How did information travel around the web in the 90s compared to today? When the rise of Twitter etc. started happening, did you see it as an evolution on "going viral" as you had experienced it?
Urban legend, former IMDb editor, conference speaker, Seattle CoderDojo organizer. Love finding inspiration in dev tools and products, then sharing it with dev communities.
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BA in Creative Writing, self-taught + some certification courses in modern programming languages
I'm pretty sure someone could do a doctoral thesis on the evolution of virality. :-)
In the 90s, viral content mostly propagated by email and usenet newsgroups.
Web content got punches in the arm with the help of some big "site of the Day" sites, like Cool Site of the Day and some of the larger magazines. In 1997, I got a huge short-term traffic boost when my entertainment column got recommended by Newsweek, People, and Wired in the space of a month.
That gave way to social link sharing (and discussion) sites. Back in the day, traffic from being at the top of Slashdot could create an unintentional DDOS. I feel Reddit's the evolutionary successor of Slashdot, but some might argue it.
What's interesting about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. is how the network effect influenced virality. They weren't the first, but they were better than their predecessors at building their influencer communities and cascading the popularity of a link or post through friend and follow connections.
In 1997, an piece of content propagated through a mailing list, then someone might forward it to a few friends, but they'd actually have to enter the addresses or manually build a multi-email alias in the mail program they used. Virality has gotten bigger, I think, because sharing has become so much easier.
How did information travel around the web in the 90s compared to today? When the rise of Twitter etc. started happening, did you see it as an evolution on "going viral" as you had experienced it?
I'm pretty sure someone could do a doctoral thesis on the evolution of virality. :-)
In the 90s, viral content mostly propagated by email and usenet newsgroups.
Web content got punches in the arm with the help of some big "site of the Day" sites, like Cool Site of the Day and some of the larger magazines. In 1997, I got a huge short-term traffic boost when my entertainment column got recommended by Newsweek, People, and Wired in the space of a month.
That gave way to social link sharing (and discussion) sites. Back in the day, traffic from being at the top of Slashdot could create an unintentional DDOS. I feel Reddit's the evolutionary successor of Slashdot, but some might argue it.
What's interesting about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. is how the network effect influenced virality. They weren't the first, but they were better than their predecessors at building their influencer communities and cascading the popularity of a link or post through friend and follow connections.
In 1997, an piece of content propagated through a mailing list, then someone might forward it to a few friends, but they'd actually have to enter the addresses or manually build a multi-email alias in the mail program they used. Virality has gotten bigger, I think, because sharing has become so much easier.
The early "viral" sites in my internet life were Slashdot and Fark.
Bash.org (top) was also a great source of early-meme material.