Following in Amazon's footsteps, two student projects independently use 'collaborative filtering' to bring recommendations and social networking to online music; soon they will join forces. cybercultural.com/p/lastfm-aud...

Even in the middle of the dot-com bust in 2001, there are rays of hope: Wikipedia and the Wayback Machine launch, digital music turns legit with iTunes and the iPod, and blogging goes mainstream. cybercultural.com/p/internet-2...

After September 11, 2001, an influx of warblogs shakes up the blogosphere. It's part of a year-long transition in which blogging shifts from personal journaling to a more journalistic approach. cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-...

In October 2001, Brewster Kahle demonstrates a new time machine from the Internet Archive called the Wayback Machine. It will become a vital link between the Web's past and its present. cybercultural.com/p/wayback-ma...

This week on Cybercultural, I look back on Steve Jobs' January 2001 keynote at Macworld SF, when he announced iTunes and Apple's new "digital hub" concept. It set the company up for a renaissance in the 21st century, when *everything* became digital. cybercultural.com/p/itunes-lau... #AppleHistory

In 2000, Flash websites proliferate, blogging expands, social news sites like Slashdot gain influence — all of this while the dot-com bubble slowly deflates and Napster dominates headlines. cybercultural.com/p/internet-2...

Old articles and blog posts too often get removed from the web or neglected, left to rot on broken pages. Replanting lets you migrate legacy content to your current site so it can thrive again. Here's how I'm doing it... cybercultural.com/p/replanting/ #replanting #savetheweb

Napster's legal woes intensify in 2000, even as creator Shawn Fanning is celebrated on MTV and on magazine covers. Meanwhile, Apple acquires a startup called SoundJam and turns it into iTunes. cybercultural.com/p/napster-it...

By 2000, Slashdot's pioneering karma system is helping other online communities — like BowieNet — moderate user contributed content. Meanwhile, Google and Amazon enjoy good karma over 2000. cybercultural.com/p/karma-2000... #InternetHistory #BowieForever #Slashdot

In 2000, the blogroll becomes a trend as bloggers increasingly link to each other. Meanwhile, RSS bifurcates into two opposing formats: Dave Winer's RSS 0.92 and the RDF-based RSS 1.0. cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-...

The AOL-Time Warner merger in January 2000 triggers a slow deflation of the dot-com bubble, starting in March. Meanwhile, the Web's golden boy Marc Andreessen returns with a new startup. cybercultural.com/p/dotcom-cra...

By 1999, Microsoft had vanquished Netscape in the browser war, Google was starting to show up competing search engines, and Napster and Blogger had arrived to shake up our culture. cybercultural.com/p/internet-1...

The launch of Blogger in August 1999 signals the arrival of weblogs into mainstream web culture. At the same time, web syndication formats are being worked out — starting with Netscape's RSS 0.90. cybercultural.com/p/blogs-rss-...

Napster launched in May 1999 and soon there were millions of pirated songs online. Not even David Bowie, who released an album via digital download that year, could foresee Napster's future influence. cybercultural.com/p/napster-19... #InternetHistory #Napster #BowieForever

After seeing the movie 'The Matrix', Philip Rosedale started a dot-com company and attempted to build a full-body virtual reality rig. He soon pivoted to creating a virtual world on the Web. cybercultural.com/p/second-lif...

Continuing his exploration of virtual personas, in 1999 David Bowie played two 3D characters in a game called 'Omikron: The Nomad Soul'. The songs he contributed were later added to his album, Hours. cybercultural.com/p/bowie-1999... #InternetHistory #BowieForever

Exploring different personas on the web was a widespread trend in the late-1990s. Later, Facebook would neuter online identity, but in 1999 you could invent virtual characters on sites like BowieWorld. cybercultural.com/p/online-ide...

Like Morpheus in The Matrix, Google gave web users a stark choice in 1999: take the red pill and experience a new world of search quality, or choose the blue pill and stick with the bloated world of portal search. cybercultural.com/p/google-1999/

It's 1998, the middle of the dot-com boom. Portals are advertising on TV, web developers are fighting browser companies, Microsoft and Amazon are gaining power, and Netscape is going open source. cybercultural.com/p/internet-1... #DotCom #InternetHistory

Google makes the transition from Stanford project to company over 1998, but it is portals like Yahoo! and portal-wannabes like AltaVista that feature in Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch that year. cybercultural.com/p/search-1998/

At the start of 1998, CDnow and Music Boulevard were the leading online CD shops. Then in June, Amazon branched out from books and began to sell music on its fast growing e-commerce website. cybercultural.com/p/cdnow-amaz... #InternetHistory

When BowieNet launched in 1998, it became the default online community for David Bowie fans. It also anticipated the social networks that would emerge in the 2000s, like Facebook and Reddit. cybercultural.com/p/bowienet-l... #BowieForever

1998 was the year of the portal: Excite, Netscape Netcenter, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and others all competing for eyeballs and trying to be sticky. But with so many portals, some inevitably failed. cybercultural.com/p/portals-19...

In 1997, the first browser war began amid new internet trends like 'push' and DHTML. Meanwhile, instant messaging apps like ICQ and AIM became popular and GeoCities achieved 1 million users. cybercultural.com/p/internet-1... #InternetHistory

MTV's website in 1997 was a hodgepodge of technologies: Java, JavaScript, frames and more. The quality of your user experience depended on which browser you used: Netscape or IE. cybercultural.com/p/browser-wa...

With the rise of Flash and CSS in 1997, three web design philosophies emerged. David Siegel advocated for 'hacks', Jakob Nielsen kept it simple, while Jeffrey Zeldman combined flair with usability. cybercultural.com/p/web-design...

During 1997, video streaming came to web browsers through plug-ins like RealVideo, VDOLive and Microsoft's NetShow. David Bowie even attempted to 'cybercast' one of his concerts that year. cybercultural.com/p/video-stre...

In July 1997, N2K and Liquid Audio announced a way to sell digital songs online for 99 cents a pop. Soon after, Duran Duran became the first major label artist to release an online single for sale. cybercultural.com/p/digital-mu...

In 1996, the internet became an integral part of society. Web portals were all the rage, e-commerce matured, web designers got new tools (like CSS and Flash), and web applications began to appear. cybercultural.com/p/internet-1...