{"id":79125,"date":"2015-02-05T12:19:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T10:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=79125"},"modified":"2015-02-05T12:19:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T10:19:58","slug":"how-the-internet-looked-when-facebook-launched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/79125\/how-the-internet-looked-when-facebook-launched\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Internet looked when Facebook launched"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook first graced the world wide web 11 years ago – with the Internet a very different place back then.<\/p>\n

In February 2004, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg started up a social network on his Harvard campus called “Thefacebook”.<\/p>\n

The network has since grown into a $12.5 billion a year empire, attracting 1.4 billion users monthly, while Zuckerberg has ambitions to connect everyone.<\/p>\n

But what was the Internet like back in 2004?<\/p>\n

Facebook’s start<\/h3>\n
\"Facebook<\/a>

Facebook in 2004<\/p><\/div>\n

Facebook’s original look was quite different from how we see it when we log on today.<\/p>\n

Internet user numbers have more than tripled<\/h3>\n
\"Internet<\/a>

Internet users 2004 vs 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2004, there were around 910 million internet users across the world.<\/p>\n

We crossed over the 3 billion mark in 2014, with more than a third of those Internet users on Facebook today.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, China accounts for a large chunk of that, with about 640 million Internet users<\/a>, and along with the USA (280 million) and India (240 million) exceeds a billion users.<\/p>\n

There were “only” 50 million websites<\/h3>\n
\"Websites<\/a>

Websites 2004 vs 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

In May 2004, CXO Today reported<\/a> on the “mind-boggling” 50,550,965 sites that were online at the time.<\/p>\n

For some perspective, as of January 2014 there were over 850 million websites<\/a> – and some live site trackers put that number at more than 1.1 billion.<\/p>\n

Microsoft ruled the roost<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/strong><\/td>\nTop sites 2004<\/strong><\/td>\nTop sites 2014<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nMSN<\/td>\nG<\/span>o<\/span>o<\/span>g<\/span>l<\/span>e<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nMicrosoft<\/td>\nFacebook<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nYahoo<\/td>\nYouTube<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nAOL<\/td>\nYahoo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nG<\/span>o<\/span>o<\/span>g<\/span>l<\/span>e<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\nBaidu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\neBay<\/td>\nWikipedia<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nReal<\/td>\nAmazon<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nAmazon<\/td>\nTwitter<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>\nLycos Network<\/td>\nTaobao<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>\nMapQuest<\/td>\nQQ<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

According to a Nielsen NetRatings report<\/a>, Microsoft’s MSN website was the most popular online destination in 2004. It attracted 95.2 million users.<\/p>\n

Google was only ranked fifth, with 61.3 million users.<\/p>\n

Today, though, Microsoft is nowhere to be seen in the top 10, with Google climbing to the top spot, with Facebook second.<\/p>\n

Google search was dominated by teen pop sensations<\/h3>\n
\"Google<\/a>

Google search 2004 vs 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

Britney Spears was 2004’s hot topic, followed by Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera.<\/p>\n

The Tech community demanded wallpapers (for their desktop backgrounds) and had a keen interest in file-sharing site, Kazaa and Mp3s.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Google’s top search terms looked very different: Comedian and actor Robin William was the most searched term, followed by the World Cup and ebola.<\/p>\n

On the tech side, smartphones ruled, led by the iPhone 6, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Nexus 6.<\/p>\n

These popular websites didn’t even exist<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Site<\/strong><\/td>\nYear started<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
YouTube<\/td>\n2005<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Answers.com<\/td>\n2005<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Reddit<\/td>\n2005<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Twitter<\/td>\n2006<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
PornHub<\/td>\n2007<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tumblr<\/td>\n2008<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

More on the web<\/h3>\n

China\u2019s staggering internet population<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

25 worst passwords on the Internet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The threat of the Internet of things<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook first graced the world wide web 11 years ago – and the Internet was a very different place back then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":43007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[45,26,113],"class_list":["post-79125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-facebook","tag-headline","tag-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79125"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79159,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79125\/revisions\/79159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}