In the dozen years since the debut of Web browsers that turned the Web into a graphics-rich environment, the migration to life online has been unrelenting. Below, a small sampling of the many milestones.
1995:
* Netscape goes public. Amazon.com and eBay launch. n There are an estimated 100,000 sites on the web, up from some 623 in 1993.
1998:
* Google opens with a staff of 3.
1999:
* Blogger, one of the first popular weblog publishing tools appears.
* Craigslist, which began as an e-mail list of arts events in San Francisco, becomes an online classified ads-listing company.
2000:
* An average 52 million adults are online, about 5 million with high-speed internet access at home. As the year closes, there are 25.6 million websites.
* Google handles more than 100 million queries a day.
2001:
* Apple introduces the iPod.
2002:
* 65% of American children ages 2-17 use the Internet, up from 41% in 2000.
2003:
* MySpace and Friendster launch, putting "social networking site" in the vocabulary.
* One-millionth iPod is sold.
2004:
* Audio blogging is dubbed podcasting, and how-to articles begin to appear.
* Flickr, the photo-sharing/social networking site, launches.
* A typical day sees 128 million U.S. adults online. About 60 million have high-speed connections at home.
2005:
* eBay has 79 million U.S. members, 168 million worldwide.
* MySpace has 40 million members.
* 87% of 12- to 17-year-olds use the Internet.
* Technorati tracks 22.9 million blogs.
* By midyear, Flikr has 775,000 users and is growing about 30% a month.
* LiveJournal reports 2.5 million active accounts.
* 10 million Craigslist users search some 6.5 million classified postings each month.
Source: Pew Research Center For The People & The Press: Mid-September 2005 Political Survey, September 15 , 2005