How the Internet Happened

Author:: Brian McCullough Full Title:: How the Internet Happened Tags:#media/book

• themes::
  • theme 1
• Summary::
  • summary 1

* highlights from 2021-02-08

* Legend holds that the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, once remarked, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” ([Location 63](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=63))
* And yet, the tantalizing, almost forbidden mystique of computers seduced a generation of what were considered hobbyists in the 1970s. The hobbyists wanted to master computers themselves. They wanted computers that responded to them directly, without intermediaries. They wanted personal computing. ([Location 74](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=74))
* By 1990, only 42% of U.S. adults said they used a computer even “rarely.”1 In that same year, the number of American households that owned a computer had not yet passed 20%.2 ■ THE INTERNET, AND ESPECIALLY the World Wide Web, finally brought computers into the mainstream. The Internet is the reason that computers actually became useful for the average person. ([Location 89](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=89))
* a distributed, nonhierarchical computer and communications network that facilitated discussion and exchange among the research and scientific community. The ARPANET evolved into the Internet we recognize today not as a populist or mass-market communications system, but as an electronic playground where a priesthood of academics could play and exchange ideas. ([Location 106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=106))
* And the current users had little interest in making it easier. In fact, there was a definite element of not wanting to make it easier, of actually wanting to keep the riffraff out. ([Location 224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=224))
* The original Mosaic crew was the first to make this journey. They didn’t know they were the vanguard of a newfangled gold rush. They were, literally, corn-fed midwesterners. They were used to making six bucks an hour for their coding and had little inkling that software development could pay much more than that. ([Location 395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=395))
* But the Mosaic team had stumbled upon something simpler. They had discovered that you could dream up a product, code it, release it to the ether and change the world overnight. Thanks to the Internet, users could download your product, give you feedback on it, and you could release an update, all in the same day. In the web world, development schedules could be measured in weeks. ([Location 418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=418))
* Throughout the Internet Era, company after company would become obsessed with the idea of creating or owning a platform. If you are a platform, you can create an ecosystem of developers and software and apps all dependent on the underlying platform. To own a platform is to own the ball field, the rule book, the turnstiles, and the broadcast rights. Netscape did not originate the obsession with platforms, but it would provide the template. ([Location 483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=483))
* The more valuable thing was to show a sense of “Netscape speed,” the ability to be nimble and a willingness to chase markets and market share; to sense your moment of opportunity and be willing to go after it immediately. ([Location 629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=629))
* “You had to show that you were the company not of the present, but of the future. The most appealing companies became those in a state of pure possibility.” ([Location 631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=631))
* The information superhighway was the fever dream of the telephone industry and the cable industry and the computer industry and even of Hollywood. The idea was that we’d all be linked together via a Frankenstein-like combination of the television and the PC. We’d be able to shop from home, and exchange video chats with each other, and rent movies on demand and receive personalized news and media based on our interests. I know. Sounds exactly like the Internet we know today. But all of this was supposed to happen on your television. ([Location 688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=688))
* It all came down to this: no one in tech, no one in media, no one from Bill Gates to Jerry Levin to Hollywood ubermogul Barry Diller had realized what Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark had realized: the information superhighway was already here. The Internet and the World Wide Web were the information superhighway. The revolution was now, and it was being delivered not by the television, but by the computer. ([Location 735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=735))
* In a way, AOL embodied that most American of dichotomies: wholesome, friendly, mainstream on the outside, with all sorts of prurient stuff going on behind closed doors. ([Location 1013](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1013))
* AOL always had a schizophrenic relationship with the Internet. The web provided a new, wilder alternative online environment, and in some ways this was in tension with AOL’s carefully cultivated online “community.” ([Location 1100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1100))
* “Long lines are endemic at Disney World,” a new AOL executive named Bob Pittman said. “Folks hate them. But offer Six Flags as an alternative and they look at you like you are crazy. They don’t think anything is a substitute for Disney.” AOL survived and continued to thrive for one reason, according to Pittman: “It’s the brand, stupid.” ([Location 1171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1171))
* The early web was sort of everything and nothing at the same time. The entrepreneur and venture capitalist Chris Dixon has remarked that “the next big thing always starts out dismissed as a ‘toy.’ ([Location 1179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1179))
* In April 1995, Sequoia invested $1 million in exchange for one-fourth of the newly incorporated Yahoo. By early 1999, Sequoia’s initial $1 million was worth $8 billion. ([Location 1498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1498))
