1994, in college. Got test results to a VAX account, and friend told me we could send messages to other students through it. Then I realized you could send messages to any college student with a VAX account. Then I realized you could send messages to ANYBODY with ANY sort of email address.
Then I discovered usenet, gopher, then Mosaic. I learned HTML and put my first web site together and got tons of responses. Six months later I got my first job as a web designer, and have been one ever since.
Pixelrage
· 1 month ago
1994: connecting with Hyperterminal, chatting on IRC, visiting BBS's and paying $1/each for shareware ASCII-based games, downloading BMP files, watching animated GIF porn.
Stan_Schroeder
· 1 month ago
Hehe. I really got hooked in college, I played MUDs and was hanging on IRC all day.
Henry
· 1 month ago
great news i have to say that it's internet that enrich our life thanks for it
Frank Kemper
· 1 month ago
I got my first modem (1.200 bps) in 1991. Then I got my first Compuserve account, started writing and receiving emails and contributing to different forums. One day Compuserve offered a gateway to a new service called "World Wide Web". One had to install a software named "Mosaic Browser". In order to surf the Web you had to first login to your Compuserve account and then open the gateway. If I remember reight, they even charged an extra fee per minute for surfing the Web. My first short Web excursions were quite undramatic - and I really wondered wether this strange stuff would make it to the future...
Doubledown Tandino
· 1 month ago
the internet should be shot and put out of it's misery
Url Reviews
· 1 month ago
umm go take your emo medication
Joe Dawson
· 1 month ago
I remember when I was little my father took us to see his friend and he had this computer installation and it was then I realised that I wanted to be an astronaut!!
kemeny
· 1 month ago
My first "internet" was on Compuserve.... i learned how to read Tabs and play some cool songs on my guitar. I think it was a greenday song, cant remember which one, back in 94.
dessyS
· 1 month ago
1996 probably? my mother made me a hotmail account that my IT-graduate uncle could spam wisdom messages on. I never read any of them, let alone touch the mouse. I had to be taught how to move the cursor through the window. That was a dark era. :)
madisontex
· 1 month ago
I am 34 and could never imagine have all the luxuries the internet has to offer while in high-school and college. Facebook, booking vacations, buying concert tickets (I remember waiting outside in the cold and rain for hours), applying for loans, buying groceries, and pretty much anything you could possibly imagine legal and illegal :)
suzi w.
· 1 month ago
I remember asking my boyfriend to take me to the library on my 24th birthday to see the Internet. We looked at the website for the store I worked at. It was pretty tame. That was in 1995. I didn't get "on line" for another three years.
pamelajaye
· 1 month ago
got on AOL Dec. 93 to find Donny Osmond. Fail. found Quantum Leap message board, Scott bakula fans, stayed. 5 months later a Scott fan found Donny for me - in Chicago, playing Joseph. I went, on the way to a QL con in Indiana. Newsgroups were next. Mosaic after that - slow as mud. June 95, Computer Museum in Boston - web via Netscape on a T1 - whee! I could set up Trumpet winsock, over SLIrP on Win 3.1 Once had an ISP that didn't bill me for a year... Hopped thru several real (now defunct) ISPs before landing on Mindspring in 97. My email addy and url are still mindspring, though earthlink took over. 2400bps, 14.4, 56k, Cable in 2002. ISP hopping no longer a problem: my domain is $9 a year, though my website is on mindspring with main frame on blogger (pitas was great, but i'm tired of coding by hand). Now #2 on google! (though I'd love to get out of frames - it would be a big project, and my CSS hates my tables) Try Men of a Certain Age, co-starring Scott Bakula, December 7, 10pm ET on TNT. I'm a fan - I plug for free.
Prodigy online is where it started for me. Though a lot of my buddies in middle school and I were on a local BBS called Spider Island, which allowed us free email and forums :). Everything was (and is) so exciting, in my opinion the advent and acceptance of the internet is one of the largest moments in the history of man.
