Remembering the golden age of the Internet

My Golden Age for the internet would be the '00s as a whole. It was amazing watching that transition from the early web to the rise of social media.

First, you have the early '00s web, which was essentially about the same as the late '90s. Most of the country had dial-up, message boards were dominant, Google was becoming a big search engine but still had competition, websites like Geocities were where everybody made their own web pages, and kids used stuff like AOL Messenger.

Then you have the mid '00s. Message boards were still the big thing, but early social media began to become relevant with Myspace taking off around 2005 and YouTube become big a bit later. Broadband had overtaken dial-up, but it wasn't that great and dial-up still had something like 30% of the market. MP3 downloads began to get bigger than ever, but online streaming was still early and not that relevant.

The late '00s are generally considered the Golden Age of social media, before MySpace became irrelevant, and sites like YouTube and Facebook became corporate. This was the last era where message boards were still a big thing. It was the early days of online streaming getting big also.

The Internet nowadays (especially with sites like Facebook and YouTube) just feels more corporate, homogenized, and less free.

That's a good point. It does sort of seem like when social media became more about getting likes and attention was when the web as a whole started going downhill. Like, the early days of YouTube were about guys making videos in their garages about stuff they thought was cool, but eventually it became about trying to be a celebrity and get any attention that you can online.

Not enough people recognize the 2000s decade for the wonderful era it was for the Internet.