-
Creation of the Worldwide Web
In March of 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee conducted his vision for the web in a document called "Information Management: A Proposal" and it was not immediately accepted. By the end of 1990, the first web page was created on the open internet, and in 1991, the public was able to join the new community. -
First touchscreen phone
The first ever touchscreen phone was produced in 1992 by IBM. This device was named "Simon". Simon featured no app store; however, it came with preloaded features including Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, Fax, Filer, Mail, Note Pad, Sketch Pad, Time and To Do. The downside of Simon was that the battery only lasted around one hour. Simon spent a mere six months on the market while selling around 50,000 units. -
Creation of Google
The founders of Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin originally met while they were graduate students at Stanford University. The pair began collaborating on writing a program for a search engine in January of 1996. The project for the pair was put together in a research paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Operating out of their dorm rooms, the pair built a server network using cheap, used and borrowed personal computers while maxing out their credit cards. -
Creation of Friendster
Friendster was created in 2002 by the trio of Peter Chin, Jonathan Abrams and Dave Lee. The group wanted to find a way for people to meet new friends on the Internet, keep in contact with already existing friends and to expand personal networks in a safe manner. Within the first few months the site had over three million users. -
Creation of MySpace
Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, employees of the Internet marketing company eUniverse created MySpace in 2003. It was different from other social networking sites by allowing and in fact encouraging musical artists to use the site to promote themselves. MySpace was the first social media outlet to begin detecting and deleting profiles of registered sex offenders which was a great breakthrough for the times. -
Creation of Facebook
In February of 2004 Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while studying Psychology at Harvard University. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students signed up and after one month over half the undergraduate population had a profile. US high schools could sign up starting in September of 2005 then UK universities followed suit the following month. As of September of 2006, anyone could sign up with a registered email. -
Creation of YouTube
Working out of a garage in Menlo Park, California, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karin debuted YouTube. Inspiration for YouTube came from the halftime faux pas committed by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Karim could not find the video clip anywhere online, so the idea to found a destination to watch and share videos on the Internet was born. In November of 2006, the investors became millionaires when they sold the brand to Google for $1.65 billion. -
Creation of Twitter
Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone created Twitter. When Twitter was first created for a way to send text messages on their cell phones and a way to reinvent a somewhat dying company in Odeo Inc, where the trio worked. On March 21, 2006 Jack Dorsey (@Jack) sent the first tweet reading, "just setting up my twttr". The name of Twitter was ultimately inspired by Flickr. -
The First iPhone
In January of 2007 at the MacWorld convention, Steve Jobs revealed what Apple had been developing for nearly three years as the cutting edge of technology. The device was originally described as an iPod with a wider screen and controlled by a touch screen. Jobs was quoted for saying the device would "reinvent the phone". The iPhone 2G was a GSM model and came in three separate models featuring 4GB, 8GB and 16GB -
Creation of Kindle
The 1st ever Kindle was on sale on amazon.com on November 19th and sold out within hours and was also known as the "iPod of reading". The first Kindle featured a six inch display with a full keyboard and buttons to control. The cost of the device was $399 and was only available within the USA as there was 90,000 books on the device while launched. -
Creation of Instagram
Kevin Systrom, a 2009 Stanford University graduate decided to quit his job at Nextstop and focus on Burbn. Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010 and quickly became the top free photo sharing app with 25,000 users. By mid December, there was one million users and continued to climb. The launch was timed up perfectly with the iPhone 4 release which featured a higher quality camera. -
Creation of Snapchat
Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown while they were studying at Stanford University. Spiegel originally presented the idea for a project in his product design class. The app was launched in July of 2011 under the name of "Picaboo" but was rebranded a few months later as Snapchat.