Like with other groundbreaking advancements in communication (telegraph/telephone) it will change how we function as a world.
init0
· 1 month ago
Its been 40 years :) wow! But still we can embed video in an email...
Adam Gonnerman
· 1 month ago
The first time I saw the Internet was in 1994. I was in college and a friend came over to my dorm room and said they had computers with "the Internet" set up in the college library. I said something like "The Internet? I've heard about that." The computers used the Mosaic browser and timed out quite often, but I was impressed. I discovered I could even see the constitution of Mongolia online. Wow.
Rebecca Jesson
· 1 month ago
My first experience of the internet was in about 1994 or 95 at my Dad's office. I used to go in and search for information about Terminator 2, mostly from FAQs, as I was obsessed with it. We got dial up at home shortly afterwards where I started chatting to people on Compuserve and AOL and never looked back. I love you internet <3
Brian Blank
· 1 month ago
I remember summer computer classes in 1984 on Apple IIe's at the local high school when I was around 12. They also had these huge-ass console computers with the modem you put the old-school phone into two sockets. I remember dialing into to other networks and playing really simple games and accessing information on monochromatic green screens....that was revolutionary to me!
My first taste of the internet in the 1990's? Sorry to say was via AOL and got a heck of a lot more interesting once I found out you can go to OTHER places that are not AOL! Good write-up Stan.
Adam
· 1 month ago
I remember the scratchy dial tone fuzz and the free promo AOL hours on CD.
Gerry Alanguilan
· 1 month ago
I heard of the Internet from my techie brother, who handed down to me my first computer in 1997. It was a 486 with a 500MB HD, running on Windows 95. I had my first website running soon after. I studied Netscape Composer very very closely and I managed to put something together with it. I then added my site to Infoseek and in a few days I was thrilled to see my site turn up in search results. Inspired by a friend who did his diary publicly online, I put my own online diary on my site, a regularly updated html file using Netscape Composer. I feel bad that I never managed to save the first couple of years of my online journaling. I can't find it even on archive.org.
Boone
· 1 month ago
I remember the very first thing i entered into the netscape browser when my parents got the internet: http://www.nightcrawler.com when that didn't return anything, i then tried: http://www.wolverine.com after nothing came up again i thought the internet was crap. HAHAHAHA
RedShift
· 1 month ago
Remember when EVERYONE had AOL? Just so we could IM. And you would get a new CD with 200 FREE HOURS everyday. Ahhhh the good old days.
Hehehe happy birthday internet.I started using it along time ago and just recently i saw the real potential of its money making side.I like the thing u can its endless possibility for every person u just need to know how to make some use of what is provided to u...
Les
· 1 month ago
My first modem was a 300 baud unit. I used to get in trouble for tying up the phone line at home. Fiber optics were not mainstream.
Of course cable TV was analogue.....
There is no end to the innovation that the Internet has brought and created!
Our kids grew up with the Internet and get the shakes when their wireless connection drops....
I would get my dad to take me over to his workplace on a Sunday when it was closed and I'd use, I think, Netscape, to go through a list of websites I'd compiled from reading my tween girl magazines. Back in '99 or '00 or thereabouts, I would've been around 12/13...I feel like such a late starter compared to everyone else's comments, but in my group of friends I was online long, long before them. I'd many Geocities pages over the years...RIP :P
paulinelaila
· 1 month ago
Wow, it has been so many years since the net is around? I always thought it was far lesser around 25? I think if there was no internet in my life for a day, I'd die lol but hey there's lots to do offline too. Happy bday internet! google sniper
Roberto
· 1 month ago
Just a little note... the real predecessor of modern web browsers was Mosaic. The first graphical one was Erwise. :)
Nick Beech
· 1 month ago
my first exposure to the internet was back when BBS' were all the rage, playing Legend of the Red Dragon cruising with a 2400bps modem...I almost miss those days....almost
Stan_Schroeder
· 1 month ago
Almost? I miss them like hell (:
Nick Beech
· 1 month ago
I don't miss the 2400 bps modem, it took 10 minutes to dl one bitmap.