* By 1998, Yahoo was better known to the average consumer than even Microsoft. ([Location 1530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1530))
* “The fundamental bet we are making is that we are a media company, not a tools company,” ([Location 1531](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1531))
* Yahoo was bigger than Netscape. But unlike Netscape, which remained a traditional software and business services company, Yahoo was a web-only company, a web-native company, a company that would never have existed if the web had never been invented. ([Location 1595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1595))
* To early commerce pioneers, the promise wasn’t that the web would allow them to do something fundamentally different than before—this was still about selling goods to consumers—but that it could radically transform the way they would do ([Location 1611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1611))
* So, it’s interesting to note: Amazon didn’t exactly trounce its initial competition. Barnes & Noble is still around (though Borders is gone). Bookstores are still around, unlike, say, video rental stores or music stores. Amazon didn’t surpass Barnes & Noble in total revenue as a company until 2004.33 Amazon didn’t even become the biggest book retailer in the world until 2007.34 But it didn’t really matter, because just as had been the plan all along, while the incumbent booksellers raced to copy Amazon, Amazon was already moving toward new horizons. Jeff Bezos didn’t care if Amazon ever definitively “won” in books, frankly, because his real aim was to take increasingly bigger bites of other markets, and then other markets, and other markets, until one day, Amazon had a piece of every market. ([Location 1803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1803))
* But AuctionWeb’s immediate success was also due to structural decisions that would enable the service to scale successfully. In short, Omidyar enabled AuctionWeb’s community to organize itself. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1896))
* Omidyar had accidentally stumbled upon one of the longer-term factors in AuctionWeb’s eventual success. A focus on community, on empowering the users and allowing them to function autonomously would prove to be absolutely vital. ([Location 1907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1907))
* eBay was online commerce, but not in the way that Amazon was; it was a platform, but not like the operating system or the browser were. eBay was nothing more than a virtual marketplace, and by being virtual, it didn’t actually do anything other than facilitate the interactions between buyers and sellers. It didn’t store goods. It didn’t ship goods. It didn’t even guarantee the exchange of goods between buyers and sellers! The one truly tangible thing that eBay had was the goodwill of those buyers and sellers and the community they were creating—on their own—to make the buying and selling happen. eBay would be one of the first web companies to understand that all the value of its service came from the users and their community. eBay’s only asset, in fact, was its users, and therefore the only important thing for the company to do was to make sure the buyers and sellers were happy so that they would keep coming back. ([Location 1929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=1929))
* THE INTERNET ERA might have been launched in Silicon Valley, but to a large extent, it was monetized by startups in New York City. As the web began to call out for digital advertising as a revenue engine, young New York–based geeks stepped up to create digital agencies, brokerages and advertising companies. ([Location 2023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2023))
* The posts on Suck always felt like they came from a distinctly personal point of view. There was commentary, sometimes overt, but also between the lines. Suck was rude, often crude, glib and satirical, but always with purpose. Suck was, in short, snarky. It was a publication that laid the groundwork for blogging in its modern form, both in structure and in tone. ([Location 2096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2096))
* Yahoo needed to find a way to keep users on its pages. To use a watchword that was ubiquitous at the time, Yahoo needed to get more “sticky.” ([Location 2181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2181))
* Valuations weren’t tied to things like, you know, income. They were tied to potential fortunes to be made, somewhere in the future. New metrics like counting “eyeballs” and “mind share” were used to show companies were growing, even if that growth couldn’t be measured in dollars and cents. Heck, sometimes a dot-com stock would increase in value even after it announced losses! Investors might take that as a sign the company was “wisely” plowing its money into strategies for growing at all cost. ([Location 2281](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2281))
* People didn’t want to hear negativity. For everyone involved, it was far more helpful to your career if you joined the hosanna chorus talking up the prospects of the soaring market. Fund managers who did not fill their holdings with technology stocks saw their returns trail those of their peers and even the market indexes. “You either participate in this mania, or you go out of business,” ([Location 2344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2344))
* That sort of new-economy mumbo-jumbo worked for the dot-com companies—until it didn’t. Get Big Fast and profits-someday were valid business strategies—until they weren’t. ([Location 2700](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=2700))
* The bubble made possible the British Empire at its economic height. ([Location 3059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3059))
* Of course, the dot-coms went away. Of course, AOL—for one brief shining moment, the embodiment of the Internet in American life—went away. But the Internet itself didn’t go away. And that’s why the railway example is so pertinent. ([Location 3061](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3061))
* All of the money poured into technology companies in the first half decade of the Internet Era created an infrastructure and economic foundation that would allow the Internet to mature. And I mean that in a tangible, physical way. ([Location 3063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3063))
