/Big Question/ Deep impact
16/09/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
Which website has had the biggest impact on your life?
Business guru
Justin Cooke
Fortune Cookie
I remember Travelocity launching in Berlin in 1996. What was awesome was that it was the first website that allowed consumers to reserve, book, and purchase tickets without the help of a travel agent: ground breaking stuff!
Hotmail – original spelling HoTMaiL (nice use of HTML) – was launched on Independence Day in 1996. I loved it because it symbolised freedom from yucky ISP-based email and you could access your inbox from anywhere in the world! Over the next few months I remember watching it spread across the world like a friendly virus – and it ran on Linux – even after Microsoft bought it.
In February 1998, Bill Gross from GoTo.com offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of the results on his search engine and thus PPC advertising was invented. Payment on results mixed with the simple premise that the best performing websites would pay more is probably one of the best and most important business models of the past 2-0 years.
As well as Easynet and CYBERIA, the world’s first internet café, Keith Teare founded a brilliant company called RealNames that translated a keyword that someone typed into their browser location bar and sent you to the relevant URL. In 2002 it was responsible for over one billion keyword navigations per quarter. Then in Q2 Microsoft stopped supporting it and instead sent the results to MSN search. Game over. Shame.
Mobile guru
Brian Fling
Fling Media
We forget how Google’s simple little search page changed everything. As the dot-com era went up in flames, Google rose from the ashes with a minimalist vision of what the web could be. It brought user-centred design, web standards and web-centric business models to the forefront of the web consciousness. That one little page was responsible for spawning an entirely new generation of the web.
Social software consultant
Suw Charman-Anderson
Open Rights Group
The site that has wrought the biggest change in my life is, without doubt, Blogger.com. The first incarnation of my personal blog, Chocolate and Vodka, lived on Blogger and I think it’s fair to say that it has transformed every aspect of my life.
Had I not started Chocolate and Vodka, I certainly wouldn’t have ended up becoming a social media consultant. My first foray into that world came four years ago, when a company asked me to do some copywriting for them on the strength of my personal blog. When I saw the blog they wanted me to write for I realised that there were a few problems with it, so I wound up advising them on how to improve it, rather than writing it. From that one acorn, my career has grown.
Had I not started using Blogger, I wouldn’t have met fellow bloggers such as Gary Turner and Kevin Marks. I wouldn’t have gone to NotCon, and wouldn’t have found out about the EFF or Lawrence Lessig or Danny O’Brien. Which pretty much means that I wouldn’t have founded the Open Rights Group. And without that, BBC Radio 5 would have had no call to interview me, which means that I never would have met Kevin Anderson, who’s now my husband.
All in all, I have a lot to thank Blogger for.
Content specialist
Siim Vips
Modera
Google has definitely changed the lives of many. I was still at university when search engines started to appear, and Google stood out with the quality of results and simplicity of use. Now it’s taken the same ideology to different web applications and found good ways of turning traffic to profit. Google has challenged us as users and now as content creators, in addition to being hugely involved in the way businesses and consumers use the internet and related technologies.
Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications
With so many sites and resources that I use now, it’s difficult to pinpoint what really sparked off my interest. In the early days of the web (while at university) there weren’t many people using the internet and we were discouraged from doing so. They certainly wouldn’t help you set up an account and get connected to it. It’s only because my brother (www.clevegibbon.com/wordpress) was studying computer science that I knew a little bit more than my peers and this underground use of it captured my imagination.
Back then, it there wasn’t ‘a site’ as such for me, so it’s tempting to say Google as ‘the’ site with the biggest impact because it was a resource I started to use more as the web began to take a more commercial route, and searching for information online was part and parcel of the job. Google started out as a search engine and has played a major part in influencing the internet and related technologies. It’s challenged us as users and businesses to strive for the best in seeking simple solutions to complex issues.
But the site that had the biggest impact on me in the beginning of my digital career was MSN. It’s where I registered to get my first personal email address in 1997, with Hotmail, and the email address is still use now. It meant I could manage out-of-work correspondence and gave me online independence. A Yahoo email address followed shortly after that, and I used them both more than anything else. I became interested in portals generally and the additional services they began to offer such as communities, forums and eventually the instant messaging (IM) tools. This was the turning point for me as they became great tools for business and networking (commercial and otherwise), becoming incredibly addictive: pretty much as they are now, albeit from a range of different providers.
Applications guru
Roger Greene
Ipswitch
For me it’s the same as I expect it is for others: Google. I use it more than any site, usually several times a day, for mostly the same reasons as others do. I search for a company’s website by typing in the name. I use it as a reference library index to answer questions. I use its maps to see how far away places are and how to get there. The experience that was initially magical has become mundane, but I find it still has most impact.