Shane Davis
· 1 month ago
I remember Geocities and Angelfire. Spinning GIFs and "Under Construction" banners aplenty. I remember MSN Messenger, when my friends and I were 10 or so - emoticons!
svenpartymaan
· 1 month ago
1992, my dad got Prodigy. I was 7. I would use it to play MadLibs and read Baby Sitters Club comics in all 256 colors of the rainbow.
Daniel
· 1 month ago
How exciting! Can't wait to see what innovation is next!
martyholman
· 1 month ago
I was a stranger to the internet until around 1994 or 5 when the USA Today ran a 5 day special on what the internet is and how it works. I read it and was fascinated, but really didn't get a computer for my internet purposes until 1998.
K Matthews
· 1 month ago
I remember when a friend set me up with a Yahoo email address - I was blown away. All these colours, additional news features, weather links in any city around the world . . . Simple things to please simple minds!
The internet has come a long way from what it was and it's still continuing to grow. I been hearing a lot of "I can't live without my internet," but we should be focusing our efforts on making on our personal time more efficient.
1994... I was so happy I could look up baseball stats with my dad whenever I wanted. I didn't have to wait for the newspaper the next morning. Ouch to the printed media!
jtabaco
· 1 month ago
some of us were around when it was only 55bps and you had to punch paper tapes to send something back. but that was even before the internet was around...
Anthony Rossos
· 1 month ago
It was so long time ago, that I don't remember when I first discovered the Internet. But I remember my friend telling me that I can send emails to USA and they will be delivered the next second. I was thinking he is kidding and didn't believe him. After that I started to learn how to build web sites on the computer courses. It was about 8 years ago and I was involved in the Internet sphere ever since. :)
give4u team
· 1 month ago
NEW, NEW , NEW Give4u is a social network that was built and designed for all citizens of the world. Anyone in the world who sees contribution to society and to the community as a higher value, a value which could bring him/her to a happier and more fulfilled life is more than welcome to join our "Give4u" social network community. Give4u believes that this kind of contribution can fit the needs of individuals, animals and the environment itself.
malkat
· 1 month ago
I first went online in 95-96, in computer class in elementary school. The only site we were allowed on was Yahooligans.
KC
· 1 month ago
It was 1990, I was 13, and was permitted one hour on a local Hartford, CT, BBS called "Bruce's Bar and Grill." To a 13-yr-old girl, I had a whole sea of nerdy boys to chat with. Met my first few boyfriends there. After the scratchy sound of the 1200 baud modem connecting, and then getting the DOS prompt that I'd been permitted into BB&G, I'd be giddy as the school girl that I literally was. I even planned for cohosting a BBS.
When Prodigy came out, I thought email was the coolest thing. No more stamped letters! But, ah, other people needed to have Prodigy, too.
Then AOL and IMing for hours on end, but I think we had some sort of hourly plan, so I had to be mindful of that -- lest my parents deduct the extra from my allowance!
Good times...
Jnando
· 1 month ago
I lived in Wethersfield and around the same age, I was calling into Bruce's Bar and Grill too. It was the only BBS in the Hartford area of its kind. The guy had multiple modems so that more than one person could visit the site at one time. It was also the first site that I ever saw where you could chat with other people on-line. It was funny because unlike today everyone in the chat room was living within the local calling area.
KaCro
· 1 month ago
That's cool! I wonder if we ever chatted. I remember "meeting" people from Wethersfield.
gwoodard
· 1 month ago
Perhaps I can use the Acoustic modem in the attic to talk to William Bell. ...its a Bell 104.
aethre
· 1 month ago
Oh wow, most everyone can give a year for when they learned about the internet or at least a general time frame.
I can't remember when I learned about it at all. It's like I always knew it existed. Of course, I was born in '88, soo...
I got the internet at home when I was 12, though. And then I joined neopets and spent waaay too much time in their guild forum things.