* They’re always asking, why should it be like that? ([Location 3115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3115))
* But a lot of it was Page and Brin’s ingrained Montessori philosophy: they never met a problem they couldn’t solve through smart engineering. ([Location 3244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3244))
* Google didn’t take pages from the established Silicon Valley playbook because, in a way, they had never bought into it. They didn’t try to Get Big Fast. Instead, Page and Brin were almost manically focused on endlessly iterating and improving upon their Big Idea, ([Location 3245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3245))
* Frugality and efficiency were not just virtues, they were also philosophical and aesthetic differentiators. Google’s home page was simply the Google logo, a text field to enter a search query, ([Location 3252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3252))
* Fanning’s MP3 search program would be networking in its purest form; it would be a literal peer-to-peer exchange. ([Location 3370](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3370))
* If Napster had been naïve to think it could have done a deal with the record companies, then the record companies were certainly naïve to think destroying Napster would somehow make the threat of digital technology go away. ([Location 3487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3487))
* Napster was the first signal that the web had changed consumer behavior in a fundamental way. Today, we live in a world where consumers not only expect, but demand, infinite selection and instant gratification. Amazon had first introduced the concept of infinite selection, and now Napster was training an entire generation to require the instant gratification. ([Location 3496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3496))
* Infinite selection. Instant gratification. On any device. When it comes to digital disruption of media, it is almost never about free content or piracy, not at the core. It is always about giving people what they want, when they want it, how they want it. ([Location 3504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3504))
* By 2003, it was estimated that 2 billion music files were being exchanged every month. ([Location 3595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3595))
* Jobs was convinced that ease of use and customer choice were key to competing with the lure of the free. Making it dead simple for people to get what they wanted would make piracy seem like a hassle in comparison. ([Location 3612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3612))
* By mid-2006, Apple had sold 58 million iPods in total, and the iPod-iTunes business combined contributed 61% of Apple’s total revenue.23 Apple was no longer “just” a computer company. ([Location 3640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3640))
* iPods, with their soon-to-be-ubiquitous white(ish) earbuds, became fashion statements, calling cards of the “hip” and the “modern.” ([Location 3646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3646))
* But (irony of ironies) the iTunes software platform gave Apple a near-monopoly of the MP3 player and digital music download markets. It was (ironically) a software platform that Microsoft couldn’t penetrate. By 2007, Apple’s iTunes controlled 70% of legal digital music sales.25 The iPod claimed a similar share of the MP3 player market. ([Location 3649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3649))
* Apple showed a willingness to eat its young in order to stay on the cutting edge; to out-innovate itself before others ever had the chance. ([Location 3656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3656))
* The general public has intuited that the Internet and digital technology enable a world of unlimited selection and instant gratification. If your business model stands in the way of that, well, consumers will just go around you. ([Location 3677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3677))
* The official tale of Netflix’s birth is that CEO Reed Hastings got a $40 late fee for not returning a copy of Apollo 13 in time. Incensed, he founded a DVD-rental company that wouldn’t treat its own customers so shabbily. Like eBay’s Pez Dispenser, however, this late-fee-as-eureka-moment is merely a PR-friendly origin story dreamed up retroactively. ([Location 3681](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3681))
* The DVD became the fastest adopted consumer electronics technology in history, and the number of DVD titles Netflix could provide exploded. ([Location 3691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3691))
* Netflix won not because it eliminated late fees, but, again, because it understood how consumers’ expectations were changing and moved to satisfy those new expectations. Unlimited selection. Instant gratification. ([Location 3751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3751))
* After a mere twenty-six months of operation, there were 12.8 million PayPal accounts. It had taken eBay more than four years to reach 10 million accounts. ([Location 3787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3787))
* The Yahoo deal taught Google that licensing alone wouldn’t be a big enough home run to build a company around—or at least, not a very big company. ([Location 3822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3822))
* It became a classic win-win-win: Google started making more money per search than Overture did, advertisers felt like they were paying less per click while reaching more potential customers, and users felt like they were getting supplemental search results, in the form of ads that were often quite useful. ([Location 3912](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3912))
* Google’s success was validation that the Internet as a social, cultural, and (most important) a financial phenomenon was not dead. The revolution had merely been regrouping. Google was also proof that not only were some of the original ideas from the dot-com era still valid; some new ideas might also be out there ready to build on the dot-com era’s faded promise. ([Location 3991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3991))
