Top 10 Most Important Moments In Internet History

It wasn’t called Twitter back then. Well, it’s technically also not called Twitter now, but we all know that nobody calls it “X.” Anyways, the first actual tweet was from its creator, Jack Dorsey, and it occurred back when the social media platform was simply known as Twttr, without the vowels. The very simple statement of Dorsey setting up his account basically set the stage for an entire generation of hot takes, misinformed opinions and indefensible positions. In other words, it made the internet an even more level playing field for just about everyone to have a voice. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing, however, is up for debate.

One could actually call it “e-marketing.” Gary Thuerk[a] certainly did back in 1978, when he made history by sending out the first unsolicited electronic message. Thuerk sent out his spam/e-marketing email to those few who held ARPANET addresses (more on that later). Those recipients, predictably, weren’t too thrilled on the other end of that line. This included representatives for ARPANET, who admonished Thuerk on his actions. That said, the spam blast was successful, since the company for which Thuerk was working saw a massive increase in sales for their line of VAX computing systems.

It’s sometimes easy to forget how Wikipedia’s publicly edited status essentially means that it shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Yet the site has become a de facto source for many of us to cultivate our daily doses of “didja knows.” Granted, Wikipedia’s many monitors and curators ensure that the site’s endless resources of knowledge try to retain at least a semblance of impartiality. It was back on January 15th, 2001, that Wikipedia went live, and today its consistent flow of updated information provides rabbit hole after rabbit hole for us to spelunk.

Hey, are you old enough to remember a time when all of our desired purchases weren’t waiting right at our fingertips? Amazon officially launched back in July of 1995, and initially specialized in books. Fast forward to the modern day, and Jeff Bezos[b]’ company has become the behemoth that ate the juggernaut, in terms of e-commerce. For better or worse, Amazon has changed how brick-and-mortar stores operate, while forever altering the customer experience. It’s now a place where people from all walks of life shop, listen, watch and yes, read, while at the same time doing all of this with instant gratification.

YouTube wasn’t the first to pioneer online video, but it was probably the first to perfect it. Like Wikipedia in the information space, YouTube has become the default for many of us to stream videos. For just about anything, really. Sure, other competitors to YouTube still exist, such as DailyMotion, but this video sharing site has grown far beyond simple travelogue or humor clips. It’s instead become a place where many of us earn a living, writing, editing and producing video content for audiences that have come along with us for the ride. YouTube is also an ever-changing internet beast, with fluid standards and rules that make uploading a true adventure.

Contrary to popular opinion, Napster didn’t destroy the music industry. Just like home taping didn’t kill music back in the 1980s. Instead, the concept of sharing music, peer-to-peer, for free, forced the record companies to shift how they delivered music to the masses. There will always be those that prefer keeping their lives clutter free by keeping their music in the cloud. At the same time, however, the thriving sales of vinyl and uptick in tape and CD nostalgia have worked in tandem with the world file sharing created back in 1999. What was most interesting about the Napster era was primarily the “wild west” of lawless blogspots sharing Rapidshare and Megaupload links until the cows came home.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We mean that era when Hotmail debuted its free email service to the public…albeit with a ridiculously low amount of storage. Then again, it wasn’t as if we had a lot to save back in the summer of ‘96, and Hotmail proved extremely popular. Heck, we’re betting that many of you watching this know at least ONE person that still uses the Hotmail address they created back in high school. Or maybe you ARE that person! We’re not judging you, but we ARE glad that Gmail showed up in 2004 with a substantially more generous amount of online storage for their users.

What’s in a domain name? Well, a lot, actually. For starters, there’s the optics involved with professional businesses utilizing a proper .com. After all, would you feel safe shopping online from an Angelfire or Geocities site? Elsewhere, computer scientist Jon Postel[c]’s 1986 introduction of top level domains made it easy to signal out proper nonprofits by their .org designation. Then, there’s domain names that represent certain countries, such as the United Kingdom. Or .edu and .gov domains that let users know they’re accessing an educational or governmental website. It’s an invaluable piece of internet history that we sometimes take for granted.

It’s perhaps the most obvious entry on this list, the ultimate softball when it comes to monumental internet occasions. Sir Tim Berners-Lee[d] was the English computer scientist that brought us the HTTP protocol, HTML coding language, URLs…basically the entire world wide web as we know it today. The very first web page was a primitive thing by today’s standards, but it’s virtually impossible to overstate its importance to our online connectivity. The page was a basic table of contents describing the web’s nuts and bolts for the millions of us who didn’t know what the heck Berners-Lee was talking about. But it would go on to change just about everything for everyone in its wake.


Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

Richard Dawkins’ Coining of the Word Back in 1976

Connectivity Gets an Upgrade

Sorry, PCs. Only Macs Could Run Webcams Back in the Day

Journal Diaries for a New Generation

Instant Video to Go Along with Your DVDs By Mail!

When it comes to the impact of online gaming in internet history, the tip of the iceberg is clearly… Club Penguin.


Alright, you got us– just kidding! But let us know what color your Puffle was in the comments.

Every major event has a beginning and the internet was no exception. ARPANET was an acronym that stood for The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, having been developed by the United States’ Department of Defense back in 1966. It was a collaborative group of networks that pioneered many things we take for granted today. These include file sharing, remote log-ins and many other important steps that could be taken by defense administrators in the event of an emergency. It was a forward-thinking endeavor that helped lay the groundwork for the massive connections we currently enjoy with the phones in our pockets.


What do you think are some of the most defining moments in online history? Let us know in the comments!

ARPA-net https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ARPANET
VAX = vacks https://youtu.be/kwAk2I3D3gc?si=IU6HDQ3vs972ZpYd&t=36
[b]BAY-zoce / zose (second syllable rhymes with "dose") https://youtu.be/rWRbTnE1PEM?t=11
[c]john paw-STELL https://youtu.be/MXHL89PDHAc?si=ue97SJp-iatK1mJ9&t=5
[d]burners-lee https://youtu.be/fKL_SZS-EYs?si=jEDXnG5kB11cLv4V&t=1