Kandice Day
· 1 month ago
The first thing that I remember about the internet was the commercials for it. Remember that little girl in the desert or something. She would always say 'it's coming,' or something like that. I was always so interested in what 'it' was.
Chris Seline
· 1 month ago
It was probably 1990 when I was first exposed to the actual internet. FTP was it's name, and downloading warez was the game. Though I had used BBS's before that, and I had seen email in action but never used it until college (93). We had net connections in our dorm then, but no web, just telnet and ftp. But despite all that, and dabbling in computer science in 94, I didn't use the web until probably late 95 or early 96. I was too busy making Doom levels.
websiteknight
· 1 month ago
My mate, Jeff was in my flat in the very early 1990s excitedly babbling on about this 'internet' and how it was going to change the world... He said you could go on these things called 'chat rooms' and talk to people all over the world and, because they couldn't see you, you could pretend to be anyone you want!
Also - instead of posting letters you could now send electronic letters (e-mail for short) that would reach the other person, even if they were on the other side of the planet, in a matter of seconds!!!!
Yeah, right, Jeff....... You've had too much cider again haven't you.
Name
· 1 month ago
I'm so grateful to Al Gore for creating the internet what an amazing thing he did all those years ago....
Mike Dammann
· 1 month ago
cool since we didn't really go to the moon that year, at least we did something right ;)
alans
· 1 month ago
Forty years ago I joined IBM at their workshops in South Ruislip, UK. At school, five years previously, a presenter waved an 80 column punch card at us and said it would be defunct by the time we were employed. As an engineer the card readers, punches and verifiers employed me, often frustrated me, well into the eighties. The IBM Virtual Machine Operating System (VM) continued the tradition of the 80 column, twelve row format.
In 1970 I managed to send data despite the reticence of 'Post Office, Telephones' (now British Telecom [BT]). Load the cards or tape, call the telephone exchange and ask for a data line. Wait for an eternity and, eventually, be granted the privilege of 200bps - yes bits per second!
The Bulletin Boards were run by enthusiasts. All credit to them but they were point-to-point connections, not an Internet. During WWII Post Office engineers created the first computers; in 1970 they could not provide a decent data link. They did, eventually, provide a 'Bulletin Board' of their own (what was it called?) but it was not a success.
The 'Internet' dates from the 1980s when Scientific and Commercial research establishments (NASA, CERNE, IBM etc.) had continuous links. BT could have been the world leader in computer networks but their ingrained resistance to change destroyed their business. Now they are set on destroying their postal business too.
Bury me face up twelve edge first!
mcastel
· 1 month ago
In the end of '80, making my thesis of astronomy, I was introduced to VAX and its email system. I started to get in touch with friends who worked in other scientifical institutes, connected with Decnet, the only available network at that time... It was only after some times, I think around 1993-94, while I was working for PhD at the Rome Astronomical Observatory (where I work now) that I got in contact with internet, with Mosaic, first, and Netscape, after some times. Netscape in particular was exciting in what it allowed you to view a webpage even if it was still uploading its elements. I remember that was fascinated by this new think of Internet. I remember how I was excited when I opened my very first simple page at Geocities..... Nobody still talked about it, or used it at home, no media was interested in it.. but it was just the beginning....
Joanne G. Apat
· 1 month ago
I had it way back high school. That's about 16 years ago... wow! It was a funny experience in an inet cafe. I accidentally came to a site that I'd rather keep my eyes tainted... Was stunned for what I saw when I opened the browser and hurriedly closed it... Hahahaha It scared me off... LOL
Gina9223
· 1 month ago
1973 at Sauk Trail Elementry School in Richton Park Ill. We were given class asignments, tests and IBM punch cards. At first we had hole punches and had to punch out the little boxes to answer the test questions. Then we moved on to big blue ink pencils. The ink got every place and stained your hands. Then we moved on to red pencils but that was only for a week or two. Then NO. 1 pencils, but the graphite smeared. Then NO. 2 pencils. We would answer the tests and our teacher would gather up the tests and take them over to Governor State Univerity for processing. The next day he would hook up a telephone in to a clunky modem and a IBM Selectric typewriter with a box of accordian paper and print up our test results.
