These days, birds don’t ‘chirp’ but human beings often ‘tweet.’ This article contains information on the most influential websites that redefined the Internet world. Find out how various websites have changed the Internet world forever.
TAGGED UNDER: Best Websites

Web sites, the main component of the Internet, have radically changed how we lead our lives today. Many websites have made our life simple and easier, but some have revolutionized the concept of social life. The concept of ‘worldwide web’ (www) was launched in 1990 by the physicist Tim Berners-Lee, and since 1993, it was made available to all common users. Isn’t it quite surprising that it had a colossal impact on our information environment within a few years only? Websites that changed the Internet world have also had a great impact on our lifestyle.

Today, we use computers as easily as telephones. We cannot imagine spending a single day without using at least one of the several Google applications like Gmail, Google News, Froogle, Google Maps, Google Book Search, Google Talk, Google Earth, etc. Certain websites have changed the Internet world. We can find answers to our queries on discussion forums like WikiAnswers. We can express our thoughts with the help of a website like ‘blogger.com.’ We can choose any educational course from any university located in any part of the world. It is quite easier to acquire an international degree now. Online banking, online booking, online shopping, etc., have completely changed the way we lead our lives. We can pay bills, tolls, taxes, insurance, or loan installments online and save a lot of time. We can earn/save money by advertising and promote ourselves on different websites. We can check the opening and closing times, weekly holidays of any famous museum in Paris or Rome, despite our location. We need to sit in front of the computer, and everything is available right at our fingertips now.

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Websites that Changed the World

The top 10 websites regarding traffic and influence would keep changing, but we can enlist a few websites that redefined the Internet world. Certain websites that changed the Internet world completely include social networking sites or community sites like ‘Orkut’ and ‘Facebook,’ microblogging sites like ‘Twitter,’ information sites like ‘Wikipedia’ and other sites like ‘eBay,’ ‘YouTube,’ ‘Amazon.com,’ etc. I am sure you would like to browse Internet facts for more information. The convenience and comfort that we are enjoying today can be attributed to certain popular websites that redefined the Internet.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook
Founded by: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Launched in: February 2004
Users: more than 800 million; had more than 138.9 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in May 2011.
Facebook was originally introduced as a site to connect the students of Harvard University. Still, soon its rise led to the decline of several other social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace. In the computer world, ‘Friendster’ is recognized as the ‘granddaddy of social networks.’ Today, Facebook is the most popular website in the world. In June 2011, Facebook recorded one trillion page views! Facebook allows you to create your profile. You can add other users as your friends, and you can join common-interest groups like ‘close friends,’ ‘family tree,’ ‘people from work,’ etc. You can upload photos and videos, you can chat with your friends, you can send private or public messages, you can write on somebody’s wall, or you can even poke. Your updated status promptly provides information on your whereabouts and actions.

Twitter
Founded by: Jack Dorsey
Launched in: July 2006
Users: more than 200 million
Twitter is a microblogging service through which you can read and send posts of up to 140 characters. The posts are text-based and are known as ‘tweets.’ The concept of sharing thoughts and views has now gained tremendous popularity worldwide. The subscribers are known as ‘followers, ” and follow (subscribe to) other users’ tweets.

More Sites

Several other sites like ‘MySpa,’ ‘Friendster,’ etc., were in the list of ‘Top 10 popular websites’ before ‘Facebook’ was launched. Websites like ‘LinkedIn,’ where you can develop new contacts, search jobs, post your resume, and design your career, are also quite popular today.

Information Sites

Wikipedia
Founded by: Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger
Launched in: January 2001
Users: more than 365 million
Wikipedia is a free, user-generated multilingual encyclopedia. It contains over 20 million articles, and it provides information on everything that you need. For the latest events, too, people search on Wikipedia for reliable information. It is well-known for reliable and perfect information. Today, about 90,000 active contributors write for Wikipedia regularly, and the articles are available in 282 languages! According to the statistics, about 2.7 billion are from the United States alone out of its total monthly page views. It is and will remain among the ten most visited websites worldwide.

More Sites

Forum websites like Answers.com, where people can discuss various topics, government sites, which support tourism or provide information on food and drugs, medicines, etc., like nal.usda.gov, cancer.gov, nlm.nih.gov or sites launched by educational and nonprofit institutions, etc., come under this category.

Mailing and Communication Sites

Hotmail
Founded by: Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith
Launched in: July 1996
Users: nearly 364 million users in August 2010.
Hotmail was initially launched as ‘Hotmail,’ keeping in mind the ‘HTML.’ It can be called ‘the pioneer of web-based email services.’ Microsoft presented it as a part of ‘Windows’ applications. It is now available in 36 different languages. According to the statistics, in Aug 2010, ‘Windows Live Hotmail’ was the world’s largest e-mail service.

Gmail
Service: provided by Google
Launched in: April 2004 and was made available to the general public in February 2007
Users: more than 260 million users in October 2011
Gmail offers a 1 GB storage capacity per user. A message with an attachment can be up to 25 MB (quite large compared to other mail services). Gmail is an e-mail service provided by Google. It is an advertising-supported service, so you may see relevant advertisements on your page when you open your mailbox. Google video and voice chat are quite popular today. ‘Gmail Mobile’ service is available in 40 languages.

More Sites

FastMail, Yahoo Mail, Rediffmail, etc., are some other popular mailing sites. ‘Skype’ has brought the world into a single room. It helps communicate with people away from you. Skype is known for video chatting. You can interview on Skype, and you can choose your life partner or easily interact with your children away from home.

Video Sharing Sites

YouTube
Founded by: Three former PayPal employees; Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim
Launched in: February 2005
Users: more than three billion views per day as of May 2011
YouTube has gained tremendous popularity as one can upload, view, and share videos here. It is a subsidiary of Google now. According to the Alexa records, it is ranked third today. You can even upload 3D videos here. The simple, user-friendly procedure attracts more and more visitors.

More Sites

Sites like Flixya, Pandora, Google Video, Metacafe, MySpace, etc., are popular for video sharing. Flickr, an image hosting and video hosting website, helps upload or download photos and videos.