I wouldn't consider 1998 a peak. There was a local maxima in 1993, before the September that never ended. Then the rest of the 90's were exciting because of the

I wouldn't consider 1998 a peak. There was a local maxima in 1993, before the September that never ended. Then the rest of the 90's were exciting because of the rapid growth, but the actual state of things at the time was pretty messy. I'd personally put the next peak around 2007. Broadband was widespread but smartphones were not. Google existed but hadn't yet purchased DoubleClick. IE6, while not quite dead, no longer had a stranglehold on web development. Independent blogs and forums and RSS were still big, and hadn't yet consolidated with social media.