After the Bubble (2000-2006)
The dot-com bust. Google IPOs. Wikipedia goes live. Facebook is born. Tesla is founded. YouTube is bought by Google for $1.65B 18 months after launch.
Part of Technology
25 moments in this segment.
- — AOL-Time Warner Merger Announcement. January 10, 2000. Steve Case and Gerald Levin announce the $182B AOL-Time Warner merger. Peak-bubble corporate theatre; universally remembered as the worst merger in business history.
- — Wikipedia Launches. January 15, 2001. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch Wikipedia. By 2024: 60M+ articles in 300+ languages; the most-visited reference site in human history. Operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
- — iPod Keynote — Steve Jobs. October 23, 2001. Steve Jobs pulls the iPod from his jeans pocket: "1,000 songs in your pocket." The keynote template for every Apple launch that followed.
- — iPod. October 23, 2001. Apple launches the iPod — "1,000 songs in your pocket." 450M units sold over its lifetime; the device that brought Apple back from the brink and led directly to the iPhone.
- — Firefox 1.0. November 9, 2004. Mozilla Firefox 1.0 — the browser that broke Internet Explorer's 95% market share. By 2010, ~30% global market share. Established the open-web alternative throughout the 2000s.
- — iTunes Music Store. April 28, 2003. Apple launches the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs at $0.99 each. By 2010 the world's largest music retailer. Killed Napster, paved the way for Spotify, transformed how music was sold.
- — iTunes Music Store Launch. April 28, 2003. Steve Jobs introduces the iTunes Music Store. 200,000 songs at $0.99. The first commercially-viable legal digital music store.
- — Second Life Launches. June 23, 2003. Linden Lab launches Second Life. By 2007: 1M residents, branded "metaverse" before the term was popular. The early-2000s template for every later virtual-world platform.
- — Tesla Founded. July 1, 2003. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning found Tesla Motors. Elon Musk leads the 2004 Series A. Roadster ships 2008; Model S in 2012. The most consequential automotive disruption since Henry Ford.
- — Facebook Founded. February 4, 2004. Mark Zuckerberg launches "thefacebook.com" from his Harvard dorm room. By 2012: 1 billion users. By 2024 (as Meta): 3.9 billion across its family of apps. The most consequential social network ever built.
- — Gmail Launches. April 1, 2004. Google launches Gmail — 1 GB inbox at a time when Hotmail offered 2 MB. Many assumed it was an April Fool's joke. Invite-only until 2007; redefined what webmail could be.
- — Zuckerberg on Facebook in 2004. 2004 Harvard-newspaper interviews with 20-year-old Mark Zuckerberg about thefacebook.com. The unguarded early footage from before he became one of the most-watched CEOs alive.
- — Web 2.0 Conference Keynote. October 2004. Tim O'Reilly's "What is Web 2.0?" — coined the term that defined the next decade of internet startups. AJAX, mashups, user-generated content as a programming paradigm.
- — YouTube Founded. February 14, 2005. Three former PayPal employees — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim — launch YouTube. First video: "Me at the zoo" (April 23, 2005). Acquired by Google for $1.65B (Oct 2006) — 18 months after launch.
- — Me at the Zoo (First YouTube Video). April 23, 2005. Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. 19 seconds, 350M+ views. The video that proved YouTube's concept and started the platform's 20-year run.
- — Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement. June 12, 2005. Steve Jobs's commencement address at Stanford. "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." The most-quoted commencement speech ever delivered by a technologist; viewed 100M+ times.
- — Reddit Co-Founders Pitch. 2005 Y Combinator interviews of 22-year-olds Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian pitching Reddit. The founding archive of YC's defining era.
- — Reddit Founded. June 23, 2005. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian launch Reddit. By 2024: "the front page of the internet," 73M daily active users. IPO'd March 2024.
- — AWS Born. 2002. Amazon launches Amazon Web Services as an internal toolkit. The S3 + EC2 public launches in 2006 created the modern cloud-computing industry. By 2024 AWS revenue: $107B annual.
- — Twitter Launches. March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." Becomes the de-facto public-square of the early 2010s; rebranded "X" 2023 after Elon Musk's $44B acquisition.
- — First Tweet. March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey: "just setting up my twttr." The first tweet ever. Sold as an NFT in 2021 for $2.9M; bidder later tried to resell for $48M and got bids of $277.
- — AWS S3 + EC2 Launch. 2006. Amazon launches S3 (March) and EC2 (August) as public services. Modern cloud computing begins. By 2024 AWS revenue: $107B annual.
- — Palantir Founded. 2003. Peter Thiel + Alex Karp + Joe Lonsdale + Stephen Cohen + Nathan Gettings found Palantir. Funded by In-Q-Tel (CIA's VC arm). The most controversial data-analytics company of the 21st century.
- — Shawn Fanning at Napster. 2000 60 Minutes / MTV coverage of 19-year-old Shawn Fanning during Napster's peak — 80M users, music industry in panic.
- — Flickr Launches. February 10, 2004. Stewart Butterfield's Flickr — the photo-sharing site that defined Web 2.0. Acquired by Yahoo! for $25M in 2005.
