Internet Throwback: Freeserve, Ask Jeeves, Friends Reunited, MySpace, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Chatrooms & Vampires

The Shifting Language of the Internet

I was born in the early 1980s, and although I grew up with technology, there have been significant changes over time. I can remember before the internet, it's early days, it's rise to dominance and today where we find it integrated into everything, from ordering a pizza, your shopping and even connectivity to your fridge!

Technological advances have transformed the way we use the internet and online platforms, resulting in casualties of how we defined certain aspects of it in the past and the early companies that kick-started most of what we take for granted now.

It's amusing how many words and phrases become part of the modern lexicon in the early days of the internet, yet if you were to say them out loud now, many people wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about.

'The Information Superhighway', the 'World Wide Web' and 'Cyberspace' were terms commonly used in the the early days to define the internet itself. I can remember these terms being spoke of on the news, in the papers and on TV shows like 'Tomorrows world'. Now it's simply referred to as the plain old "Internet" or "t'internet" if you're a comedian from Bolton.

Daemons online and those Countless CDs

In the early days of having internet access at home, countless CDs would arrive through the post with software and free trials for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Younger readers might wonder, "What the hell is an ISP?" It's funny how something so simple is now referred to simple as Virgin, Sky, BT etc.

Those CDs were everywhere, they were in shops, magazines, newspapers, circulars – this was clearly a long time before people were worried about polar bears and plastic!

If we didn’t use them as make shift coffee coasters, my brothers and I used to throw them like frisbees into the field behind our house.

Maybe in a thousand years, there will be a reboot of "Time Team" digging an archaeological trench in that very field. I can imagine Tony Robinson's floating head in a robotic AI powered goldfish bowl pondering over these strange, shiny round objects labelled AOL / Freeserve and Daemon Online, and wondering if they are artefacts of a strange and lost alien civilisation!

Ask Jeeves!

Nowadays, we all rely on 谷歌 for finding information, hell, we don’t even have to type anymore with Siri and Google voice search! Whether we want to know how to cook a baked potato in a microwave, how much lime is needed to bury a body, or what those little red spiders are called that scurry all over your PVC windows in the summer, we can get the answers in seconds. But back in the day, 谷歌 just wasn't an option!

For schoolwork, we had 微软 Encarta on a PC-CDROM, and that was it! We also had these weird things made out of paper, books I think they were all called – but who had time to read them!

Before 雅虎 search, there was a website called "Ask Jeeves." It had a picture of a butler or waiter as it's logo (I could never figure out which). I remember being amazed that you could ask a question, and it would provide an approximate answer or direct you to another website.

Now known as Ask.com , Ask Jeeves couldn't compete with 谷歌 in the long run. There were many similar search engines when that industry was in it's infancy, but nearly all missed the boat and now pale in comparison to the might and power of Google!

Other notable mentions included sites like LYCOS , which had a black dog as its logo if memory isn't too fuzzy.

Friends Reunited

A couple created Friends Reunited in their kitchen to reconnect with old school friends. I remember visiting it and seeing people mocking our old schoolteachers, but the teachers' comebacks were even funnier, and if those responses were made public today – jobs would have been on the line and the Daily Mail would have lost its mind!

Friends Reunited could have become what Facebook is today, but others came along and did it better, some even before Facebook arrived.

MySpace

Myspace was the first social media platform I signed up for and probably had the best chance of becoming the juggernaut that Facebook is today. Interestingly, the concept of things going "viral" today is usually associated with online social media. However, I first heard of Myspace through word of mouth from a friend. In those early days, many websites and social media platforms gained traction through personal recommendations.

Can you remember your first friend on Myspace ? it was none other than Thomas Anderson, one of the co-founders of the website, and anyone who signed up to Myspace , Tom was always your first friend. Imagine creating a Facebook profile today and receiving a friend request from Mark Zuckerberg. Automated or not, it would still be weird!

Myspace had such good potential, it was ‘your space’ to express yourself and people could see what sort of films and music you were interested in. I guess it was the first time that those dopamine hits were introduced to the internet, at least on social media. Last I heard or checked, Myspace had been sold a few times and then turned into a music platform of some description.

Yahoo Chat Rooms

Back in the day, there were numerous chat rooms on the internet. 雅虎 Chat was where I usually ended up, often frequenting Electronica/Dance chats. Some of the chat rooms were downright strange.

Vampire chat was one of them, where people would role-play as vampires (although some scarily believed they were real vampires), proclaiming their love for drinking blood, which we always answered back with:

“have you tried Vimto instead, or perhaps a glass of Ribena would quench your thirst?”

Due to my typical sarcasm and wit, similar ‘suggestions’ were never taken too kindly, and was told numerous times that I would be hunted as 'meat' by their dark lord when he arose from his slumber! Maybe that’s why I have never really enjoyed day trips to Whitby!?!

My sense of humour was morphed and twisted at a young age by shows like Blackadder, Bottom, The Young Ones, and Red Dwarf. So, me and my friends would enter these chat rooms to poke fun at people who genuinely believed they were vampires. In modern terms, I suppose we were early internet "trolls," although we never said anything truly hurtful. Perhaps there is some irony that we were ‘trolls’ trolling people who thought they were vampires!

I will never forget experiencing these chat rooms and getting the feeling that this internet thing, if it ever took off – could give anyone in the whole world the opportunity to express themselves. I can remember thinking how that might turn out over the years, and what that might look like, even for the nosferatu fans.

With the rise of other social media platforms, chat rooms fell by the wayside. I felt a bit sad when I heard that 雅虎 was closing them down, even though I hadn't used them myself in years. Chat rooms where the wild west at the time, and most new platforms on the internet back then were, and very difficult to admin and censor.

MSN Messenger

"Get me on messenger later," my friends used to say, much to my parents' annoyance. My mum would ask, "You've been talking to them all day at school, why do you need to do it anymore?" It's akin to the modern-day equivalent of using WhatsApp, although back then, we didn't have internet access on our phones. My first mobile phone only allowed me to send 10 texts a day, and only to people on the same network! I can already hear the “whaaaattt?” running through the minds of the Insta-Generation reading that last sentence!

Before auto matchmaking and direct invites in online games, my friends and I would log onto MSN Messenger to organize playing Quake, Unreal Tournament, and Soldier of Fortune 2 against each other. We would create a game server and share the server number, as there was no simpler way that we knew of. It was always frustrating when someone would suddenly disappear from the game because someone in their house picked up the phone and disconnected the internet, so we had to deal with the screaming dalek again whilst we reconnected.

We also used other platforms like 雅虎 Messenger, 美国在线 IM, and a lesser known one called ICQ . But for the most part, MSN Messenger was what my friends and I used.

Future relics

Many of these relics of the internet are forgotten by most people today or are simply too young to remember. Some of them still exist in one form or another but are a mere shadow of their former selves.

It's fascinating to reflect on how much things have evolved, and in 20 years, there may be other companies, websites, or platforms that overtake the current market leaders, consigning them to the dusty back room of the internet that we look back on fondly.

Did I miss anything? What do you remember about the topics I've discussed above??