By 1977 Scantron testing had matured to the point that everyone was using it.
vikkycab
· 1 month ago
Thank you for the piece on internet history, Stan. Brought me to nostalgia mode.
My first encounter with the intranet was in 1989, at a client's office. They needed to communicate between the huge steel-making plant in southern Philippines with the main office in Manila, a 1-1/2 hour plane (24-hrs by inter-island ship) ride away. It just made coordinating operations and exchanging documents between large corporation departments much easier.
Back then, we owned a PC with a 5.25" floppy drive, and used such wonderful user programs as Lotus, a word processing program (the name escapes me now), and created newsletters using a Xerox Publisher program. Prior to that, we owned an Atari gaming computer. My husband experimented with the programs and presented the first computer animated advertising storyboard to our client. While the animation was slow at 30 frames per minute (much like a slide show), we were able to impress them and bagged the account.
But my first personal link with the internet was only 5 years later, when my cousin introduced me to Usenet. Very very few homes had computers back then, but we were able to communicate with offices and non-governmental agencies to coordinate our social development work.
I too have not looked back, instead saw the potential of this new tool for personal business marketing to the world. Soon, I was surfing with Netscape, learning more and faster than reading books. I created my dance website on Geocities, using the Netscape Communicator, created my own graphics, experimented with columns, frames, tags, links, exchange links, and so many other features.
I was impressed by the results. In a week, people from the US were emailing me regarding dance lessons, when they came to visit the Philippines. I wasn't getting local clients from my website, because very few locals were connected to the net back then. But this changed at the turn of the century. By then, I had changed email addresses and forgot to inform Geocities in my account info. And I was locked out from my own website for failure to confirm my email address (how could I when they were sending the emails to my old deactivated email addy). But for almost 15 years, Geocities worked for me, until it finally closed shop on October 26 this year.
I've moved my dance site, and created several new ones on my own server, and continue to benefit from my online offices.
Some lessons learned from those 15 years include: (1) always put yourself in the position of your site's visitors -- content and useful info vs hype, personal writing style which makes blogs valuable, valid links, simple layouts that can be viewed in various browsers (2) good tags and keywords that people actually use to search for information. The tags I used to promote my site have not been changed since Yahoo/Geocities, yet I continued to receive 5 inquiries a day from my 10-year old non-updated website. (3) make friends with your exchange link owners. Goes a long way, much like social networking, extends your reach to many more people. (4) always update your account information with the critical sites. This is very important with Paypal and similar accounts, free web hosting if one prefers that, and a few others.
Happy 40th birthday, INTERNET.
anix
· 1 month ago
i used internet in 1999 (i was 13 then) when my dad bough a computer at our home, well in India it was still very new concept (internet), and people always had mixed opinion about it, like dont expose children to internet at so early age (i never under stood y at that time). but really what ever i am 2day is all b'coz of internet, my online friends and lods of free user generated contents floating on this free web space...
but i can say, it has changes a lot in past 11 years with a speed with has no count and will continue...
adam om
· 1 month ago
hehehe...great stuff
uditvanudas
· 1 month ago
i still remember when i first used the internet. it was back in 1996, an early age for computers in india. i was at my dad's office. i remember going to his secretary and telling her to take me to computer with 'internet explorer'. i had read about internet explorer in the papers a day earlier. and the first website i went to was, lego.starwars.com! :D i still remember the page loading...slowly..and the first images i saw was of the millenium falcon, made of lego!
JEBworks
· 1 month ago
Became first aware of it pretty much the same way. Found this thing developed by some geek named Marc Andreessen installed it on my Powerbook and started to explore the fascinating early world of the web.