* More than anything, Google’s success provided the template to make these new ideas profitable. Just as with the Netscape IPO nearly a full decade before, a new generation took notice: there was fire in Silicon Valley again. ([Location 3996](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=3996))
* It turned out that blogging represented the vanguard of a new kind of web, one that built off the original promise of the web as an interactive medium, but now in a new, more personal way. There was a whole new world of content being created on the web, and the creators were the web users themselves. ([Location 4018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4018))
* Ever since the web was born, the idea of webpages as individual soapboxes was one of the most obvious and enticing use cases for the technology. It all tied into the original utopian ideal of the web: anyone with an opinion or an insight could broadcast their truth to the entire planet, free from the oversight of the traditional gatekeepers who told you what you could and could not say. But blogging was somehow more personal and more purposeful than simply having a homepage. The whole point of having a blog was to share something with the world, anything from links to things you found cool, to the most intimate details of your life, to your manifesto for world peace. ([Location 4027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4027))
* Drudge gained his notoriety in January 1998 when, after Newsweek had determined the story too dubious to publish itself, he released the first rumors about Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern on the Drudge Report. One man’s digital soapbox nearly brought down the President of the United States. Within 6 months, the Drudge Report claimed 6 million monthly visitors, which represented a greater readership than Time magazine. ([Location 4062](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4062))
* “Immediacy is more important than accuracy,” Denton would say, “and humor is more important than accuracy.” ([Location 4090](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4090))
* Pitchfork allowed a slate of obscure music writers to challenge the established order merely by gaining credibility through the power of their unique point of view. This phenomenon, whereby the best content rose to the top and the most prominent voices became the new “establishment,” occurred in numerous interest niches across the Internet. From food to fashion, from automobile blogs to “mommy” blogs, even touching such rarefied academic arenas as finance, economics and the law, blogs allowed new voices to surface and claim the mantle of “expert,” without any official sanction, training or even previous experience. ([Location 4101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4101))
* the common man as recording vessel for history. “If everyone was to tell their stories on the web, we would have an endless human storybook, with alternating perspectives. ([Location 4111](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4111))
* It had taken about a decade for mainstream users to acclimatize themselves to the web, but now that they had the lay of the land, they were no longer content to merely “surf.” Even everyday web users were now ready to participate in the web. As Marc Andreessen had anticipated all the way back in the days of the Mosaic browser, the “riff-raff” were ready to join the party in a major way, not just as consumers, but as producers. ([Location 4130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4130))
* If you both shared an interest in a given band, then maybe you would like that other band that your friend on Napster had so many MP3s of. It was like the Netflix recommendation engine, but impromptu and self-created. It was the act of finding like-minded individuals, of creating community out of silos of shared interest. ([Location 4137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4137))
* The new postbubble web was about the users and the content in equal measure. It was about spontaneous impulses like “sharing” and self-organizing schemes like “tagging” and taxonomies. It was about how the content created by and for the hoi polloi often ended up being more engaging and exciting than the content that was prepackaged or professionally produced. And increasingly, the new web was about the collective “wisdom” of the crowd to create and organize the anarchy. ([Location 4153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4153))
* Cunningham is famous for coining “Cunningham’s Law,” which finds that “the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer.” ([Location 4168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4168))
* turned out that the “infinite monkey theorem” about giving enough monkeys typewriters and eventually producing Shakespeare—was not exactly fanciful. Enough self-interested strangers could achieve a fair degree of accuracy on a wide range of topics. ([Location 4197](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4197))
* this day, it is supported by contributions from the public and is thereby an open-source counterweight to the proprietary “answer engine” that is Google. ([Location 4209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4209))
* If Web 1.0 was about browsing stuff created by others, Web 2.0 was about creating stuff yourself. If Web 1.0 was about connecting all the computers in the world together, then Web 2.0 was about connecting all the people in the world together, via those interlaced computers. If the clarion call of Web 1.0 was the Netscape IPO, then the coming of age of Web 2.0 was Google’s IPO. ([Location 4213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4213))
* Get Big Fast was no longer the strategic mantra; multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns and gaudy launch parties were out. Instead, Web 2.0 companies aimed at refining their products and services, carefully cultivating a user base through feature innovation and word-of-mouth discovery, all while focusing like a laser on issues such as reliability and scalability. ([Location 4239](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4239))
* By some estimates, the cost of starting a web company had fallen by 90% in the few short years of the nuclear winter. ([Location 4247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4247))
