Latest Articles
From BowieWorld to Facebook: How Online Identity Evolved
July 30, 2025
Exploring different personas on the web was a widespread trend in the late-1990s. Later, Facebook would neuter online identity, but in 1999 you could invent virtual characters on sites like BowieWorld.
|
Google in 1999: Search Engines Escape the Portal Matrix
July 23, 2025
Like Morpheus in The Matrix, Google gave web users a stark choice in 1999: take the red pill and experience a new world of search quality, or choose the blue pill and stick with the bloated world of portal search.
|
Seasons: A Fine Way To Structure a Website or Blog in 2025
July 18, 2025
Borrowing a concept from podcasting, I'm introducing 'seasons' of content on Cybercultural. From season 1 in 2019, when I began this as a newsletter, to the current season 4 focused on dot-com.
|
What the Internet Was Like in 1998
July 15, 2025
It's 1998, the middle of the dot-com boom. Portals are advertising on TV, web developers are fighting browser companies, Microsoft and Amazon are gaining power, and Netscape is going open source.
|
Search Engines in 1998, Before Google Takes the Spotlight
July 8, 2025
Google makes the transition from Stanford project to company over 1998, but it is portals like Yahoo! and portal-wannabes like AltaVista that feature in Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch that year.
|
1998: How Amazon Conquered Online CD Retailers Like CDnow
July 1, 2025
At the start of 1998, CDnow and Music Boulevard were the leading online CD shops. Then in June, Amazon branched out from books and began to sell music on its fast growing e-commerce website.
|
Launch of BowieNet and the First Inklings of Social Networks
June 25, 2025
When BowieNet launched in 1998, it became the default online community for David Bowie fans. It also anticipated the social networks that would emerge in the 2000s, like Facebook and Reddit.
|
Portals in 1998: The Rise and Fall of Excite and Netcenter
June 18, 2025
1998 was the year of the portal: Excite, Netscape Netcenter, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and others all competing for eyeballs and trying to be sticky. But with so many portals, some inevitably failed.
|
|
Browse by Internet Era:
Pre-web (1960s-80s)
Dot-com (1990-2003)
Web 2.0 (2004-2012)
Enshittocene (2013-2021)
Other:
Yearly Reviews
Search
 
|
Generate your own 90s page here!