90] and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Via satellite on Larry King Live,[91] Boyle performed an a cappella verse of "My Heart Will Go On".[92] She was also portrayed in drag by Jay Leno, who joked that they were related through his mother's Scottish heritage.[93]
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She was all over the internet before US TV even knew who she was. Sure, TV later absolutely added to the frenzy, but she was an internet sensation globally after just that one moment on TV.
 
maestrocasa said:
How about this:

April 28, 2003 iTunes Music Store launches. Now the number one music vendor in the U.S. and by far the largest provider of (legal) digital downloads in the world.

Kinda changed the internet and music forever, wouldn't ya say?
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Absolutely. You could easily argue it should be #1 on the list.
 
Agreed the iTunes debut deserves a place on the list. However, I think Napster paved the way for online music sales by showing truly what the possibilities were for the internet being a vehicle for the distribution of music.
 
Susan Boyle wasn't the only one propelled to instant stardom thanks to YouTube. Anyone know of Justin Bieber? (If you don't, ask your preteen daughter...!) He's got CDs in music stores everywhere and recently sang live for President Obama. All because he had a modest channel on YouTube featuring him singing a few songs...

I'm not much into teeny-bop music, but I do appreciate acapella, and another band which is recently becoming more popular in the mainstream is Straight No Chaser -- again, nobody knew who they were until their YouTube video went viral.

Meanwhile, people all over the world sign up with YouTube's "partner" program, giving them a share of ad revenue from their video channel exposure. People are making literally thousands of dollars a month just for posting videos. The only one I can think of off-hand is that annoying "Fred" channel (which also got that guy into TV show guest spots and commercial deals), but I know there are plenty more.

Any prolific news event, blooper, outtake, whatever -- it's instantly on YouTube for all the world to see. Balloon Boy, Kanye, Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa, David after Dentist, the clips from "fail blog"... it happens somewhere, and the world knows about it right away. It's crazy how connected we are now!

It's incredible how much the internet landscape is changing. I was blown away to read in the article that YouTube only became popular in 2006. I could swear it was around a lot longer.
 
maestrocasa said:
How about this:

April 28, 2003 iTunes Music Store launches. Now the number one music vendor in the U.S. and by far the largest provider of (legal) digital downloads in the world.

Kinda changed the internet and music forever, wouldn't ya say?
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Wow, can't believe that I missed that as well.:eek:
 
Wait wait wait....

What about Bing being launched on June 3, 2009?

Oh boy, here it comes.......
 
What about "Don't tase me bro!"



The involvement of the public in reporting the news is not a single 'moment', I suppose, but surely there was a particular incident where the power of the general public to instantly report the news, with video, was first made light of on a grand scale?
 
notjustjay said:
I'm not much into teeny-bop music, but I do appreciate acapella, and another band which is recently becoming more popular in the mainstream is Straight No Chaser -- again, nobody knew who they were until their YouTube video went viral.
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I was just introduced to Straight No Chaser over the Christmas holiday when my in-laws shared their song and video for the 12 days of Christmas. Very funny and clever.
 
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this:

Internet forum poster exposes CBS News story on President Bush as a fake(2004)
Just before midnight Eastern time on September 8, 2004, a poster named "Buckhead" made a post on the Free Republic conservative discussion web site questioning authenticity the documents showing supposed questionable performance by President Bush when he was with the Texas Air National Guard, especially in the type of fonts the documents used. The result set off two days of very careful forensic investigation showing all kinds of major problems with the authenticity of the documents, and the final straw was when a poster on a conservative weblog overlaid a new version of the document done in the Windows version of Microsoft Word and showed it was a perfect match against the original shown by CBS News, demonstratingng it really was a forgery. The fallout from this debacle has lasted even to this day.
 
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