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All of the conspiracy theories and hero-worshipping etc ignore the basic, boring reality of how these concentrations of power emerge: half the work is showing u

by numair 5y ago

All of the conspiracy theories and hero-worshipping etc ignore the basic, boring reality of how these concentrations of power emerge: half the work is showing up. There was a time that you had to beg and plead with people to take websites and the Internet seriously. Nobody wanted to show up. These guys showed up. The rest is history.

paulpauper 5y ago
The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two. By 1998 it blew up. It,s not like there was not intense competion 24 years ago.plenty of ppl showed up but few made a lot of money
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two. By 1998 it blew up. That's more than a year or two into the internet (and even the Web.)
  - johannes1234321 5y ago
    > That's more than a year or two into the internet (and even the Web.) Around 1998 was the time when Microsoft started pushing it out of the geek space into mainstream, but AOL and CompuServe were still around. This was when Microsoft pushed the "Active desktop" and other things. However the Internet still was of united use for most people. eBay was founded only in 1995, Amazon in 1994. And global expansion took time. People still used 28.8 Baud or 56k Modems. ADSL wasn't broadly available, yet. Sure, some companies started using it as a communication network between offices, universities and geeks used it. But all in a relatively small niche.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Yes, and after 2000 it was again a niche for a while (though not quite so tiny). The collapse of dot com bubble also resulted in lack of faith in internet based businesses in general, lack of investment and difficult market conditions. The landscape of 2003 was much different than that of 2013, when internet startups again were fully en vogue.
- wdr1 5y ago
  > The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two What? This statement bears no semblance to reality. I say this as someone on the net since 1991, went through the dotcom bust of the 1990s, the Great Recession & has worked at several Big Tech companies. Basically my whole career has involved the Internet for several decades, and to say it was a "tiny niche for a year or two" is just... ridiculous.
oleganza 5y ago
Same with Bitcoin.

by numair 5y ago

paulpauper 5y ago

The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two. By 1998 it blew up. It,s not like there was not intense competion 24 years ago.plenty of ppl showed up but few made a lot of money

dragonwriter 5y ago
> The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two. By 1998 it blew up. That's more than a year or two into the internet (and even the Web.)
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  > That's more than a year or two into the internet (and even the Web.) Around 1998 was the time when Microsoft started pushing it out of the geek space into mainstream, but AOL and CompuServe were still around. This was when Microsoft pushed the "Active desktop" and other things. However the Internet still was of united use for most people. eBay was founded only in 1995, Amazon in 1994. And global expansion took time. People still used 28.8 Baud or 56k Modems. ADSL wasn't broadly available, yet. Sure, some companies started using it as a communication network between offices, universities and geeks used it. But all in a relatively small niche.
xyzzyz 5y ago
Yes, and after 2000 it was again a niche for a while (though not quite so tiny). The collapse of dot com bubble also resulted in lack of faith in internet based businesses in general, lack of investment and difficult market conditions. The landscape of 2003 was much different than that of 2013, when internet startups again were fully en vogue.
wdr1 5y ago
> The internet was a tiny niche...for a year or two What? This statement bears no semblance to reality. I say this as someone on the net since 1991, went through the dotcom bust of the 1990s, the Great Recession & has worked at several Big Tech companies. Basically my whole career has involved the Internet for several decades, and to say it was a "tiny niche for a year or two" is just... ridiculous.

oleganza 5y ago

Same with Bitcoin.