* The new Web 2.0 companies didn’t need to raise as much money and, unlike just a few years previously, none of them were in any hurry to go public. ([Location 4268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4268))
* The lesson of the bubble had been learned: you can go for broke, but try to build a real company first. ([Location 4273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4273))
* “In the end, we just sat back,” said Hurley, meaning they just let the users upload whatever they wanted no matter how silly, or inane, or personal, or whatever.20 It was the Web 2.0 way. ([Location 4287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4287))
* Aside from push-button-easy uploading, the true brilliance of YouTube was the site’s second important focus: dead-simple sharing. After you posted a video to YouTube, you could simply share a link to your uploaded video, just like with Flickr. But you could just as easily cut and paste a few lines of code and your video would play, embedded, wherever you wanted it to: on your website, your blog, or your Myspace page. You didn’t ever have to send people to YouTube if you didn’t want to. ([Location 4299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4299))
* After the early months of indifferent traffic, YouTube’s audience exploded faster than any previous website in history (including Google, Myspace and Facebook). By the beginning of 2006, the site was serving 3 million video views a day. Six months later, that number had grown to 100 million views a day. Like most good Web 2.0 companies, YouTube achieved this success on a shockingly small amount of money. The company only ever raised $11.5 million, in two investment rounds. The fact that YouTube could serve video to the world from just a handful of servers (and some helpful content delivery networks in the background) was a powerful testament to the infrastructure the dot-com bubble had bequeathed to this new generation of startups. ([Location 4312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4312))
* The idea that random events or random people could “go viral” really entered the mainstream thanks to YouTube. “We are providing a stage where everyone can participate and everyone can be seen,” Hurley told the Associated Press in April of 2006.22 There was no greater Web 2.0 manifesto than that. ([Location 4321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4321))
* Google was the savior Napster never had. It had the infrastructure to allow YouTube to scale up; it had the technical sophistication to keep YouTube on the right side of the law; it had the money to contest the legal battles; and—most important—it provided YouTube with the business model that would allow it to thrive. ([Location 4350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4350))
* WEB 2.0 WAS ABOUT PEOPLE expressing themselves—actually being themselves, actually living—online. The last piece of the puzzle was simply to make the threads of all this social activity explicit. ([Location 4366](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4366))
* AIM continued as a breakout success for one simple factor: it was a literal social graph, a tangible map of your online connections and relationships. Chatting on AIM became more popular than email, and your AIM screen name eventually gave you the ability to customize a rudimentary profile, turning it into a valuable online marker of identity. These features, combined with the away messages and status updates, came to reflect a user’s daily circumstance. Add to this the emojis and icons that allowed AIM users to project their mood, and AIM became a fully functional and real-time representation of the digital self. ([Location 4378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4378))
* The social graph was actually the great prize of Web 2.0. ([Location 4387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4387))
* Friendster ended up missing the moon by some distance. It turned out that hosting blogs or even serving portal pages to millions of users was one thing, but a social network scaled to millions of users was another thing entirely. On a social network, the content was ever-changing, and what was served to each user was often unique to that user, often only in that moment of time. ([Location 4418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4418))
* Myspace was the first to hit on a key concept in social networking: linking to others could be a way of mapping your personal connections, but it could also highlight your personal tastes. Friending, or “following” another profile, could be a powerful vote of interest and engagement. ([Location 4438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4438))
* “I don’t know what I could do with the money,” Zuckerberg responded. “I’d just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have.” ([Location 4852](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=4852))
* What so entranced these early adopters of the BlackBerry was just that ability to always be connected to information. It’s the reality we’re all familiar with today: the phenomenon of never being out of touch. ([Location 5077](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=5077))
* Too soon. All through the first half of the 2000s, mainstream consumers collectively yawned at the explosion of smartphone and mobile computing features. ([Location 5125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=5125))
* the last minute, the engineers identified a “golden path,” a specific set of demo actions that Jobs could perform in a specific order that afforded them the best chance of the phone making it through the presentation without a glitch. ([Location 5337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=5337))
* But more than anything else, we have to credit the App Store for turning the smartphone from a niche category that only appealed to early adopters and on-the-go professionals into a universal computer that appealed to everyone and their mother. ([Location 5406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=5406))
* First, we connected all the world’s computers together. Then, we uploaded all of humanity’s collected knowledge into the virtual space that networks created. Then, we made all of that knowledge searchable. We tied our commerce systems, our financial systems, even our media and information systems, to the network. ([Location 5445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BLJ1QYZ&location=5445))