Comments on: The launch years of today’s most popular websites

By: RABryson

RABryson — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:19:09 +0000

I work for Overstock.com which is turning 11 on October 1st. It's fun to see who launched during the dot.com boom and survived the bust and then went on to thrive.

By: Marketing Actuary | @mActuary

Marketing Actuary | @mActuary — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:11:07 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to prepare this post.

I was looking for major websites by year of introduction. You provide that and more. Perfect!

By: MGN

MGN — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:10:42 +0000

Very interesting. I am somewhat of a ranking freaking. Checking the Alexa ranking of my website is one of my favorite activities to do. The list contain some of my favorite websites and certainly is in other people’s lists. I appreciated this post. During the 90s, there were fierce competition to showcase creativity and business ideas. Since that date, web surfers has been more selective so therefore I think that is the reason for less newly sites created cracking the top 50 list.

By: Jehzeel Laurente

Jehzeel Laurente — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:05:32 +0000

Wow! so facebook is now number 3. Geeezz. It’s the fastest growing website ever for me. But based on the stats, bing.com is the fastest. Maybe because it’s live.com before and the users are now being redirected to Bing.

By: M.Wanzer

M.Wanzer — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:05:22 +0000

Great post, I don’t find it too surprising that a lot of the most
popular websites were created back in the early days of the web by,
either early adopters (with the case if imdb) and companies with
deep pockets (like cnn).

To reply to Sebastian’s comment, I have to agree that creating a lasting online brand is extremely difficult. I would look at the emergence of all the linked data sites and social networks as somewhat of a beginning of another era in the web. I think that we may see a peak as we did in the 90s later on, especially since the technology keeps evolving. I guess only time will tell.

By: LeonimuZ

LeonimuZ — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:23:57 +0000

Hey!!! Almost all those years are not true. Apple Website started in 1986 not in 1996.. This list has the dates of release of the .COM domains

By: Karoly Negyesi

Karoly Negyesi — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:54:08 +0000

Alas, 50 is not enough to draw any conclusions from, you would need 100-200 at least IMO.

By: Launch Years — Matt Mullenweg

Launch Years — Matt Mullenweg — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:09:06 +0000

[...] The launch years of today’s most popular websites. ¶ [...]

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:57:42 +0000

Very interesting survey! I work in the German online sector and we see the same trend here. A big proportion of very successfull websites launched in the 90s, among these international brands such as amazon, google, ebay, yahoo etc as well as some national ones (immobilienscout (real estate), mobile (cars) etc.). Many of them were pushed into the market with very high marketing spendings which were financed by bullish capital markets. They either used low market barriers with low distribution costs, which made spreading information nearly costless (news, entertainment etc.) or they built virtual market places and therefore replaced som unefficient parts of the old economy value chain (categories, market places). All these business models have in common, that they are base on some kind of a centralized web services, an aggregator of information which is open to everybody.

But then we see a couple of websites that arised in the early/mid 2000s. Most of them belong to social networks/communities. They are based on a more decentralized approach, letting users share information within a closed or focussed environment. These plattforms are more or less enablers for communication, they do not aggregate information on central point. Surely, one major reason for the rise of these plattforms are improved technologies such as higher bandwith and dynamic page building. So maybe the second peak is due to technological improvement.

What will come next? I think that cloud computing will evolve some great web based applications that are even more complex than todays ones (consider Microsoft Web Office) and place greater demands on computing power.

But after all, establishing an online brand is not as easy as it seems. I think, we will not see such a peak as in the 90s anymore.

By: KTC

KTC — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:19:15 +0000

Bing can’t count as 2009, LOL. It’s a rebrand of Live Search, which itself is a rebrand of MSN Search. It’s top 50 ranking is artificial when one consider that searches from MSN.com redirect to Bing. I can have a top 50 website the same year its launch as well if I can just get a search engine in the top 50 to redirect all searches to it.