Dee A
· 1 month ago
The party is at Al Gore's house...
Url Reviews
· 1 month ago
I always had a problem with this Internet birthday thing, The Internet was not born until it was publicly accessible, if you think about it, a baby is not starting to age until it is born into the public either, else we would all be 9 months old when we pop out of mommy's belly, it is the same with the Internet, I count the age from when it first went public and was available to people.
I first got the Internet with a one year free trial when I bought my buggy 60Mhz Pentium computer, remember that mishap? you know the chip with the calculation error in it lol, anyways my Internet was sitting on a shelf most of that year, I had no clue what to use it for, the David on Beverly Hills started blabbering about a "Internet in a Box" software suite, and my ears perked, and I guess for me that was the beginning of my downfall.
All Comments
Then I discovered usenet, gopher, then Mosaic. I learned HTML and put my first web site together and got tons of responses. Six months later I got my first job as a web designer, and have been one ever since.
i have to say that it's internet that enrich our life
thanks for it
I never read any of them, let alone touch the mouse. I had to be taught how to move the cursor through the window. That was a dark era. :)
June 95, Computer Museum in Boston - web via Netscape on a T1 - whee!
I could set up Trumpet winsock, over SLIrP on Win 3.1 Once had an ISP that didn't bill me for a year...
Hopped thru several real (now defunct) ISPs before landing on Mindspring in 97. My email addy and url are still mindspring, though earthlink took over. 2400bps, 14.4, 56k, Cable in 2002. ISP hopping no longer a problem: my domain is $9 a year, though my website is on mindspring with main frame on blogger (pitas was great, but i'm tired of coding by hand). Now #2 on google! (though I'd love to get out of frames - it would be a big project, and my CSS hates my tables)
Try Men of a Certain Age, co-starring Scott Bakula, December 7, 10pm ET on TNT. I'm a fan - I plug for free.
Live stream of the 40th anniversary conf. @ ucla http://www.ustream.tv/channel/internet-40th-ann...
enjoy!
Like with other groundbreaking advancements in communication (telegraph/telephone) it will change how we function as a world.
But still we can embed video in an email...
My first taste of the internet in the 1990's? Sorry to say was via AOL and got a heck of a lot more interesting once I found out you can go to OTHER places that are not AOL! Good write-up Stan.
http://www.redshiftagency.com/
Of course cable TV was analogue.....
There is no end to the innovation that the Internet has brought and created!
Our kids grew up with the Internet and get the shakes when their wireless connection drops....
http://discoverycomm.com/
Give4u is a social network that was built and designed for all citizens of the world.
Anyone in the world who sees contribution to society and to the community as a
higher value, a value which could bring him/her to a happier and more fulfilled life is
more than welcome to join our "Give4u" social network community.
Give4u believes that this kind of contribution can fit the needs of individuals, animals and the environment itself.
When Prodigy came out, I thought email was the coolest thing. No more stamped letters! But, ah, other people needed to have Prodigy, too.
Then AOL and IMing for hours on end, but I think we had some sort of hourly plan, so I had to be mindful of that -- lest my parents deduct the extra from my allowance!
Good times...
...its a Bell 104.
I can't remember when I learned about it at all. It's like I always knew it existed. Of course, I was born in '88, soo...
I got the internet at home when I was 12, though. And then I joined neopets and spent waaay too much time in their guild forum things.
Also - instead of posting letters you could now send electronic letters (e-mail for short) that would reach the other person, even if they were on the other side of the planet, in a matter of seconds!!!!
Yeah, right, Jeff....... You've had too much cider again haven't you.
In 1970 I managed to send data despite the reticence of 'Post Office, Telephones' (now British Telecom [BT]). Load the cards or tape, call the telephone exchange and ask for a data line. Wait for an eternity and, eventually, be granted the privilege of 200bps - yes bits per second!