Web filtering specialist
Eamonn Doyle
Bloxx
By some distance it has to be Google. How many times a day do you find yourself on Google searching for information about a whole range of subjects? Yesterday Google helped us to settle the argument about who sang Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs (it was Brian and Michael just in case you were wondering). Without search engines like Google to help us deal with the vast store of information available, the usability of the web would surely be significantly reduced.
Ecommerce specialist
Chris Barling
Actinic
I do feel at a slight disadvantage here. Unlike the Facebook generation, my world has migrated online as opposed to being born via the Ethernet cable. However, my award would have to go to the BBC, which has been working to make the web useful for the general public for many years. I use its site to listen to or watch shows that I missed, find the weather, get up-to-the minute sports news and generally stay connected. It’s not flashy, but it’s very useful.
The truth is that over the years my world has been turned upside down by the internet. After all, I started an ecommerce company back in 1996 when all we had was text and animated gifs, and the exciting new development was hyperlinks!
Web analyst
Phil Sumner
Nielsen Online
TripAdvisor has revolutionised the way I approach researching and booking holidays. I’ve just booked a large proportion of my forthcoming honeymoon based on the thoughts, opinions, photos and videos of a whole host of people I’ve never met. In my opinion, TripAdvisor has become an essential tool for the modern and diligent traveller but more importantly, it’s helped bring consumer-generated media to the mainstream and made businesses wake up to the power and the potential harm of negative feedback. Of course we all know that the real answer to this question is Google!
Comments
Andrea / 16/09/2008 / 15:10
Guys... no one is mentioning altavista and yahoo! I mean... google is great and bla bla bla... but Yahoo with its directory and Altavista were the real first big web search engines. Sometimes I feel sad on how easily things change...
Colin Robertson / 16/09/2008 / 17:09
Altavista and Yahoo were useful but Google really took it to the next level. Before Google the best thing to do if you were looking for some particular piece of information is find a site that might know and work your way through that - Google brought that information straight to your home page.
Despite that I'd say Google Reader has had a bigger effect on my life. I literally spend hours a day on it, both for personal and professionally use. It has taken the information I was finding out by chance and drives it straight to my inbox (essentially).
I was quite surprised to see no RSS reader on the list. Perhaps because more people still use desktop RSS apps and therefore they don't count in this list.
Tim / 17/09/2008 / 17:24 / http://www.dubblevision.com
Google!!! Not only is the search engine used several times a day, but i rely on Google to find me websites i am looking for. I know there are other search engines which may give accurate results but, Google has taken the search engine program to a whole new level.
As a director of a design & marketing agency, its unbelievable the amount of times we use Google services. From Analytics, Sitemaps, Rankings, Maps, Gmail and now the Chrome browser - which i have to admit.. i love. I even feel alittle sorry for Firefox. Google not only develop these things to a high standard.. but they are FREE.
All our clients want to be ranked high on Google. And if they get there.. they've practically made it.
Caledonian Jim / 18/09/2008 / 00:41 / http://www.caledonian-comment.com
Altavista was the site I remember using all the time - and I never go near it now !
Manuel / 21/09/2008 / 03:37 / http://www.gossipcheck.com
http://www.geocities.com
I started playing around with their free website creator tools back in 1997 and created my first website. I soon figured out that I want to be a web designer / programmer.
Adam Bryson / 22/09/2008 / 16:43 / http://adambryson.com
Reluctant to admit it, but AOL was the first web site to have an impact on my life. It was the only dial up access in my area for several years. The email address, the communities, the content all held an attraction to me that brought me back daily.
Jon / 26/09/2008 / 14:05 / http://www.manizesto.com
Google, without a doubt. Look at how it has changed everyone's lives, even people who don't use the internet know that to find something you just Google it!
Google helped mold an entire industry!
Sure, Yahoo was around even MSN was working up a storm - I'd even say that AOL was making a mark - but that was years ago and Google has really revolutionized the internet; because of their simplicity and accurate-than-most algorithms.
Deb / 29/09/2008 / 11:33
Facebook has had the biggest impact on my life. I spent 2 years living in Africa with kids I thought Id never see again. To get a poke from one of them, and then another and then another 15 years down the track was amazing to see how far through life they had all come. From having no shoes and no electricity and be living in a mud hut, to showing me pictures of a house they own and having families and having jobs made me dumbfounded.
Ellie / 23/10/2008 / 23:27
Vampirefreaks.com has had the biggest impact on me.
Sure, the name sounds terrible, but it's the best, and probably the only social networking website for those with "alternative" lifestyles that I use.
It basically sparked my interest in web and graphic design, I've learnt most of what I know about it from there.
I've met some pretty amazing people there too, it has its cons just like every website out there, but it's like my second e-home.
Har har.
