Results: The History of News & Communication *Part Ninety-Five* Commercialization of the Internet

1996: The creation of social media beyond webmail, the Internet also gets more social in 1996 with the creation of the first social media platform. In 1997 Andrew Weinreich created Six Degrees, a company named after the "six degrees of separation" theory. The site allowed users to create a profile and list their interests, and then connect with others who shared similar interests. similar to the features of all your favorite social media hallmarks. Did you ever have an amount with "Six Degrees"?

In 1997: The invention of Wi-Fi changed internet access. Today, Wi-Fi is almost synonymous with the Internet, and we can trace its official creation back to 1997. In this year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved the 802.11 standard for Wi-Fi. This "official" onset came after several foundational developments, leading back to the 1940s, when actress Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil developed a "frequency hopping" system. The system paved the way for a team at CSIRO to invent the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) in the 1990s. The WLAN allowed devices to connect to a network through radio waves. Did you ever use Dial Up and a modem over a phone line?

Google went live in 1998, revolutionizing the way in which people find information online. In 1998: Internet-based file-sharing gets its roots. Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. Initially, Napster was envisioned by Fanning as an independent peer-to-peer file sharing service. The service operated between June 1999 and July 2001. Its technology enabled people to easily share their MP3 files with other participants. The service was extremely popular and provided easy access for millions of internet users to a large amount of free audio files (mostly music) that could also be shared with other Napster members. At the height of Napster's popularity, approximately 80 million users were registered on its network. Did you know that many colleges blocked the use of Napster because of network congestion caused by students obtaining music using peer-to-peer file sharing?

First camera phone introduced, Japan's SoftBank introduces the first camera phone, the J-Phone J-SH04; a Sharp-manufactured digital phone with integrated camera. The camera had a maximum resolution of 0.11 megapixels a 256-color display, and photos could be shared wirelessly. The J-Phone line would quickly expand, releasing a flip-phone version just a month later. Cameras would become a significant part of most phones within a year, and several countries have even passed laws regulating their use. Do you own a Camera Phone?

2000: The bubble bursts--2000 was the year of the dotcom collapse, resulting in huge losses for legions of investors. Hundreds of companies closed, some of which had never turned a profit for their investors. The NASDAQ, which listed a large number of tech companies affected by the bubble, peaked at over 5,000, then lost 10% of its value in a single day, and finally hit bottom in October of 2002. Did the crash of the Dotcom Bubble impact you personally?