The Bulletin Boards were run by enthusiasts. All credit to them but they were point-to-point connections, not an Internet. During WWII Post Office engineers created the first computers; in 1970 they could not provide a decent data link. They did, eventually, provide a 'Bulletin Board' of their own (what was it called?) but it was not a success.
The 'Internet' dates from the 1980s when Scientific and Commercial research establishments (NASA, CERNE, IBM etc.) had continuous links. BT could have been the world leader in computer networks but their ingrained resistance to change destroyed their business. Now they are set on destroying their postal business too.
Bury me face up twelve edge first!
At first we had hole punches and had to punch out the little boxes to answer the test questions. Then we moved on to big blue ink pencils. The ink got every place and stained your hands. Then we moved on to red pencils but that was only for a week or two. Then NO. 1 pencils, but the graphite smeared. Then NO. 2 pencils. We would answer the tests and our teacher would gather up the tests and take them over to Governor State Univerity for processing. The next day he would hook up a telephone in to a clunky modem and a IBM Selectric typewriter with a box of accordian paper and print up our test results.
By 1977 Scantron testing had matured to the point that everyone was using it.
My first encounter with the intranet was in 1989, at a client's office. They needed to communicate between the huge steel-making plant in southern Philippines with the main office in Manila, a 1-1/2 hour plane (24-hrs by inter-island ship) ride away. It just made coordinating operations and exchanging documents between large corporation departments much easier.
Back then, we owned a PC with a 5.25" floppy drive, and used such wonderful user programs as Lotus, a word processing program (the name escapes me now), and created newsletters using a Xerox Publisher program. Prior to that, we owned an Atari gaming computer. My husband experimented with the programs and presented the first computer animated advertising storyboard to our client. While the animation was slow at 30 frames per minute (much like a slide show), we were able to impress them and bagged the account.
But my first personal link with the internet was only 5 years later, when my cousin introduced me to Usenet. Very very few homes had computers back then, but we were able to communicate with offices and non-governmental agencies to coordinate our social development work.
I too have not looked back, instead saw the potential of this new tool for personal business marketing to the world. Soon, I was surfing with Netscape, learning more and faster than reading books. I created my dance website on Geocities, using the Netscape Communicator, created my own graphics, experimented with columns, frames, tags, links, exchange links, and so many other features.
I was impressed by the results. In a week, people from the US were emailing me regarding dance lessons, when they came to visit the Philippines. I wasn't getting local clients from my website, because very few locals were connected to the net back then. But this changed at the turn of the century. By then, I had changed email addresses and forgot to inform Geocities in my account info. And I was locked out from my own website for failure to confirm my email address (how could I when they were sending the emails to my old deactivated email addy). But for almost 15 years, Geocities worked for me, until it finally closed shop on October 26 this year.
I've moved my dance site, and created several new ones on my own server, and continue to benefit from my online offices.
Some lessons learned from those 15 years include:
(1) always put yourself in the position of your site's visitors -- content and useful info vs hype, personal writing style which makes blogs valuable, valid links, simple layouts that can be viewed in various browsers
(2) good tags and keywords that people actually use to search for information. The tags I used to promote my site have not been changed since Yahoo/Geocities, yet I continued to receive 5 inquiries a day from my 10-year old non-updated website.
(3) make friends with your exchange link owners. Goes a long way, much like social networking, extends your reach to many more people.
(4) always update your account information with the critical sites. This is very important with Paypal and similar accounts, free web hosting if one prefers that, and a few others.
Happy 40th birthday, INTERNET.
but really what ever i am 2day is all b'coz of internet, my online friends and lods of free user generated contents floating on this free web space...
but i can say, it has changes a lot in past 11 years with a speed with has no count and will continue...
I first got the Internet with a one year free trial when I bought my buggy 60Mhz Pentium computer, remember that mishap? you know the chip with the calculation error in it lol, anyways my Internet was sitting on a shelf most of that year, I had no clue what to use it for, the David on Beverly Hills started blabbering about a "Internet in a Box" software suite, and my ears perked, and I guess for me that was the beginning of my downfall.