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Arpanet
Arpanet was the first real network to run on packet switching technology. On the October 29, 1969, computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time. So they were the first people on the thing that would someday become the Internet. -
Email
Email was first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who also made the decision to use the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the website name. -
Project Gutenburg and Ebooks
One of the most impressive developments of 1971 was the start of Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, for those unfamiliar with the site, is a global effort to make books and documents in the public domain available electronically–for free–in a variety of eBook and electronic formats. It began when Michael Hart gained access to a large block of computing time and came to the realization that the future of computers wasn’t in computing itself, but in the storage, retrieval and searching of inf -
The first trans-Atlantic connection and the popularity of emailing
Arpanet made its first trans-Atlantic connection in 1973, with the University College of London. in the same year, email accounted for 75% of all Arpanet network activity. -
The email client
With the popularity of emailing, the first modern email program was developed by John Vittal, a programmer at the University of Southern California in 1975. The biggest technological advance this program (called MSG) made was the addition of "Reply" and "Forward" functionality.1977 was a big year for the development of the Internet as we know it today. It’s the year the first PC modem, developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington, was introduced and initially sold to computer hobbyists. -
Spam and bulltin board systems
1978 is also the year that brought the first unsolicited commercial email message (later known as spam), sent out to 600 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk. The first bulletin board system (BBS) was developed during a blizzard in Chicago in 1978. -
The first Emoticon
While many people credit Kevin MacKenzie with the invention of the emoticon in 1979, it was Scott Fahlman in 1982 who proposed using :-) after a joke, rather than the original -) proposed by MacKenzie. The modern emoticon was born. -
Aol starts
When Apple pulled out of the AppleLink program in 1989, the project was renamed and America Online was born. AOL, still in existence today, later on made the Internet popular amongst the average internet users. -
The first Commercial Dial up internet
1990 also brought about the first commercial dial-up Internet provider, The World. The same year, Arpanet ceased to exist. -
Google
Google went live in 1998, revolutionizing the way in which people find information online. -
Wikipedia
With the dotcom collapse still going strong, Wikipedia launched in 2001, one of the websites that paved the way for collective web content generation/social media -
Myspace
Also in 2003, MySpace opens up its doors. It later grew to be the most popular social network at one time (though it has since been overtaken by Facebook). -
"the" facebook
Facebook launched in 2004, though at the time it was only open to college students and was called "The Facebook"; later on, "The" was dropped from the name, though the URL http://www.thefacebook.com still works. -
youtube
YouTube launched in 2005, bringing free online video hosting and sharing to the masses. -
Twitter
Twitter launched in 2006. It was originally going to be called twittr (inspired by Flickr); the first Twitter message was "just setting up my twttr".
